March 3, 2016

Two teams will compete for $400M Lynnwood Link light rail contract

Image from city of Shoreline [enlarge]

This conceptual drawing shows the Northeast 185th Street overpass. A pedestrian walkway and bike lanes would connect to the station.

Sound Transit has narrowed the field of teams seeking to bid on the $400 million L200 contract for the Lynnwood Link light rail extension.

Two joint-venture teams are moving to the next phase: a request for final proposals. One team is Stacy and Witbeck, Kiewit and Hoffman Construction. The other is Walsh Group and Graham Contracting.

Four other joint-venture teams initially sought the GC/CM contract: Atkinson Construction-Parsons, Flatiron-Kraemer, Granite-Mortenson and PCL-Skanska.

(Editor's note: This article has been updated to include the full list of teams.)

Rod Kempkes, executive project director for the Lynnwood Link extension at Sound Transit, said price proposals based on 30 percent of the design are due March 21 from the teams.

Sound Transit will pick a team and negotiate a preconstruction services contract. When designs are 90 percent complete, the agency will negotiate a final construction contract.

Kempkes said the prime contracting team can perform up to half of the work and bid against other firms for another 20 percent. He said it's also possible for the prime to subcontract all the work.

The extension will connect Northgate Station and Lynnwood Transit Center with 8.5 miles of light rail. Kempkes said it consists of three major contracts: the L200 south segment, the L300 north segment and the L800 contract for electrical systems, signals and communication systems along the entire 8.5 miles of track.

Contract L200 will include 4.5 miles of track, an elevated station with a 500-stall parking garage at Northeast 145th Street, and a retained-cut station with a 500-stall garage at Northeast 185th Street.

Contract L300 will have 3.7 miles of track, two elevated stations and a 1,650-stall garage at the Lynnwood Transit Center.

A smaller fourth project, L100, will install about 1/3-mile of track in Lynnwood.

Kempkes said between 30 percent and 40 percent of the line will be elevated and the rest will be at-grade.

HNTB Jacobs JV is designing L200 and L300. Kempkes said an award for the final design contract to HNTB Jacobs will go before the Sound Transit board on March 24.

Kempkes said the plan is reach 60 percent design in mid-2017 and start full construction by the end of 2018. He said other construction — demolition, site prep and utility relocations — could be performed before that.

The L200 segment is projected to finish in late 2019 or early 2020. The entire Lynnwood Link extension will open in late 2023.

Sound Transit will apply for federal funding once designs are 60 percent complete. The entire project could cost as much as $2.3 billion and include 34 new light rail trains and partially fund a new light rail maintenance facility. About $1.1 billion in funding would come from a grant through FTA New Starts program.

The Central Link light rail line that opened in 2009 had $500 million in New Starts funding and the University Link extension opening March 19 has $813 million from the program.

A trip from Lynnwood to downtown Seattle on the new line is expected to take 28 minutes.