Blue Line Extension - Bottineau LRT

[BikesOnFilm]

Or another idea - let's complete the capital investment plan we outlined over a decade ago and use the 4-7 years to let the very real investments we've made in solving those problems have a chance to play out before we preemptively give up.

[Bakken2016]

From the Blue Line Extension Newsletter, it truly looks like most of the cost increases are defined below.

Updated budget, schedule set next steps for Blue Line Extension
Thank you for your patience as we have awaited results from the Federal Risk Assessment process. We are providing this update to share information about the completion of an important step in the Blue Line Extension process, and to share information about next steps. With the recent completion of the Federal Risk Assessment process and the project nearing the 90% design milestone, project staff in partnership with the Federal Transit Administration have set an official project budget of $3.58 billion.
Completion of the risk analysis is a required milestone for all federal transit projects and marks a significant step forward for the proposed Blue Line Extension project.
This budget is $336 million higher than the previous project budget of early 2024 when the project was 30% designed. It reflects major changes to the project requested by cities through the Municipal Consent Process in 2024 and genuine engagement with communities.
Changes to the project requested by communities since the 2024 preliminary cost estimate include:
• Adding a station at Washington and West Broadway avenues
• Redesigning the Lowry Avenue Station
• Improving road connectivity in the North Loop to offset loss of traffic on 10th Avenue
• Many other changes and local infrastructure improvements requested by cities and communities
The budget also includes a large contingency fund of 32% to account for ongoing economic volatility and uncertainty.

Project schedule
The federal risk analysis modified the project schedule. According to the analysis, if the Metropolitan Council were to apply for a Full Funding Grant Agreement within the next six months and that grant was then approved in a timely manner by the FTA, early construction could begin later in 2027, with major construction getting underway in 2028 and complete by 2032. Revenue service would begin in 2033 after testing is complete.
Informed by in-depth constructability reviews with MnDOT and existing Metro Transit construction staff, and major construction contractors from across the country, this updated project schedule accommodates construction phasing to maintain residential and commercial access throughout the corridor for the entire duration of construction.
The project team has worked diligently to partner with the community to ensure we are involving a diversity of voices and perspectives in the corridor. We listened, and we made significant changes to the project based on what we heard.

Next steps
With the federal risk analysis complete, the next step is to apply for federal funding. The Met Council is the designated organization to formally submit a project application on behalf of all project partners.
All nonfederal funding must be identified and committed before a Full Funding Grant Agreement application is submitted. At this time, a funding gap remains that must be addressed before the project applies for federal funding. The Metropolitan Council and Hennepin County will work diligently with all project partners to evaluate all available funding sources and project efficiencies in an effort to close the remaining gap. Both agencies recognize the importance of this project to our partners and the community, and we will keep you up to date as we continue to advance through the federal process.

[angrysuburbanite]

Ok, so I did some quick math: $3.6 billion puts the project at ~$276,923,076 per mile; if you were to assume every mile of the line cost the same amount, truncating at 63rd Avenue would cost around $2.3 billion.

Seems like the GOP should have pushed for a truncation study rather than a stupid BRT alternatives analysis because that seems like a reasonable solution to cut costs.

There is no world where a 13 mile, almost entirely at-grade light rail line should cost almost 4 billion dollars. I want the extension built, but we need to do some deep thinking and reflecting as a region and country as to how we’ve let these projects get so expensive.

[Nick]

As with Southwest before it, it might be fun for proponents to preregister some red lines. Is $5,000,000,000 too much?

[BikesOnFilm]

If the budget for this line was $5b, with a 32% contingency fund that leads KSTP to report the project will cost $6.6b, yeah I'd say that would be too high.

It's not a mystery why things cost so much in the US. MNDOT has staff that design their own roadways, but to build our transit projects we have to hire consulting firms. And then we have to go back to those consultants over and over as the plans are presented to the public and we have to go over the parkway... I mean under the parkway... I mean avoid it entirely so the Park Board will finally vote yes.

The countries that build rail cheaply do it themselves. They design it in house, they construct it in house. They don't have arbitrary federal standards that make things more expensive by virtue of making every transit project in the country conform to a one-size-fits-none process to obtain necessary funding. I don't know what the public hearing process is like in Spain but I'm guessing they don't spend years on it. They can buy equipment off the shelf no matter what country it comes from.

Maybe we could save a bit by making the stations more spartan too, but when we're already putting the stations underneath a freeway bridge because building it for a better rider experience would cost too much, is a bit of light and color really what's holding us back?

[Nick]

It does seem like "overhead" is eating the entire country, and unfortunately our social circles are full of that overhead :-/

[thespeedmccool]

I would suggest we really just need Train Robert Moses: one guy who has all the power and authority to just build what needs to be built. That way, no one has to chip in $60 million~ in local road improvements to please Robbinsdale city councilors who, let's face it, are by-day hotel managers and by-night political hobbyists who don't deserve to have a say.

Give Train Robert Moses $20 billion of state bonding over ~15 years and you'll quickly see a useful transit network appear. More people will be pleased that someone is doing something than would be mad that it's not literally perfect.

[John21]

Boring Company can build a car tunnel from BP to the convention center and most other places for cheap.

[angrysuburbanite]

Is it just me or is a 32% contingency fund for a project at the 90% engineering phase a bit excessive? Especially on a relatively safe project with basically no grade separation. I'm desperately thinking of ways that planners could lower the costs. From my calculations, if you went down to a 5-10% contingency and cut the line at 63rd avenue you could get this project down to around $2-2.4 billion.

