08/24/06  String Thing Bridge budget is a moving target.

		It was just a few weeks ago that we got confirmation for what many had long been suspecting -- the city doesn't have the money to do the first Calatrava String Thing Bridge, much less all three of them.

		Jul 10, 2006 8:33 pm US/Central Dallas Calatrava Suspension Bridge Over Budget  - Sarah Dodd Reporting
DALLAS CBS 11 News has learned that the first of three Calatrava suspension bridges, being built in Dallas, is coming in millions of dollars over budget. Given the overrun, the bridge may have to be changed, if it's going to be built. If the city doesn't have $83 million in the bank by the end of July, then the process of authorizing a contractor will start over, putting the project at least two months behind. Architect Santiago Calatrava is famous for his ability to create suspension bridges that are as much ?art? as they are functional. The City of Dallas is planning to build three as the centerpiece of the Trinity River project. As it stands, the city can only afford $65 million dollars per bridge, and the first one on the drawing board has a price tag of $113 million. One city leader is still optimistic about the project. ?That bridge can be built for less and it will be built for less,? said Mary Suhm, Dallas City Manager. The bridges are already controversial, with many critical of the expense. ?Too much downtown and city hall time has been put into these bridges, we can't afford them and they are not Dallas,? said activist, Sharon Boyd. The Texas Department of Transportation, along with the federal government, will put in about $30 million for a concrete bridge at Woodall Rodgers, but the city wants to build a suspension bridge. Fifteen million dollars has been raised privately, but that still leaves a large gap. Now, TXDOT says it may be too late to minimize the project, without having to re-do the bid process with contractors. ?If they get the money in the bank, then we'll move forward with the project,? said Bill Hale, Texas Dept. of Transportation. The city has only raised a total of $65 million dollars, including the money from TXDOT. The lowest bid for the bridge was $113 million, and the contractor has already been awarded the project. If the City of Dallas doesn't come with $83 million by the end of the month, everyone, including Calatrava, will have to go back to the drawing board. The city says in its contract with Calatrava, he must design a bridge that fits into the $65 million budget. Contractors say the bridge cost would be reduced by $14 million if they could use steel from Asia, but since federal money is involved in the project - it has to be American made.

When this first came up, I was amazed at the caviler attitude at City Hall and among the bridge devotees.  It was pretty much a Scarlett O'Hara state of mind -- "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."

Now, I'm a child of the South, but I don't subscribe to Scarlett's philosophy.  You should deal in the present, fix the problem and deal with something else tomorrow. 

Pretending that millions and millions are going to magically appear or disappear, as in the high bids for the String Thing Bridges (STB's) is not just wishful thinking, it's lunacy.

Mind you, Ch 11's Sarah Dodd broke the story on July 10th, but Belo didn't allow Emily Ramshaw or Tony Hartzel  to do the story until a month later on August 14th.  Emily and Hartzel are very good reporters, but they report to editors, and their editors report to their bosses, who report to Bob Decherd, who wants the STB's because they are vital to the Trinity Bondoogle, which is essential to enhancing his family holdings in the Trinity River flood plain.  It is really something that Ramshaw and Hartzel were even able to get some of the ugly facts in their story.

New bids sought on Calatrava bridge; Dallas officials hope designers can help contractors lower costs Monday, August 14, 2006 By EMILY RAMSHAW and TONY HARTZEL / The Dallas Morning News

