Tutor Perini wins $1.4B Los Angeles Purple Line Section 3 contract

Dive Brief:

Tutor Perini Corp. announced that it received a notice of intent from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to award the company a $1.4 billion contract for the Purple Line Extension Section 3 project.
Tutor Perini, together with partner O&G Industries, will design and build 2.6 miles of rail and two stations. The Metro board estimates that the segment will be operational in 2026.
The contractor also is performing initial design work under a complementary contract with partner Frontier-Kemper — a $410 million project that will see construction of tunnels and related systems for the Purple Line’s stations phase.

Dive Insight:

The Metro board first approved Tutor Perini for the project in January 2017. Around the same time, transportation officials announced that the Purple Line Section 2 phase had won almost $1.6 billion in federal financial assistance — the combination of a federal grant and a USDOT loan, with local taxes contributing approximately $836 million toward the $2.5 billion total cost.

The Federal Transit Administration also approved a Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) of $1.25 billion for the Section 1 phase of the extension. Another federal grant, a Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan, and local revenue will cover the balance of the $2.8 billion project.

Section 3, however, has yet to receive a FFGA. The FTA did announce in November, however, that the $3.7 billion final phase of the Purple Line had received $100 million of a $1.3 billion request.

The delay in the Purple Line’s funding reportedly is part of the disbursement logjam under President Donald Trump’s Transportation Department. Tutor Perini, according to Streetsblog LA, worked out an agreement with the Los Angeles Metro to extend its bid expiration deadline so that the project would not have to be re-opened due to the funding holdup. This illustrates the patience that is sometimes required by contractors that commit to projects that must wait for approval and distribution of federal dollars.

The Section 3 project is also included in advocacy group Transportation for America’s list of approved yet unfunded USDOT projects. The organization tracks approved projects against how much money the federal government has paid out. It reports that the agency has awarded only $1.1 billion of the $3.9 billion of transportation funding that was approved since Trump took office in 2017.