The Purple Line likely won’t begin carrying passengers until as early as February of 2023, about a year behind schedule.
The delays are fairly typical of major public transportation projects, but they will lead to more grousing from the project’s critics.
The Purple Line already began construction a year behind schedule, after a federal court dismissed a lawsuit aimed at stopping the project.
Other delays occurred when the contractor building the Purple Line found it more complicated than expected to coordinate with the CSX railroad, while the state missed some of its own deadlines for buying land and reviewing environmental plans.
These kinds of problems are pretty much expected by anyone who follows mass transit. After studying 258 transportation infrastructure projects around the world, University of Oxford scholar Bent Flyvbjerg nine in ten exceeded their cost estimates.
The delays will likely add about $215 million to the Purple Line’s $5.6 billion cost, the Washington Post reported.
Construction of the Purple Line already began in College Park last year where the University of Maryland permanently closed one lane of Campus Drive through the heart of campus, making it a one-way street.
