(rshsdepot) Albany, NY

["James Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

-From the Albany (NY) Times Union...

Station funds held up
Albany -- Citing cost overruns, state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno
demands an accounting of the Rensselaer project

Calling the Rensselaer railway station construction project "a runaway
train,'' Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said Thursday he would withhold
further funding from the project until its managers account for escalating
expenses.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle assailed the Capital District
Transportation Authority for running tens of millions of dollars over budget
on the project. CDTA officials this week revised their cost projections,
saying the new station will probably cost more than $60 million by the time
it is completed. It was at least the third major cost revision since the
original estimate of $35 million, and it drew fire from the same state
officials the CDTA hopes will help bridge the massive shortfall.

"Since it was first announced, the cost of this project has been a runaway
train,'' Bruno, R-Brunswick, said. "I will not commit any additional state
funding to the new rail station until I receive a full and complete
accounting of how these cost overruns occurred.''

CDTA officials say the station could still open in spring 2002 on the last
budget estimate of $52.2 million, but that additional track and signal work
they call "Phase Three'' will be needed afterward and will push the budget
past the $60 million mark.

The CDTA has secured between $41 million and $47 million for the station and
is looking to state officials to help complete the project, which broke
ground in June 1999.

"We appreciate the senator's concern and we will provide him with the
information necessary to receive his continued support for this important
project,'' said CDTA spokesman Carm Basile.

The remarks recalled a similar exchange the CDTA had earlier this year with
U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, when he criticized the authority's handling of a
Saratoga Springs-to-Albany commuter rail project. Sweeney demanded accountin
g records and other documents before lending that project further federal
support.

CDTA officials said the cost overruns at the Rensselaer station are largely
due to unanticipated track work that involved moving less than a mile of
rail and more than 100 signals to accommodate the new station's platforms.

The so-called third phase of the project that will continue after the
station is open will involve further track and signal work to provide for a
freight rail bypass and high-speed rail capability, said Dennis Fitzgerald,
the CDTA's executive director.

But some legislators have grown skeptical after watching the CDTA raise the
construction project's price tag and push back the completion date from the
original plan in 1998, when they said the $35 million station would open in
2001. The projected opening has been pushed back a year.

"This is not the first time and that adds to the predicament,'' said
Assemblyman Ron Canestrari, D-Cohoes, who sits on the Assembly's
transportation committee.

"There is going to have to be serious justification for us to commit to much
more,'' Canestrari said. "What isn't finished may have to be scaled back.''

Canestrari noted that the state voters' defeat of the Transportation Bond
Act last fall has cramped the budgets of projects statewide and made
officials especially sensitive to cost overruns.

A spokesperson for Gov. George Pataki did not return calls for comment on
the rail station's revised cost estimates.

More than 600,000 passengers pass through Rensselaer station each year, most
of them traveling to New York City, making it the 13th busiest in the
nation, Amtrak officials said

Bruce Becker, president of the Empire State Passengers Association, a group
that lobbies for better rail service, said he has received assurances from
the state Department of Transportation that the station will open in early
2002, but he said the cost overruns are worrisome.

"We are concerned that there is still a funding shortfall and in light of
the new cost overruns, that concern is heightened. The gap is widening, not
narrowing,'' Becker said.

Meanwhile, CDTA officials are waiting for a bid on one of the final
construction pieces of the station project, a walkway over the tracks. The
80,000 square-foot brick station appears, from the outside, to be nearly
complete. Painters have been hired for the interior.

"The station is going to open at some point, somehow,'' Becker said. "For
the CDTA to say 'We ran out of money, we're going to stop,' that's not
realistic.''

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