Our elected officials don’t project manage transit and transportation projects. Like it’s been clearly mentioned, they were on track but then no construction companies showed up to do the work. How is that the city’s fault?
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By making unreasonable demands like wanting NC firms to do the work when nobody had that experience. Getting someone from out of state who had that experience would have gotten the work done.
Pandering never gets work done.
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Is that true? Or just a rumor?
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So why didn’t they find someone else if they were serious they be tryna find someone else.
Stop the excuses, the city doesn’t have anything to defend there not serious.
I’m not excusing anything. Just asking a question.
It has been thrown around that the city limited the bidders to NC contractors only. Just trying to verify if that is true.
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Don’t know either but if it is shame on them also very unprofessional and irresponsible. I swear why do we elect these people.
This seems like a lot of angst for a fairly minor issue. It’s tough to say at this point if they made a poor choice. Clearly the expectation that 1 NC company could handle everything was ambitious, but it cost at most a couple months progress on a multi-year project.
And while I’m frustrated with the slow progress too, that’s just the nature of infrastructure and being the people who are following changes so closely.
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Its not even that it just why would they rely on one company knowing there could be problems.
I’m not an expert on the bid process, but don’t suppose there’s any reason two companies couldn’t have put in a combined bid. I know that happens for other development projects where a financer, architect, and developer(for example) work together.
Just writing that out makes me wonder if they’re going to have problems getting bids for one of the components and have to expand the selection parameters? Most likely the “vertical” components since roads and foundations are pretty standardized.
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Have ZERO problem with wanting to source the work from North Carolina (ideally Raleigh-based) companies.
I do have an issue with imposing an arbitrary ‘2 year deadline’, knowing the contractors you preferred have built plenty of public transit projects…but not BRT. There are plenty of other mechanisms they could use versus an arbitrary deadline knowing this.
That’s a fair point. Like, I get that they want it done ASAP, as it’s already been LONG overdue. But I could totally see why imposing such a strict deadline into the deal might scare off local/state contractors who have never taken on such a project. As much as I’d love to see a North Carolina based company do it … why not reach out to whoever did Richmond’s BRT construction? They’re likely close enough to us that it would at least make sense for them to take on the job, and we’d know we’re getting contractors with experience building this type of infrastructure…
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I live a few blocks from where the BRT is planned in East Raleigh and have been eagerly following this since its inception. So while I’m fascinated by the convo here (as always!), sometimes it feels like we’re all just talking (screaming?) into the void. Lots of critiques and questions. Very few answers to be found.
So a suggestion: Het Patel is the BRT Program Manager. His contact info is listed on the website with an invitation to contact him with any questions. Why not invite him to come on over to this forum and do an AMA (ask me anything)? Or, if that’s too complicated, maybe we could crowdsource a list of questions to ask him so that we know what’s going on. @JonathanMelton has sure been helpful, but let’s go to the guy who’s directly in charge.
@dtraleigh, is this something that would be feasible? Just trying to think outside the box!
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This is a great idea. I got a chance to talk to Het at In Situ Studio’s Real Matter conference this summer, and he was very open about the state of the project. Even if he’s not available for an AMA, I’m sure he’d happily respond to an email.
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Absolutely. I’m happy to reach out to Het and see.
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A little bird (ie, someone who works for a company that is directly involved in the BRT project) told me that after the city re-opened the project for bids, they received two interested proposals and recently accepted one. This bird said that makes it likely construction will start soon.
I haven’t been able to confirm this outside of their word though. Any chance you’ve been able to reach out to Het?
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I assume the bid they accepted was for the “horizontal” portion of the project (roads, multi-use path, etc) and that the “vertical” portion (the bus stations) is still in the works?
Yes. Stand by for an update later this week. (I think)
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I think your examples of vertical and horizontal are reversed?
It’s been a long couple of weeks… 
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