Posted: 4:55 pm Mon, August 20, 2012
By Drew?Kerr
Tags: Katie Walker, Martin Olav Sabo Pedestrian Bridge, Metropolitan Council, Southwest Corridor, Southwest LRT
Repair work began Monday on the Martin Olav Sabo Pedestrian Bridge in Minneapolis. The Metropolitan Council decided to seek new bids for a Southwest Light Rail Transit line engineering contract after URS Corp., the firm slated to get the contract, faced questions about its work on the Sabo Pedestrian Bbridge. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)
Engineering proposals due by Oct. 2
After halting a previous bid process, the Metropolitan Council has released a pair of new requests for proposals?(RFPs) to begin engineering work on the Southwest Light Rail Transit line.
The RFPs were made public on Friday and bids are due by Oct. 2, according to the Met Council, which is leading planning efforts for the proposed 15-mile transit line between downtown Minneapolis and Eden Prairie.
Firms are expected to be chosen by the Met Council in December or January and the engineering work is scheduled to be finished by the second quarter of 2014.
Met Council leaders had hoped to have the engineering done by the end of 2013 to keep on schedule for the line to go into service by 2018.
Plans were thrown off course when a pair of suspension cables on the Martin Olav Sabo Pedestrian Bridge broke in February. The Sabo bridge was designed by San Francisco-based URS Corp., which was slated to receive a $94 million contract to do all of the engineering needed to ready the Southwest LRT for construction.
The $5 million Sabo Bridge, which crosses Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis, was closed again this week for additional repairs. Questions about liability remain unanswered, but there was enough uncertainty to start the process over from scratch, Met Council officials said.
To help alleviate safety concerns, the regional planning agency is also planning to hire a consultant to oversee and review engineering work. A request for proposals for that work is expected to go out this fall, with an award in spring 2013.
URS spokesman Ron Lowe declined on Monday to say whether the firm would respond to the Met Council?s new RFPs. The only other company to bid during the last round was Los Angeles-based AECOM. Officials at AECOM, which designed the Hiawatha LRT line, have said they remain interested in the project, but a spokesman could not immediately provide an update.
Although the engineering timeline on the Southwest LRT has been pushed back, later work can be sped up so that costs won?t necessarily increase, according to the Met Council. Every year of delay typically adds around $40 million to project costs and makes it more difficult to obtain federal funding, officials have claimed.
Project backers expect the federal government to pay for up to half the $1.2 billion project.
Unlike the previous RFP, the engineering bids being sought now are split into two parts and cover just 30 percent of the work needed to prepare the line for construction.
One of the contracts covers a seven-station, 6.5-mile stretch between Mitchell Road, in Eden Prairie, and 11th Avenue in Hopkins. The other contract covers a 10-station, 8.5-mile area between Hopkins and the Interchange, a new transit hub being built north of Target Field.
The work was split into two parts so that smaller firms could bid and because of the different issues that exist on either end of the line. Engineers will have to design a number of bridges on the east end of the line while the west end is more complicated because of existing freight operations.
Work to be completed during preliminary engineering includes study of roadway crossings, road and trail connections, park-and-ride facilities, utility needs and environmental issues. Station locations and the site of an operation and maintenance facility that could hold 35 light rail vehicles are also expected to be solidified.
The route also includes 11 bridges. A separate RFP for inspection work on three bridges on the route ? the Minnehaha Creek Bridge, the Louisiana Overpass Bridge and the Lake of the Isles Bridge ? also went out on Friday.
Bids for that work, which also includes routine inspections of bridges on the Central Corridor and Hiawatha LRT routes, are due by Sept. 12.
The Met Council has $47 million from the Counties Transit Improvement Board and the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority to begin engineering work on the Southwest LRT.
Met Council spokeswoman Meredith Salsbery said Monday that the budget for the two new RFPs would not be disclosed while the bid process remained opened. The previous RFP was worth $94 million.
More money will almost certainly be needed to finish the engineering, however. The Met Council is seeking a share of a $47.5 million state bonding fund created in the last legislative session to pay for additional engineering.
After the project is 30 percent engineered, the Met Council can ask the Federal Transit Administration for money needed to finish the final design.
The engineering work is just a part of the planning for the Southwest LRT line.
Work on a Transitional Station Area Action Plan is due to begin in mid-September and to finish within a year. The $624,000 study will look at what kind of infrastructure is needed to support residential and commercials development near the station areas, said Katie Walker, Hennepin County?s Southwest LRT Community Works project director.
Bids for a $25,000 housing inventory that will explore demographics along the proposed route are also being reviewed now, Walker said. A consultant is supposed to be chosen later this month or in early September, and work finished by the end of the year.
Source: http://finance-commerce.com/2012/08/southwest-light-rail-bidding-begins-again/
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