Posted on 02/15/2020 10:38:50 PM PST by grundle
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABC7) — Metro has spent $3.8 million and taken five years to build two unfinished bike racks - at East Falls Church and Vienna Metro Stations.
WMATA originally budgeted $600,000 for each rack, but the price tag has soared to $1.9 million each.
The covered bike shelters will house 92 bikes, putting the price tag at more than $20,000 per bike. Future costs to finish the projects could raise that number even higher.
The projects were supposed to be completed in December of 2015 but remain unfinished in 2020.
Metro says due to “Numerous construction quality issues, including damage caused by a contractor repeatedly drilling into an underground duct bank, led to lengthy delays.”
The transit agency severed ties with the first contractor four years ago. Metro says a second contractor also did not meet its quality control standards. In a statement to ABC7, Metro says “Quality control issues with contractors can take time to sort out, but Metro determined it was more important to get the project done right rather than get it done quickly.”
In January 2020 signs at the fenced-off construction site said the project would wrap up in late 2018. After ABC7 aired its story in January, the signs were removed.
ABC7 has requested all documents related to this project between the transit agency and the contractors involved though a Freedom of Information Act request. We have still not received any documents.
While regular riders say they have not seen construction workers here in months, WMATA says it hopes to have the project completed in the next few months.
The local hoboes are waiting impatiently to move in the moment these covered bike racks are complete.
Being like china is expensive! Visiting a friend in NY on a very narrow single lane street in queens there is a bike lane. On a normal day if you wanted to get into your car from the street side you had to wait for passing cars, yet there is a bike lane on this street. Rat idiocies prevail
thing leaks more than a collander.
My daughter lives in Springfield, VA. Last summer visiting they had impatiens flowers planted in the road medians. Planted and thriving. Impatiens require multiple watering per day and regular fertilizing to flourish. Either they were cared for that way or new ones repeatedly planted.
Apparently lots of money to throw around in Northern Virginia.
AUDIT. There has to be a scheme at work here.
> The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Regan
This saying is being entered into congressional record.
So far it’s 37 words and 2/3 complete.
Regular Metro rider here - as we know, this bike rack fiasco is a representative example but utter small beer compared to the big ticket projects where Metro wastes BILLIONS of dollars and the projects end up years, if not decades, behind schedule. Like the current Silver Line extension fiasco. Literally billions over budget and several years behind schedule. All to extend the line over an existing above-ground right of way to Dulles Airport!! How hard could that possibly be?!
Any idiot could supervise a contract for a bike rack. This isn’t government incompetence. It’s fraud. Somebody knows somebody and got a sweetheart deal
Trump probably could have built both in a month for $250,000.
Yeah, but still it only took 10 days. /s
Went way back uphill over the metro to a deadsville section on the other side. At least the bathrooms were free, a bit heated, and semi-clean. Finally hung out in a heated elevator lobby for a friend to pick me up. And I’m thinking “why doesn’t this go a few miles farther to Dulles?”
I was thinking the same thing - I know a family of engineers whose Eagle Scouts built something for a bus stop, they’d probably have this done by now.
They are probably forced by law to hire incompetent contractors.
Eagle scouts are required to develop and then lead a project actually accomplished by scouts that need to earn service hours.
The purpose of the Eagle Project is to develop leadership skills and provide a source for service hours.
I'd rather take my chances with the WuFlu at home than to walk into that building.
Really? 5 years to build a bike rack?? Typical government, and people wants us to have more government. No thanks, I could do it in 2 months and I might have it bigger and better...
Stop! You’re both right!
Pandemic preparedness is an aspect of what I do.
In various wargaming scenarios, the US continually fails to stop pandemics before enormous damage is done because those in charge cannot act quickly and efficiently because they must follow “the rules”.
The rules for hospital construction actually got started 70+ years ago with the Hill-Burton Act. Like any Federally-funded program, money comes with strings. As long as the money is created by debt, voting for it is popular and the rulemakers at the agencies can escalate and escalate since the cost of compliance is essentially socialized.
How we got to a $6000 aspirin tablet in a hospital (yes, it’s a metaphor) is a complicated story with plenty of blame to go around, but the construction and occupancy requirements are a significant part of it.
So.
China can build things fast, yes. The things they build are not always of the highest quality, yes. There system does afford them the opportunity to respond quickly to emergencies, yes.
And ours doesn’t. YES.
Sounds like Chicago politicians running the place.
Would you have drilled through cables repeatedly in your haste to get done?
Who pocketed the 3 mil+ ?
“China just built an entire huge HOSPITAL on 10 days.
10 days.”
It’s not that the government can’t do BIG things anymore. It can’t do small things anymore, either.
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