Good news for the Washington State Department of Transportation and the North Spokane Corridor. Not only is the NSC/Francis to Farwell-Southbound Lanes project the first TIGER (Transportation Infrastructure Generating Economic Recovery) project in the nation to open bids, but all bids submitted were under the engineer’s estimate of $27,417,410.
The bids are under review for full compliance with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) requirements but a contractor should be chosen in a few days.
$1.5 billion was made available under the TIGER program with over 1,400 projects totaling over $50 billion submitted from all 50 states. The NSC work was submitted along with two other Washington state projects in a competitive process for funding.
Construction is expected to start in summer 2010 with completion in late 2011. The project will add three lanes between Francis Avenue and Farwell Road. If you'd like to know more on the NSC, here's a link to the WSDOT's NSC web page.
3 comments:
Proclaiming this as good news is like celebrating the oil spill in the gulf because it creates new jobs to help clean up the mess. Way to go BP and WSDOT creating jobs at the expense of the environment!
Thanks for the comment Anonymous. I've got a lot to do today and I've debated this with you repeatedly. So, being a public employee, I'm not going to waste tax payer money and go through it again. Have a great day though and if anyone else wants to jump in I'd be interested in hearing other opinions and points of view.
Let us assume two things for fun. First that you make $30 an hour. Second that it takes you two minutes to respond. That means that a response costs tax payers $1. The unfortunate thing is that your response will be infinitely more beneficial to the region in the long term than the completion of the NSC and at only one four billionth of the cost! Seems like a deal to me.
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