Dallas officials said Monday that they will seek new bids beginning next week for the first budget-breaking Trinity River bridge, but they said the bridge specifications will contain no major alterations.    If the new bids ? expected in mid-fall ? break the bank, too, City Manager Mary Suhm said, the city's 40-story "signature" bridge will need a major redesign.    "We still believe we can build a bridge for the amount of money that we have," Ms. Suhm said. "Everybody's got to sharpen their pencils and give us new bids." ... Without a change in a project's design, the prices for a highway or bridge will not go down over the next few months, said Tom Johnson, executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of Texas. ... "You had smart people giving good bids," said Mr. Johnson, whose organization represents major road builders' interests statewide. He said he wasn't familiar with the Dallas bridge project. "If there is a change in design, the bids will come in cheaper. If you put the same packet of information out there ... the bids are generally going to be a little higher."    Bids for the Woodall Rodgers bridge, the first of three to be designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, came in at more than twice the anticipated $57 million cost in June. ... "The design is not substantially changing," Ms. Suhm said. Mr. Calatrava's team "really, really believes they can get it done. They're committed to working at it." ... Bill Hale, Dallas district engineer for the department ... said initial discussions for a new Woodall Rodgers bid have centered on making small project changes, such as allowing the use of cheaper foreign steel and reducing the size of support columns in the ground. ... "We promised voters we were going to build a bridge," City Council member Ed Oakley said. "If it comes back a second time, and we still can't afford it, we go back to square one" with Mr. Calatrava's team. ...

Flip Flop Oakley is reinventing history again.  The only time we have been able to vote on the Trinity Project (back when illegal vote harvesting wasn't prosecuted and 49.5% of the city voted NO), all we saw were lakes in the Trinity with swans the size of sailboats or vice versa. 

There was nothing about String Thing Bridges in the election propaganda.  The STB's didn't come along until AFTER the election when the brain-dead engineers hired by City Hall got around to doing some hydraulics testing and realized their plans for the Trinity would wipe out the existing bridges and viaducts.  Then we had to start looking for something that hung over the water, as in suspension bridges.

As a matter of fact, Mayor Miller's first mayoral campaign had a slogan of "Signature Schools, not Signature Bridges".  Since she won that election pretty handily, that might be taken as a referendum on the lack of "voter" support for Oakley's bridges.

With all the money the first STB may cost ($117 million was the low bid), anyone would assume $117 included on and off ramps.  This worrying child of the South assumed the STB's would come with on/off ramps.  This time, it's Tony Hartzel breaking the story that the on/off ramps will cost in excess of an additional $50 million per String Thing Bridge, which will be paid by TXDOT (that's our real money, too).

This is outrageous!  We can't afford the "superior taste" of our elite.

In building bridge, don't forget ramps Sunday, 8/20/06 by Tony Hartzel

For $57 million up to $113 million, Dallas will eventually get its first signature bridge over the Trinity River.    But that's it: a bridge.    For about $50 million, the state will also build the approaches leading to the span.    And you can't have one without the other.    Lost in all the debate about the cost of the bridge itself has been the additional cost needed to build the entire project. The additional $50 million, which will be paid by the state, will go toward approaches, ramps to Industrial Boulevard and connections to other city streets.    The Texas Department of Transportation has several reasons for separating the bridge costs from the rest of the project, said Brian Barth, director of transportation planning and development for the state transportation department. ... For bookkeeping, it's better to have costs related only to that project, Mr. Barth said. ... Carving out the bridge project also would attract specialty contractors whose prices may be higher than those of typical construction crews, Mr. Barth said.    "We didn't want specialty contractors doing standard work," he said.    Separating the two contracts also prevents cost overruns on one project from being absorbed in the other, Mr. Barth said.    Bids for the span ? the first of three to be designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava ? recently came in about double the most recent costs.    The city of Dallas has pledged to pay anything over the estimated $24.5 million that the state would have spent on a standard bridge. The city's most recent estimate for the span stands at $65 million, but bids from contractors came in at $113 million in June.    Whatever the final cost for the Calatrava span, it will be a bridge to nowhere without the other $50 million for the approaches. ... "If you look at our roads across the river during rush hour, it's apparent that we need another bridge," he said. "There is a lot of traffic destined for that West Dallas area." ...

Unless Mr. Barth knows something that no one else in Dallas has witnessed, I have never seen a traffic jam on the Sylvan bridge.  The bridge where the problems exist is the "third" bridge, which will never get replaced or enhanced because ALL THE MONEY IS GOING INTO THE WOODALL RODGERS BRIDGE.

