Joe Cortright, City Observatory
May 8, 2025
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I’m Joe Cortright with City Observatory.
As you remember I testified six weeks ago, when I pointed out that faced with cost overruns, what this commission has done is frown, shrug, and then give the same people more money to do more of the same. And I noted that you get the behavior that you reward, and what you’ve been rewarding is low-balling cost estimates, overestimating revenue and minimizing or ignoring risks, and we’re seeing that happening in real time today.
On your agenda, I’ll just draw your attention to Item K, which deals with the Interstate Bridge Project. If you’ll notice, you don’t have an estimate of how much this project will cost, and you’re being told that  you’re just approving a $2 billion STIP allocation, but what you’re really doing is signing a blank check for whatever this project ends up costing. And there are clear signals that it’s going to cost a lot more than the seven and a half billion dollars they told you.
First of all, that cost estimate we know—and your staff report acknowledges—is out of date. It was prepared in 2022. In January of 2024—16 months ago—your staff publicly said, We know that that estimate is outdated. It needs to be raised, and we’ll have a new estimate for you in six months. They’ve subsequently missed two deadlines. The staff report now says you might get a new cost estimate by the end of the year. So you’re actually being asked to approve this project without any valid cost estimate.
Second, you’re counting on about up to $1.6 billion in toll revenues. But again, the homework hasn’t been done here: The “level three” analysis that would tell you how much toll revenue you can actually get, and what tolls you would have to charge to get it, hasn’t been done, and the tolls won’t be set until after you commit to construction of the project.
Third, you’re also counting on a billion dollars from the federal government for light rail, and you haven’t even applied for that money yet, and you won’t know, according to your staff report, until 2028. There’s a placeholder in the staff report that basically says, “We’ll come back and amend the STIP when we don’t get as much federal money as we hope for.”
Fourth, In addition,  the item allocates $430 million in additional money for “preliminary engineering.” That’s on top of, apparently, the $200 million that you’ve already spent—so more than $600 million—for preliminary engineering, which only covers the period through 2027. The single largest chunk of that money has gone to WSP, which is the company that came to your last meeting and said you’re doing a very fine job managing. Of course, they think you are, because you’re handing them lots of money.
What this does is, all of this does, is make a mockery of the idea of accountability and transparency. You’re signing up for something you don’t know how much it’s going to cost and how you’re going to pay for it, and it’s coming exactly the time you’re asking the Legislature for a major transportation package and  the materials presented to the Joint Transportation Committee have omitted any reference to the additional cost of this project. So essentially, once we approve this transportation package, the Legislature will discover that it has a big additional hole to fill.
Finally, I’ll just point out your staff report says that this project will be with us for a good long time, that the construction period will take 15 years. And as bad as the surprises are right now, as you know from your experience with the Abernathy Bridge, there will be more surprises in a difficult, complex, expensive bridge project along the way as it goes along. So you can count on you—and more likely, your successors—having to wrestle with the consequences of the decisions you make today. Good luck! Thank you.
