Re: (rshsdepot) Albany, NY

["Paul S. Luchter" <luckyshow_@_mindspring.com>]

Why don't they just use the Albany D&H station? (he says tongue in cheek
- -----Original Message-----
From: James Dent <james.dent_@_itochu.com>
To: RSHS List <rshsdepot_@_lists.railfan.net>
Date: Friday, May 11, 2001 4:26 PM
Subject: (rshsdepot) Albany, NY


>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.''
>
>
>

------------------------------