[BikesOnFilm]

The contingency fund is only a messaging problem. If there aren't issues with the construction, it doesn't get spent.

If we don't think building out to Target in BP is worth it or it's a matter of making cuts or not getting our federal funding, fine. But we shouldn't be cutting the line down solely to make the number of the budget + contingency look better. I really don't care what KSTP or their viewers think about a budget they barely understand.

[COLSLAW5]

Also the problem is we need the third maintenance facility that would be built up by Target. If you don't build the line up there you wont have that facility.

I guess you could maybe build it out where it was originally proposed for the green line extension

[Tiller]

Without that 32% contingency, the sticker price drops to $2.713B. That cost is also be based on the year of expenditure, which assumes a 3.5% annual construction(?) inflation rate for the cost until construction in 2028-2032ish. If we adjusted those dollars from let's say 2030 to 2012 - the median construction years of the blue line extension and the original central corridor LRT respectively - then the BLX cost would be about $1.75B. The central corridor is 11 miles, and the BLX is 13.4 miles. $957M/11 miles = $87M/mile. $1.75B/13.4 miles = $130M/mile.

Thats definitely higher, about 50% more expensive per mile. Though it's not 3X or 4X higher. I made that downward adjustment with normal inflation numbers, not construction inflation, since that construction inflation being larger than normal inflation is hypothetically part of the problem of escalating public works project costs. I think a larger part of the problem is we're all just getting older, and money doesn't go as far as it used to.

In an alternative world where the DFL didn't fuck up in 2015 by failing to pass the damn transportation bill, and instead went above and beyond and gave us like +$20B for transit in the 10 years between then and now, we could have actually seen a bunch of these lines (and more!) built for the costs that were expected back then.

[mattaudio]

For those more familiar with how these projects are financially structured on the contracts side... How are people from planning to engineering to construction incentivized to avoid using up the contingency?

[Korh]

This is and a few other projects makes me wonder how much debt/bonds is the state allowed to issue every year? Because while several people have already pointed at things that probably makes it cost a lot, I still think the fact that there's no big pile of cash reserved for transit projects increases both cost and timelines since they all have to wait for a new cash infusion every year or two.
From what I can find there are no set laws but 3 guidelines so the state doesn't get hit with a high interest rate by credit raters:

1. Total outstanding principal for tax-supported debt shall not exceed 3.25% of state personal income

2. Total authorized principal for tax-supported debt, including state moral obligations and equipment capital leases, shall not exceed 6% of state personal income.

3. At least 40% of outstanding general obligation debt shall be scheduled to mature within five years, and at least 70% within ten years.

Assuming transit falls under #2 and looking at the federal reserve page for the state, the states income is $462.74 billion
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNOTOT

6% of that is $27.76 billion and as of February that current state debt was $8.5 billion, so lets say $19.2 billion is the rough limit to how much the state can issue if they want to keep the credit rating at AAA.
That's more then enough if we just wanted to fund all current transit projects. But that includes everything the state pays for, not just things like roads and highways since the gas and motor vehicle tax hasn't been able to cover those in a long time, but every public service and utility that is as needed as transit.

[angrysuburbanite]

There was a meeting yesterday on the funding situation for the Bottineau extension. This was the slideshow but I’ll do my best to summarize. https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... E-PPT.aspx

$1.586 billion has been secured and Hennepin County is expected to commit an additional $1.519 billion before submitting for a federal grant. In addition, around $195 million is being shaved from the budget to bring the project cost to $3.385 billion. This includes reducing systems and financing costs in the final planning stages as well as cutting a pedestrian bridge at 63rd Station and opting for a surface lot rather than an enclosed garage at the Oak Grove terminus.

They currently project a funding gap of about $279 million, which needs to be resolved in order to submit an application for federal funding this fall. As basically all local funding options have been exhausted already, they are looking at a few things. The first one is to reduce the contingency, which is still a fairly large 32% of the final budget, which could remove 60-180 million from the project cost. After reducing the cost to $3.385 billion, the absolute cost of the contingency is also expected to go down as well.

One potentially risky move they are considering is removing the LRV procurement from the BLE project, which could remove up to $177 million from the project. The presentation says that new vehicles would be procured, but outside of the actual scope of this specific capital project (probably an "expansion" order concurrent with replacement of the Type 1 LRVs?). The state funding sources for transit (MVST and sales tax) are off the table.

Overall, the funding gap is relatively small if the changes they mentioned are carried out, but it needs to be resolved by early August in order to get the FFGA submitted by late October. It’s doable, but I still think the biggest question mark is whether or not the FTA will even grant any funds. The only point of optimism is that their federal-level match is actually relatively small (the majority of the project’s cost will be covered by local sources) and they haven't frozen the CIG funds yet, so it might be less of a political lightning rod in our current administration than larger projects which haven’t received funding. That being said, our current federal government hasn't really approved any new spending for transit expansion so this would definitely be an anomaly if it got any FFGA at all.

It's too bad we legally can't do the Seattle method of basically self-funding rail expansion via ballot measures. Though I doubt our region has the public support to get something like that to pass anyways.

[BikesOnFilm]

A good canary project would be the Utah FrontRunner 2X project. FTA’s annual report documents anticipate awarding the grant in August 2026. If that doesn’t happen, or there’s an unexplained delay, that could be a bad sign.