Construction Issues
On 12 March 2007, the City of Dallas officials and DART made an agreement to make Love Field Station a surface-level facility after a long debate of whether or not to make it an underground station.
On December 5, 2007, the Dallas Morning News ran a story reporting that DART President Gary Thomas stated that a previous cost estimate of $988 million was too low. A new cost estimate for the 14 mile project was $1.8 - $1.9 billion. The $900 million overrun in costs has caused considerable outrage amongst political leaders in the City of Irving Texas, where the line passes on its way to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Irving leaders subsequently made inquiry as to the cost overruns. Texas State Representative Linda Harper Brown sent an official letter to Mr. Thomas also making inquiry into the project's substantial cost overruns.
In February 2010 DART officials announced that the first two phases may be delayed due to TXDOT problems along State Highway 114, which the Orange Line route follows. Utility relocation and road construction will delay access to portions of the construction area where the rail line and highway intersect. The delay could push the connection to Las Colinas from December 2011 to August 2012. DART is determined to keep the original schedule and minimize any delay.
In June 2010, DART placed the line on indefinite hold due to declining revenue; on 15 September 2010, the agency said that due to cost savings and federal funds, the plans for the line have been revived.
On 13 December 2011, DART awarded a contract to design and build the Orange Line extension from the Belt Line station to the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, valued at about $150 million, with construction to start in early 2012 and an opening date of December 2014.
Read more about this topic: Orange Line (Dallas Area Rapid Transit)
Famous quotes containing the words construction and/or issues:
“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)