El Paso, TX — Project on Time, Budget

September 2016

The El Paso Times reportsthat the heritage PCC project being built in the west Texas city is on budget and on its construction schedule. The $97 million rail line is being built entirely with state funds so it imported European girder rail as Buy America rules did not apply.

The same firms that built the Tucson, Ariz., modern streetcar line -- RailWorks and Granite Construction --- are building the 4.8-mile line from just north of the Mexican border with Juarez, through downtown El Paso and north to the University of Texas-El Paso campus.

Brookville Equipment Corp. is rehabilitating six PCCs for service and while they will retain the classic 1930s air-electric car body without standee windows, they will have pantographs and modern propulsion and trucks. The cars will be painted in three El Paso color schemes but National Ciry Lines "fruit salad" car 1511 will be replicated with original decorative exterior artwork.

The newspaper reports 85 percent of underground work now has been completed and the entire project should be finished in
2018.

A few change orders needed to address below ground issues in the El Paso streetcar project have cost nearly $4 million, but haven’t yet impacted the trolley’s allocated budget or completion schedule, officials said in late September. The change orders have been handled within the contingency built into the project budget.

The first change order for the site work cost amounted to $108,000 when crews encountered large amounts of concrete foundation and waste material as they excavated.

Two more change orders totaled about $265,000 after discovery of an underground storage tank full of some type of chemicals. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was investigated, and deter,omed the chemicals were not hazardous. The change order also covered relocating an El Paso Electric Company switchbox.

Another change order of $219,000 covered issues related to relocaton of water and sewer lines.