Suburban road projects in Maryland are costing about 50 percent more than initially budgeted andtaking almost three years longer than planned to complete, according to a new Montgomery County study.
Montgomery Councilwoman Nancy Floreen, who leads the county’s transportation committee, asked staffers to study why the county continues to cut checks for road projects that run far over budget. Analysts found that the average road project cost 54 percent more than originally thought, or 42 percent more once costs are adjusted for inflation.
“I wanted to see if there was some evidence of some trend or reason we could point to as why costs increase so much in transportation projects — was it a timing, a right of way thing?” Floreen said. “Was there one element that identified a common thread we could work on?”
The report said there was no single factor that led to increases, but highlighted 10 elements that when combined often led to cost jumps. They varied from utility relocation and environmental compliance issues to additional land acquisitions that are made in the midst of a project or delays that occur during the procurement process, such as protests of bids.
Bruce Johnson, chief of the Division of Capital Development in the county’s Department of Public Works and Transportation, said that after planning on projects is complete, cost estimates become more accurate.
“You would expect to be way off if projects are being approved before all the facility planning process is complete,” Johnson said. “There are so many unknowns. … We’re looking at environmental impact, topography, the type of roads, whether it will have a median, sidewalks and bikeways, storm drain stuff.”
Johnson said now nearly all county road projects must go through the facility planning process before being included in a county budget.
The county is facing a $401 million projected budget gap, and council Vice President Phil Andrews said he was hopeful information garnered from the road study could be applied to other projects as well.
“Roads are not the only projects that have come in substantially over what has been budgeted,” Andrews said. “I would suspect the lessons that have been learned from this would be applicable in many respects to anything we are budgeting funds for.”
