Houston: bids opened on Sam Houston Tollway widening

[MaxConcrete]

HCTRA (the toll road authority) recently opened bids for widening a 10-mile section in southeast Houston from SH 288 (South Freeway) to the I-45 (Gulf Freeway). Work includes widening the four existing main lanes to eight main lanes, with full inner and outer shoulders (currently the inner shoulder is narrow, not wide enough to park).

https://www.hctra.org/about_contracts/?CSRT=9420672156159130689

West section
Estimate: $81.1 million
Pulice Construction: $77.4
Williams Brothers: $79.1
Webber $86.0
Odebrecht: $91.7

East section
Estimate: $95.2 million
Pulice Construction: $96
Williams Brothers: $97
Webber: $101.5
Odebrecht: $107.1

Total construction cost is $173.4 million, or about $17 million per mile. This seems somewhat high considering how simple this job is, basically just adding about 30 feet of concrete to each side of the road. But I suppose that's what it costs today.

The real news is the arrival of Pulice Construction in Texas. They are very big in Arizona, especially Phoenix, but this is the first time I've seen them win a job in Texas. They beat out the most competitive firm in the Houston area, Williams Brothers construction. Williams Brothers typically wins every job they want to win. (Sometimes they're not particularly interested in a job so they'll bid high, but they were bidding to win this job.)

[Bobby5280]

Does that $17 million per mile include ROW & building acquisition/demolition? If that figure is just for adding the lanes it seems pretty high. With all the cost inflation going on with infrastructure projects I'm worried the United States is going to completely price itself out of doing big things.

[MaxConcrete]

Does that $17 million per mile include ROW & building acquisition/demolition?

No, there's no ROW acquisition needed for this project. The new lanes are being added in the space between the main lanes and frontage roads. There is one long overpass over SH 288, but otherwise nothing that imposes usual costs. Drainage is already in place, and the only grading needed will be embankment at the overpasses. There were many expensive engineering and management contracts also awarded, so the fully loaded cost is closer to $20 million per mile. There is also a separate project already underway (paid for by TxDOT) to add the missing section of frontage roads over Mykawa and the RR tracks; IIRC that project is around $10 million.

There was a run-up in construction costs in Houston due to the oil boom, but the boom is now a bust, but I don't know that any cost relief can be expected. Most likely there will be no increases for a while. High construction costs are definitely a concern, and I can see high costs putting the proposed $7 billion I-45/downtown rebuild and expansion at risk for delays.
 

[Bobby5280]

High construction costs have gotten way way out of control. It's really obscene, just like the extreme cost inflation going on with the health care and higher education sectors. About the only thing I can see to get his insanity jammed back into reality is completely cutting the government out of the equation entirely or something just as Draconian. Right now these vendors working in these sectors are operating as if they have a blank check. The obscenity of it is really anger inspiring.

I've said this a few other times in other threads, but it bears repeating. This kind of excess going on is literally killing America. It is making it absolutely, totally impossible for this country to do big things. If the Interstate highway system was just getting started from scratch today it would be absolutely impossible to build. Totally hopelessly impossible. That's partly to do with all the infrastructure cost greed shamelessly visible today. Add to that all the legal horseshit going on that makes any new superhighway crooked and useless as hell instead of a direct, time saving route.

This extreme ineptitude the United States is demonstrating when it comes to infrastructure projects is really showing this nation is lapsing very fast into decline. Just like empires of old. They all collapse from within due to greed, selfishness and excess. No vision for the greater good. That is this nation now.

[Chris]

$ 17 million per mile for four additional lanes and full inner shoulders doesn't strike me as extraordinarily expensive, at least from a European point of view. In most of Europe that's about the starting price to widen a freeway with just one lane in each direction, and more if they have to acquire some right-of-way or rebuild a lot of bridges.

Many Dutch freeways were built with space for one additional lane in each direction in the median. These project usually start at around € 10 million per kilometer, which is approximately $ 17 million per mile.

Judging from Google Earth, every single bridge along this part of the beltway has only four lanes and no inner shoulders. That means they would have to expand them all, and probably build a lot of retaining walls as well. At least they were smart in the past, by preservering a right-of-way that is sufficient for eight lanes.

[Rothman]

About the only thing I can see to get his insanity jammed back into reality is completely cutting the government out of the equation entirely or something just as Draconian. Right now these vendors working in these sectors are operating as if they have a blank check.

So, to get vendors to not operate as if they have a blank check is by "completely cutting the government out of the equation"?

