NC: Raleigh again fails to find a contractor to build bus rapid transit line. It will try again.

For the second time, the city’s efforts to find a contractor to build its first bus rapid transit line have ended in failure.

Just one company submitted a bid to construct the 5.4-mile BRT line along New Bern Avenue, and it was at a price city officials have deemed too high. They will ask the City Council on Tuesday to let them reject the bid and try again.

The delay will push completion of the BRT line to late 2028 at the earliest, more than three years later than planned.

The city budgeted $90 million for the project, which entails building special bus lanes and 10 stations with elevated, covered platforms between downtown and a park-and-ride lot off New Hope Road. The city held a groundbreaking ceremony in November 2023 and hoped to begin construction last summer.

But when the city put the project out to bid last spring, not one company made an offer.

After consulting with contractors and with agencies that have built BRT lines in other cities, city officials decided to divide the work in two, with one contract for the roadwork and another for the stations. They reasoned that would make it easier for companies to concentrate on what they’re good at.

In late August, the city began seeking a contractor for the roadwork, which accounts for the bulk of the project and must be done before the stations can be built. The bids were due Oct. 18, and only the Fred Smith Company made an offer.

The company said it would do the work for $112.9 million, according to a memo to the City Council from Sylvester Percival, the city’s head of roadway design and construction. That was nearly 58% higher than a city engineer’s estimate of $71.6 million, not to mention more than the city’s budget for both the roadwork and the stations combined.

Several contractors had shown interest in the project, and city officials were a little surprised to get only one offer. But it’s a busy time for road builders, made more so by the damage done by Hurricane Helene in late September, said Byron Sanders, the city’s assistant director of engineering services.

“I think that any time we see a hurricane or some sort of a storm event of significance that comes through the state, a lot of the contracting community all understandably focus on that area,” Sanders said in an interview. “I do think that Helene and the construction work taking place in Western North Carolina likely had an impact on what we saw.”

A new strategy to find builders

To entice contractors, Raleigh now plans to break the BRT project into four parts. Clearing vegetation and building the stations would each be separate contracts, while the roadwork would be broken into two contracts: one for the new bus-only lanes in the median between Poole Road and WakeMed and another for the sections downtown and east of the Beltline.

“I’m confident that our approach of breaking this thing down into more digestible pieces will be more attractive to the contractors and ultimately have us be more successful this go-around,” Sanders said.

The city also will give contractors more time to finish the project. When it sought bids last spring, the city said it expected the work to be completed in two years. After contractors balked at that, the city will now give them three, said Het Patel, the city transit planner overseeing BRT.

That means if the city succeeds in finding companies to do the work this year, the New Bern BRT line wouldn’t be finished until late 2028, Patel said.

“That’s our current target, if we can get construction started in summer of 2025,” he said.

A new kind of transit for Raleigh and NC

Bus rapid transit was a key component of the Wake Transit Plan endorsed by voters when they approved a new half-cent sales tax for transit in 2016. BRT combines the lower cost of a bus with some of the benefits of light rail, including level boarding, pre-paid tickets and dedicated lanes and priority at intersections that keep the buses from being bogged down in traffic.

The city has already purchased seven 60-foot articulated buses designed for the BRT line and doesn’t plan to put them into service until construction is completed, Patel said.

Raleigh has received $47 million from the Federal Transit Administration for the New Bern Avenue line, with the rest coming from the city and the transit sales tax. Sanders said the city will do all it can to remain within the $90 million construction budget.

“If that means we have to do some value engineering to get things back in budget or think of some creative ways to get that done, it’s our intent to maintain the budget on this project,” he said.

The New Bern Avenue line would be the first BRT system in North Carolina. Raleigh plans to build three more BRT lines radiating from downtown to the south, west and north. When it does, Sanders said, it will be better prepared to find companies willing to do the work.

“We are learning a lot in this process,” he said. “When you’re at the tip of the spear, you start learning some stuff along the way.”

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