Eight hundred tons of streetcar rail – 50 truckloads – will be delivered to Kansas City next week, marking the end of bargaining and a final negotiated maximum price for the project: $102 million.
City engineering service manager Ralph Davis assured the city council Thursday that they're getting a good deal. Davis said the city has worked through a "value engineering" process to eliminate unnecessary costs, and in doing so saved about $5 million. He said city representatives had also negotiated down the contractors' fees and charges.
The net result, he said, is "a really good reduction in price."
Davis said the city also checked the negotiated final price with other cities that have built streetcar lines and found it quite comparable to what they paid.
The council accepted the price figure, and formally approved spending an additional $23 million to improve water and sewer lines along the route.
