Austin Transit Partnership continues to hit more Light Rail project milestones, approving an operations and maintenance building contract and a resolution to acquire parcels of land for the project at its April 15 meeting.
The details
The 10-mile long, $7.1 billion light rail project is part of the Project Connect transit program approved by voters in 2020. This system will initially feature 15 stations with all-electric trains running every 5-10 minutes throughout most of the day, according to ATP.
In February, ATP approved a $60 million design-build contract for the first phase of the project. On April 15, the agency approved a contract with Kiewit Austin Partnership—a joint venture between Kiewit Building Group and Austin Commercial—in an amount not to exceed $25 million for the construction of an operations and maintenance facility as part of Phase 1 of the project.
The facility will serve as the light rail's home base for the trains to be cleaned, serviced and maintained and for the system's operators to work, said Brad Cummings, ATP senior vice president of procurement and contracts.
The contract will ultimately reach hundreds of millions of dollars but the agency is breaking the work up into stepped authorizations, said Lindsay Wood, ATP executive vice president of engineering and construction.
The agency also approved a resolution not to exceed $230 million to acquire up to 18 parcels of property to use as part of Phase 1.
Nine of the parcels are related to the operations and maintenance facility with the other nine are full parcel acquisitions along the light rail alignment, said Alex Gale, ATP senior vice president of real estate and facilities.
"This is the beginning of the process where people may anticipate that we will be taking condemnation actions and eminent domain actions," Mayor Kirk Watson said. "We have to emphasize this is the beginning of what will be, and we should anticipate, a sometimes an uncomfortable process."
ATP is pursuing this first batch of parcels in partnership with the city of Austin, and while no official offers have been made yet, landowners are aware they're on the list, Gale said.
The board also clarified that ATP will do the initial negotiations for the parcels but the city will engage in the eminent domain process, and ATP Executive Director Greg Canally said these are "12 to 18 month processes."
