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Virginia Transit Projects Show How Wrong Cost Estimates Can Sometimes Be

AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Estimating the cost of major transit projects can be difficult. And a new federal report points to Virginia as an example of how cost estimates can be dramatically wrong.

A new Government Accountability Office report points to the Virginia Tide light rail project in Norfolk as an example of how cost estimates can be wrong — more than $80 million dollars off in this case.

Quentin Kidd at Christopher Newport University says a number of factors conspired to push up the cost of Virginia’s first modern light rail project. 

“Norfolk is a city that is 400 years old in the parts where the Tide was being developed," he explains. "And they ran into a lot of problems that they weren’t expecting to run into, and then there were changes along the way.”

Changes along the way, like the station design and the control system and the signaling — all of which were made after the cost estimate.

Frank Shafroth at George Mason University says he remembers how the cost estimates to build the Washington Metro system were wrong. 

“No one was quite certain how deep the tunnel underneath the Potomac River was going to have to be or how hard the rock would be in there and what kind of drill bit you would need," Shafroth says. "You might need a diamond drill bit rather than a normal drill bit.”

Diamonds are forever. But cost estimates come and go, and the GAO says the lesson of the Virginia Tide is that changing the station configuration after the cost estimate will probably lead to cost overruns.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Michael Pope is an author and journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria.