Troubled light rail line running late

AL SCHELL/Courier-Post
Work continues at the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden, which will be a transfer point.

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff

The map in the subway station deep beneath the streets of Philadelphia shows a rail line running up the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, with the notation "opens 2002."

That possibility, of course, has come and gone for the South Jersey Light Rail Line.

So have subsequent predictions by NJ Transit of winter, spring and summer 2003.

Now, with test trains regularly running up and down the 34-mile Camden-to-Trenton line, residents are wondering when it's going to begin operating for real.

"We haven't heard a thing" about a date, said Edward Aja, whose front door on Broad Street in Burlington City is just a few feet from the line. "They said in the fall."

Indeed, NJ Transit has been saying "the fall" since last spring and, although fall is now here, the agency still declines to be any more specific.

"We haven't set a date," NJ Transit spokeswoman Lynn Bowersox said Monday.

Meanwhile:

NJ Transit confirmed there have been derailments on the line, describing them as minor and emphasizing that no injuries or damage to vehicles were suffered.

A state investigation into the origins of the $1 billion line continues.

Negotiations are under way to settle claims by the general contractor, Bechtel, that it deserves an additional $140 million. State officials once dismissed those claims as baseless.

The engineering firm overseeing construction of the line for NJ Transit, DMJM-Harris, continues to profit from the project nine months after it was supposed to be completed.

All of the derailments took place "in the yard" at low speed and were attributable to operator error, Bowersox said. She estimated the number at "three or four" but said the exact number and location were not immediately available.

The possibility of such mistakes, she said, is the reason the agency does such extensive testing and training.

The state investigation into the light rail line was initiated last fall by a gubernatorial administration furious at being saddled by a previous administration with a project it considers a poor investment.

The administration of Gov. James E. McGreevey at first assigned the investigation to two outside law firms.

Then, four months into the probe, the governor took the investigation back and turned it over to the Attorney General's office.

Chuck Davis, a spokesman for the attorney general, said last week only that the investigation is "ongoing," with work being done by both the Division of Criminal Justice and the Office of Government Integrity.

One area under investigation is the process that led to selecting the route, including a 1996 study that deemed the riverfront route feasible.

That study was done by Daniel Mann Johnson Mendenhall, which subcontracted the work to Booz-Allen Hamilton.

DMJM, now DMJM-Harris after a merger, went on to design the line and oversee its construction.

Early this year, NJ Transit awarded DMJM-Harris an additional $8.6 million to oversee construction beyond the original deadline.

The additional money brought to more than $90 million the amount of money DMJM has collected on the line.

NJ Transit Executive Director George Warrington defended the contract extension for DMJM, saying the delays were the fault of Bechtel and its subcontractors, not its overseer.

When Bechtel sued NJ Transit last year, blaming the agency for delays it priced at $140 million, Micah Rasmussen, then the spokesman for the state transportation commissioner, declared "we're not going to buckle under" and said that Bechtel "seriously underestimates this administration if it thinks we will."

Warrington confirmed earlier this year that attorneys for NJ Transit and Rail Group, the consortium that Bechtel leads, are in negotiations.

While NJ Transit has no announcement on an opening date for the light rail, others offer guesses.

Larry Walker, whose real estate agency in Burlington City sits next to an office once occupied by project contractors, said he'd heard "October or November" as an opening date.

Robert Box, the general manager of the PATCO Hi-Speedline, which will share a station with the light rail line, recalls hearing "November or December."

He's pretty sure it won't be before November.

That's when his agency hopes to complete work on the "head house" at the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden, which will serve as the transfer point for light rail passengers bound for Philadelphia on the Hi-Speedline.

Bowersox cited the need for additional testing of signals and training of operators as one reason for the delay. She said there also is work remaining at two stations in Trenton.

Removal of 123,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt from East Camden would not delay the opening, she said.

NJ Transit agreed to remove the dirt it dumped next to a residential neighborhood.

Removing it by train, the option favored by residents, would not impede light rail service, Bowersox said.

Reach Richard Pearsall at (856)-486-2465 or rpearsall@courierpostonline.com