The most honest thing that may have been printed in The Dallas Managed News  this year or last year or maybe in the last decade is Hartzel's comment "Whatever the final cost for the Calatrava span, it will be a bridge to nowhere without the other $50 million for the approaches."  With or without the on/off ramps, it's still a bridge to nowhere.

Bridge Bidding (Or, Why Not Just Play Go Fish?) Filed under: Schutze Jim Schutze August 11, 2006

The Santiago Calatrava signature suspension bridge across the Trinity drainage channel to Ray?s Sporting Goods?a gun shop?will be put out for new bids soon, City Manager Mary Suhm told me yesterday. That hasn?t been public yet. You read it here first.     Last time it was bid, the lowest bid was sort of twice as much money as the city had?$113 million versus $64.5 million in the budget. Suhm told me she?s hopeful a bit of tweaking and maybe a deal to use foreign steel will bring the bridge back within range of the budget.     I asked why they had to stick with steel. Given the fairly light amount of traffic we can expect going from downtown to Ray?s on any given afternoon, why not build the bridge out of wood and just paint it silver? I know that the person running a multibillion-dollar operation like Dallas City Hall should not have to sit on the phone and hear stupid stuff like that. But I can?t help myself, OK?     She said she thought a wooden bridge might be expensive to maintain. She knows how to take care of herself. See, you don?t have to feel sorry for her. You should feel sorry for me.    I also heard a rumor yesterday that they want to use Italian steel (seriously). Provide your own punch line, I guess. ?Jim Schutze

Tell me, when was the last time you went across the Trinity using the Sylvan Bridge? 

I like Schutze's silver-painted wooden bridge idea, but it's not as good as my virtual bridge idea.  In 2004, in Virtual Dallas, I proposed doing a light show across the Sylvan Bridge.  It would become more prominent as the night darkened, and you would have the illusion of a fancy String Thing Bridge spanning the Trinity Sewer Trough.  After dark, you can't see how nasty and pitiful the Trinity is in reality.  In the daytime, nothing is going to make that sewer trough more than it is, and the serviceable bridge we have today would continue to work just fine.

It's not like any of the elite who want the STB will ever be going over to West Dallas.  Rather than the Calatrava String Thing being "Our Eiffel Tower", it will be more like Our Brigadoon.  For you culturally deprived, Brigadoon is a musical about a little Scottish community that only materializes once a century.  The people resumed their perfect lives for a few days as if they hadn't been in suspension for 100 years.  There is a real "Brig o' Doon" in Alloway, Scotland.

Wouldn't it be perfect to span a fake river with an illusionary bridge?

A smart friend suggested we could change the virtual "bridge" to a virtual rocket ship or something if we got tired of it -- Dallas has such a short attention span.  I nixed that idea because we are talking about a serious illusion here for Our Downtown Betters (the ODB) and the rest of the city's 100 or so elite.  You know, the people who demand we build an opera house when most of our recreation centers have leaking roofs and faulty a/c systems. 

For our elite, we cannot have fake illusions.  We simply must have a serious illusion of a String Thing Bridge.

It might be fairly expensive to create the light show of virtual STB's, say a million or so per bridge, but compare that to the current cost of just the Woodall Rodgers STB at $167 million and counting.  Pretty good deal in virtual or real money, and it could be done very quickly.

I want an election about this whole thing.  We never voted on String Thing Bridges on the Trinity Sewer Trough, real or virtual. 

I don't want a virtual election, I want the real deal on next May's ballot when we elect new council members and a new mayor.  Don't you want a chance to actually vote on something that is already 3 or 4 times more than the 1998 Trinity Bond package (that may or may not have been approved with legal votes)?

We can force candidates to take a stand on the STB's (sounds like a disease, doesn't it?).  If they want those overpriced silly things, we at least know they are shallow and will be wasteful of our tax dollars going in.  If just one candidate has the courage to say he or she thinks a regular bridge at regular bridge costs is more appropriate, we can all get behind that candidate.

I'm not too worried because the String Thing Bridge crowd seems to have tapped out their money sources, real or virtual.

sb