The public has lost confidence in the management of the Brown Line rehab project, CTA Chairwoman Carole Brown said Thursday, warning amid disclosure of new cost overruns and slippage in the construction schedule that transit agency President Frank Kruesi would be held personally responsible.
“We have a huge credibility problem,” Brown said after the board approved a station renovation contract that is $16 million more than the original engineering estimate.
The overall Brown Line project, involving 18 stations, is running 11 percent above the CTA’s construction budget, resulting in the agency burning through almost all of its contingency funds for the project, scheduled to be completed in late 2009.
“We owe it to our riders to deliver the Brown Line [project] when we said we were. We owe it to our riders that we are [handicapped] accessible when we say we were going to be and that we are on budget. But right now if they don’t believe us, I don’t blame them,” Brown said.
The board also learned about other problems plaguing the $530 million project. Renovation of some stations has fallen behind schedule, and contractors have offered no new timetables because the CTA has failed to acquire some of the required construction permits.
Nonetheless, Brown led the transit board in the 5-2 vote approving a $58.3 million contract with McHugh Construction Co. to renovate the Addison, Damen, Montrose and Irving Park rail stations on the Brown Line, which runs between the Loop and Kimball Avenue.
“I am going to make it [Kruesi’s] responsibility to make sure it gets done appropriately. I will hold him to it, and I will blame him if it does not,” Brown told the board before the vote.
The project, planned since the late 1990s, hit its first major bump last year when Kruesi broke his promise to keep all stations open during construction. Fifteen stations are closing temporarily to save $22 million in costs caused by faulty estimates traced to errors by CTA staff, officials have said.
Kruesi said he would determine who at the CTA is to blame.
Work also has been postponed on the Armitage, Chicago and Sedgwick stations, said Susan Plassmeyer, CTA executive vice president of construction, engineering and facilities.
The Western Avenue station was scheduled to be completed next week, but that date has been pushed back due to delays in building a new staircase to the platform, she said.
Project goals
The key elements of the Brown Line project include lengthening platforms to accommodate eight-car trains, modernizing stations, making them handicapped accessible and upgrading tracks and signals.
