CTA approves Red Line Extension contracts as estimated cost balloons to $5.3 billion

The estimated cost of Red Line Extension has ballooned to $5.3 billion, but that didn’t stop the Chicago Transit Authority board from awarding the project’s first contract.The Red Line extension from 95th Street to 130th Street on the Far South Side had been expected to cost $3.6 billion.Months ago, the CTA said it had lined up enough money to pay for the project. On Wednesday, the transit agency said it would sell bonds to cover the increased cost.“CTA is moving forward with the project to fulfill the long-ago promise to the Far South Side that the [Red Line Extension] would be built,” the CTA said in a news release. “Delaying the project would potentially increase the budget by several billions of dollars.” The CTA said the increase was due to rising labor, materials and financing costs. Construction is expected to start in late 2025 and be completed by 2030, the CTA said.The CTA awarded a $2.9 billion contract to Walsh-VINCI Transit Community Partners to design and build the extension after a two-year award process.Walsh-VINCI Transit Community Partners includes Walsh Construction, VINCI Construction, design companies EXP and Systra and other subcontractors, according to the CTA. Walsh Construction is already building the CTA’s $2.1 billion Red-Purple Modernization Phase 1 Project, which Systra helped design, the CTA said.At the transit authority’s board meeting, President Dorval Carter Jr. choked up with emotion while saying the Red Line extension is a deeply personal project.Carter said he remembered hearing plenty of talk about extending the L line while growing up on the South Side and taking public transit.But, he said, there was never action.“When I finally got the chance, the opportunity, the blessing, to become the head of CTA, I didn’t have any doubt what my No. 1 priority was going to be. It was going to be to make this project happen,” Carter said.Carter called it a “legacy project.”“You deserved this decades ago,” Carter said. “The fact that it took us this long to get here is an abomination.”Carter, who has been criticized for CTA’s postpandemic deficiencies, also reflected on what brought him back to Chicago in 2015 from his post as acting chief of staff to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.“The special skills that I have — they’re not fixing a broken bus, they’re not in running a train, they’re not in rebuilding a track — they’re in getting money,” Carter said.The CTA has said it is with $2 billion in federal grants, $950 million from a tax increment financing district, $365 million in anticipated state funding and millions in CTA bonds and other sources.The Red Line Extension project will extend the south branch of the L line 5.6 miles from the terminal at 95th Street to 130th Street. Four stations would be built near 103rd Street, 111th Street, Michigan Avenue and 130th Street.