The first major road work set for downtown Houston related to the $11.2 billion-plus rebuild of the freeway core and Interstate 45 remains on track for next year, but at a cost of $80 million more than expected.
Work could start early next year and last for eight years rebuilding Interstate 69 from Texas 288 to I-45, through Third Ward and Midtown. It is the second of more than 15 Texas Department of Transportation projects encompassing the rebuild of the downtown freeway system and widening of I-45 from downtown north to Beltway 8.
Bids on the project, opened Thursday in Austin, show Houston-based Williams Brothers Construction was the apparent low price, with an offer of $695.5 million. That represents an increase of 13% compared to TxDOT’s estimate of $615.7 million. Webber, the only other company to bid on the job, submitted a bid of $1.254 billion, or more than twice than what state officials estimated.
The bid is not final and construction is not allowed to proceed until the Texas Transportation Commission accepts it and others, following TxDOT staff review, transportation department spokeswoman Raquelle Lewis said.
The work is the latest to cost far more than officials planned when planning of the project resumed in late 2022. In May 2023, construction of the segment was expected to cost $456 million, but since many construction jobs skyrocketed in price as material and labor costs surged. While state transportation officials have said prices are beginning to plateau, large projects in the major metro areas continue receiving bids 10% or higher than officials estimated.
First, LOL at the double-the-official-estimate bid for that part of the project. They were obviously way off, but maybe part of the problem is that the official estimates are consistently too low. And I’m sure someone at Williams Brothers is reading this story and thinking “damn, maybe we don’t have to be so conservative in our bids”. Don’t be shocked if this trend continues.
As noted, this isn’t the first time that bids came in well above the official estimates for a part of this project. It surely won’t be the last. But as I said before, it doesn’t matter because only mass transit projects are affected by cost increases. There’s literally no price too high for TxDOT to finish this job.
And given how long it will take, the final price tag could be awesome indeed.
Residents, however, will live with the work for two decades or more. Work is not expected to finish in downtown until 2037, with the planned widening of the freeway to Beltway 8 to add two managed lanes in direction expected to take until 2042 or later.
Emphasis mine. How old will you be in the year 2042? How many billions of dollars less would it have cost to build the entire 2019 MetroNext project? The world will never know.
By 2042, I’ll be 91, assuming I can still drive, assuming I’m still ambulatory.