Competition opens for subway project
4.5 miles of tube will cost around $500 million
Wednesday, May 17, 2000
By GEORGE FOSTER
The competition for Seattle's most ambitious and expensive public works project since the Denny Regrade opens today with submission of plans to build the city's first subway.
But while the regrading flattened Seattle hills in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sound Transit will spend about $500 million going under them. Early next year, huge boring machines will start cutting two tubes, each 19 feet in diameter, to make a 4.5-mile extension of the present downtown transit tunnel.
The tunnel will be the northern end of the Link light rail system that will mainly run above ground from SeaTac to North Seattle.
Competing for the design-build contract are two consortia of construction firms with extensive experience in tunneling under cities -- some of them cities with problems.
One of the firms was involved with Los Angeles' embarrassing Hollywood Boulevard tunnel collapse; others have worked on Boston's vastly over-budget "Big Dig" highway tunnel.
One of the groups of contractors is led by Modern Continental of Cambridge, Mass., and includes S.A. Healy Co. of McCook, Ill.; Impreglio Group of Italy; Parsons Transportation Group of Pasadena, Calif.; and Robison Construction of Sumner.
The other team is a joint venture of Traylor Bros. Inc. and Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc., both of Evansville, Ind.; J.F. Shea of Los Angeles; and Atkinson Construction of Denver.
The leader of a third group, Obayashi of Japan, pulled out of the running earlier this year. Akio Watatani, an Obayashi construction manager, said the project is "much more complicated" than originally thought, and cannot be finished in the expected 3 1/2 years.
Sound Transit officials say the schedule is tight, but not impossible. Atkinson Construction, which earlier joined with Obayashi to make a proposal, eventually switched to another consortium on the tunnel project.
An Atkinson spokesman, Bob Adams, had no explanation for Obayashi's withdrawal. "I don't know the thinking process behind Obayashi's reasons," Adams said.
Both Modern Continental and a member of the competing consortium, Atkinson Construction, have worked on Boston's "Big Dig" -- formally known as the Central Artery/Tunnel -- under Boston Harbor and over the Charles River.
The giant highway project has escalated from $10 billion to a projected $14 billion over five years, drawing criticism from federal transportation officials.
Modern Continental has nearly $2 billion in Big Dig contracts, more than any other firm. Company officials blame the overruns on design and scope changes ordered by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
"What ended up happening is that the scope (of work) changed and then the contracts changed," said company spokesman Andrew Paven.
Paul Bay, Sound Transit's light rail director, agreed that Modern Continental shouldn't bear blame in Boston.
"The politics are driving the design, and (design changes) mean big delays to the contractor and so the costs have risen," Bay said.
Yet Modern and Atkinson are not alone in having problem projects.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority fired the team, accusing it of fraud and shoddy workmanship, including the use of wooden wedges in gaps of the tunnel's outer walls, according to the transit agency. Later the same year, the MTA sued the contractors, who were also the subject of a criminal investigation by the agency's inspector general's office. The inquiry was later dropped.
Shea-Kiewit-Kenny claimed the sinkhole was caused by water from a source outside of the project and sued the agency, claiming unlawful termination. The legal battle ended last year when the agency agreed to pay Shea-Kiewit-Kenny $3.5 million. Other contractors finished the job.
Sound Transit's Bay attributed the problems there to the way the project was conceived -- the transit agency designed the tunnel (and specified boring equipment) for someone else to build.
Having the contractor both design and build the tunnel should help Seattle avoid Boston-style political problems and Portland-style unpleasant surprises, Bay said.
Today, the competing groups will present Sound Transit with documents showing how they would design and build the tunnel. Then, on July 14, the consortia will submit their financial proposals. From that point on, terms will be negotiated behind closed doors. An agreement, including a fixed price and schedule, is to be signed in late September or October.
Adams, of Denver-based Atkinson Construction, said Seattle's project is "going to take a massive effort and as much expertise as can be mobilized."
Seattle has had boring problems in the past. In 1988, two giant boring machines working on the 1.3-mile downtown transit tunnel were temporarily halted when they hit wet sand under Third Avenue and Pine Street. Engineers feared the work might undermine buildings above. Work resumed after wells were drilled and water was pumped out of the area, and grout was pumped in to help stabilize the soil.
The earth under Seattle, Poulton noted, "has got a lot of glaciation periods that cause the ground to be somewhat unknown."
Bay says this prompted Sound Transit "to (test) bore the heck out of this tunnel (route). We have taken far more borings than any comparable project, . . . every 300 feet, and we really have a picture of the underground geology."
During the Pleistocene ice ages -- 10,000 to 2 million years ago -- glaciers retreated ever-so-slowly through the Puget Sound lowlands, leaving varied layers of deposits. For tunnel engineers, this means digging through loose and dense sands, silt where methane gas may exist, ground water and boulders three- to six-feet thick.
The glaciers also left deep trenches and pockets -- Elliott Bay, Portage Bay, Lake Washington -- as well as ridges we now call First Hill, Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill.
Today, these densely populated hills are on the route of the light rail line.
"Anything that links them on the map is going to look successful," said Paul Matsuoka, Sound Transit's deputy executive director. "The only question is how expensive is it to do it."
P-I reporter George Foster can be reached at 206-448-8341 or georgefoster@seattle-pi.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
When the system opens in 2006, electric light rail trains will run a serpentine underground route nearly 6 miles from the International District to the University District, and possibly beyond, dipping more than 200 feet in places.