There are all sorts of reasons why government has enacted piles of laws and regulations regarding bids on construction contracts especially.  Without them, we'd see more collusion (I keep telling people that the private sector suffers from corruption; the corruption of the private sector just goes under different terms).  Without government, there'd be no means of punishing proven incompetent or outright fraudulent contractors.

If anything, your proposal to completely cut government out of road construction would lead to the exact condition your are criticizing:  Vendors running around acting like they have blank checks, both fiscally and in conducting their actual construction.

[wxfree]

About the only thing I can see to get his insanity jammed back into reality is completely cutting the government out of the equation entirely or something just as Draconian. Right now these vendors working in these sectors are operating as if they have a blank check.

So, to get vendors to not operate as if they have a blank check is by "completely cutting the government out of the equation"?

There are all sorts of reasons why government has enacted piles of laws and regulations regarding bids on construction contracts especially.  Without them, we'd see more collusion (I keep telling people that the private sector suffers from corruption; the corruption of the private sector just goes under different terms).  Without government, there'd be no means of punishing proven incompetent or outright fraudulent contractors.

If anything, your proposal to completely cut government out of road construction would lead to the exact condition your are criticizing:  Vendors running around acting like they have blank checks, both fiscally and in conducting their actual construction.

There's corruption and abuse everywhere.  Some people are pro-government and point out private sector corruption, while some are anti-government and point out government corruption.  It would, of course, be nice to get rid of corruption and abuse, but realistically I think a good approach is to balance the influences.  As you say, government can influence private business in a way to prevent waste and fraud.  Private companies can influence government so as to reduce its waste and fraud.  It isn't an especially good solution, but it's about the best we can do without changing the human penchant for greed and magically making everyone more civic minded.

[Rothman]

Now I'm just ticked at the "your are" typo in my original post.

[Bobby5280]

We live in 2016. Technology is far more advanced than it was 50 years ago. But 50 years ago the US could get a big infrastructure project off the ground and completed far faster, far more efficiently and far less costly than it can today. The United States sucks at doing infrastructure now.

This country may be able to build some new state of the art projects, but it always comes at ever rising Lamborghini luxury style prices. 20 years ago a new NFL stadium could be built for $250 million. Today the cost has raced past $1 billion, with the newest stadiums running $1.4 billion (with a huge chunk of the cost being "socialized" at taxpayers' expense by the way).

The same ridiculous cost inflation happened to road construction, but the tax funding mechanisms are still prentending that we're living in 1990. The federal gasoline tax hasn't seen an increase since then. Add to that the fact today's vehicles are more fuel efficient and much of the public has changed driving behavior due to high gasoline prices and the government may actually be getting less tax revenue than back then. The public is going "tea party" crazy, happily living in a fantasy world when they think how this stuff gets funded and the share they're willing to pay for it.

Then there's all the extra regulations and laws that get added. It now takes so long for a new road to go through various legal and environmental review processes that the building cost and needs the project is trying to address may be radically different by the time the project actually gets under construction. If a new superhighway can get built it will be built on a crooked, winding alignment that compromises its very purpose and function. That's thanks to all the lawsuits, greed and other nonsense that infects the whole endeavor.

Big picture thinking? The United States doesn't have much of that anymore.

[Rothman]

Then there's all the extra regulations and laws that get added. It now takes so long for a new road to go through various legal and environmental review processes that the building cost and needs the project is trying to address may be radically different by the time the project actually gets under construction. If a new superhighway can get built it will be built on a crooked, winding alignment that compromises its very purpose and function. That's thanks to all the lawsuits, greed and other nonsense that infects the whole endeavor.

Remember the history, here, though:  Governmental abuse of eminent domain and lack of care for any environmental considerations drove things to where they are today, as well as prying government away from steering contracts to contractors owned by someone's relative.

[DeaconG]

^^^And materials costs have risen tremendously over the last 15 years, especially with all the building going on in the world right now; especially in China and the Middle East (more specifically the UAE).  Wanna know where your concrete went? Try a 3000+ mile interstate system for China.  Of the 20 major skyscrapers built or going up the majority are either in China or the Middle East (I have no idea how Dubai expects to fill those multiple 1000-foot condos in their harbor district), so your materials availability isn't what it used to be.

And asphalt is a petroleum by-product...how volatile has the oil markets been in the last ten years? You can't just snap your fingers and expect it to show up, you have a have a lead time for a lot of this stuff, which means you have to determine when it's advantageous to lock prices in...or suffer if you can't.

There's where a lot of your cost inflation came from.