Transit officials said Thursday that they will need an additional $145 million to build the Exposition light rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City, once again underscoring the huge financial stakes involved in constructing a rail system to the Westside.
Rapid increases in construction costs have ballooned the project's original $640-million budget to $785 million, officials said, and threaten to shorten the line before it reaches Culver City. The project broke ground in August.
Faced with the nearly 23% increase in costs, members of the Exposition Construction Authority voted Thursday to ask the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to provide the extra money. The MTA will operate the rail system.
Despite evidence that construction costs were rising in recent years, project officials seriously underestimated the rate of inflation for labor and materials when they developed the Expo Line's budget in 2005.
In a written report, Richard Thorpe, chief executive of the Expo authority and the MTA's top construction official, said the budget assumed that the price of labor and construction materials would increase 3.5% annually. But construction costs actually rose an average of more than 11% a year, Thorpe said.
Based on recently negotiated contracts, he wrote that the 8.6-mile first stage of the line "cannot be completed as originally planned" without the additional funding from the MTA. Without it, Thorpe said, the line will end short of Culver City, probably at the La Cienega station.
Before discussion of the cost overruns, Santa Monica Councilwoman Pam O'Connor, who chairs the MTA board, abruptly left the Expo board meeting. As she raced to her car outside the county Hall of Administration, O'Connor said she had a prior engagement out of town and had to get to the airport.
Los Angeles Councilwoman Jan Perry, who chairs the construction authority, left right after the overrun discussion and said she had to get to another event.
In an interview later she said that all members of the Expo board had been briefed on the budget problems and were aware that the project faced a substantial deficit.
"We knew," she said
After the meeting, Thorpe defended the projections used to develop the $640-million budget, saying no one could have foreseen such a rapid rise in construction costs.
His comments echoed those of MTA Chief Executive Roger Snoble, who said the cost of steel, concrete and other materials has increased dramatically in recent years.
