WAAP slipping into 2019; $5 million cost hike seen
The current budget of $35.5 million will require an infusion of “close to $5 million,” outgoing project manager Dennis Barron of El Paso County told a meeting of the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) board of directors in August. He summed up the overall issue as “major scope creep.”
An accompanying memo to the RTA from Barron and County Engineer Jennifer Irvine notes that, while “most of the major elements” in WAAP will get done this year, full completion won't occur until May 2019.
 A view east along Fountain Creek in late August shows the status of the Westside Avenue Action Plan's bridge construction (background right), as well as signs of the rainstorms that had beset the project. Westside Pioneer photo
|
The original prediction, when the project started in late 2016, was to have all the work done by December of this year.
Rebuilding about 1½ miles of Colorado/Manitou Avenue west of 31st Street (including utilities, storm drains and roadway), WAAP is being managed by the county with Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs. The RTA sales tax provides most of the funding.
A key aspect to be finished this year, according to the county memo, is the new Adams Crossing bridge over Fountain Creek at Columbia Road, which will replace the traffic bridge built in 1934. However, the schedule now calls for the new span to open in late September, about five months later than predicted as recently as last spring.
Project amenities being pushed into 2019 include sidewalks and driveways, the Ridge Road plaza, a water quality pond at Ridge Road, a pedestrian bridge over Fountain Creek, trail work, bus stops and final roadway paving, the memo states.
At the August RTA meeting, the county did not make a formal request for more money, predicting two more months were needed for detailed costs to be tabulated.
It will be the second major project increase this year. The WAAP budget was announced as $30.9 million when the project began. In March, the RTA board agreed to increase that by $4.6 million, transferring funds from another project. At that time, as the RTA board was told, a key cost driver was the slow pace of property purchase/ easement acquisitions.
That's also true now. The memo states that out of a total of 99 originally identified property needs (since reduced to 92), only one was obtained before the project started.
The rest of them were to be in hand by July of this year, the WAAP project team had previously pledged to the contractor, Wildcat Cons-truction.
But in August, “property acquisition efforts are still continuing,” the county memo admits. “Wildcat has been very flexible in advancing work within available right of way and easements as obtained, but has had to revise phasing and prioritize much of the work from what was orginally planned.”
Delays have resulted from changes in ownership, bank foreclosures, property-owner requests for minor changes and even “inaccessible or unresponsive owners,” the memo elaborates. Eminent domain, in which a government entity can force a purchase based on public need, has already been used once “and there may be others.”
Now, with the schedule being extended, that will mean more needing to be spent on such items as employee salaries, subcontractors and equipment, the memo points out.
At the RTA board meeting, El Paso County Commissioner Longino Gonzales questioned the rising WAAP tab. He, like the other RTA board members, is an elected official. Gonzales noted that when voters reapproved the RTA sales tax in 2012, the project that would become WAAP had an estimated price tag of around $12 million.
“This is one of the biggest cost overruns we've had locally,” he said.
Irvine did not dispute that point. “I hear what you're saying,” she replied to Gonzales. “We're very conscious of the costs and we will continue to track them. But we don't want to have finger-pointing.”
Her memo, along with comments she made at the meeting, touched on the project team's strategy with the acquisitions. The usual government practice on contracts is to obtain easements first. But with so many needed for WAAP and construction costs spiking upward in late 2016, the project team decided to seek bids before costs got too high. The hope - vain, as it turned out - was that property negotiations could stay ahead of the project.
Westside Pioneer article