Two big things happened on the way from a landslide transit victory in November 2020 to the pause-and-reflect phase we’re now in. One is that the scope of the Orange and Blue lines grew quite a bit, as planners worked to resolve issues along the route – from reconfiguring the Drag to crossing the lake twice to placing the entire SoCo stretch underground (to Oltorf) to avoid conflicting with a Capitol view corridor, to connecting three Downtown subway stations with a pedestrian concourse. The other is that everything got more expensive due to pandemic-inflation-supply-chain-labor-shortage-Let’s-Go-Dark-Brandon stuff. (Maybe also the crypto crash, who knows.) By June, when we did a big Project Connect update package, we were already seeing pushback on some of the scope bloat (check out our Opinion columns) and the planning efforts quietly took a time-out. There’s still plenty of federal money sloshing around that could help close the cost gap, but Mayotary Pete Buttigieg and the Federal Transit Administration want to make sure their investments in our transit will help the people here who need better mobility the most. Look for the Project Connect replanning effort to come to fruition in late spring 2023.
This article appears in December 16 • 2022.