By Mark Rea

Houston is about to welcome a new mass transit system that was on the drawing board for more than 20 years and took more than three years to construct. But when the $324 million METRORail accepts its first paying customer in January, it will make the Space City only the second in Texas - behind Dallas - to boast a light rail system.

Trains are already being tested along portions of the 7.5-mi system, said Jim Schroeder, engineering and construction manager for the Houston office of Carter & Burgess Inc. "The civil construction portion of the project was about 97 percent complete in late August and the systems elements were approximately 60 percent complete. We're on time for revenue service to begin in January."

METRORail officials are already testing completed portions of the track and the train itself, a new type of vehicle that has never been used before. Featuring a top operating speed of 66 mph and a capacity for up to 220 passengers per vehicle, the line will support a two-car train. The cars were designed by Siemens Transportation Systems Inc., a German company with U.S. headquarters in Sacramento, Calif.

"We're limited in that regard by the length of stations, which are in turn limited by the length of a city block," Schroeder said. "Obviously, we can't have a train stopping in a city street intersection, so we're limited to just two-car trains."

Schroeder has worked on light rail systems in Seattle, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., as well as heavy rail systems in Los Angeles, but he calls this project the most challenging he has ever faced.

"From a management perspective, the budget was perhaps the most difficult obstacle of all," he said. "We bid this project with only 30 percent of the drawings complete before selecting our five line-section contractors, which all submitted lump-sum bids.
As the engineering was completed and we started issuing work authorizations, the value of the individual contracts was negotiated up or down because many things changed when the drawings were 100 percent complete. Negotiating those changes, and still remaining within the budget, was very challenging, probably the most challenging project of my career."

The fast-track budgeting process was due to the city's desire to chop 11 months from the original construction schedule. Not scheduled for completion until November 2004, the schedule was accelerated as Houston vied for the rights to host Super Bowl XXXVIII in Reliant Stadium.

"We made the commitment that we would have the project completed in time for the Super Bowl, and I think that is one of the things that led to the city winning the rights from the NFL to host the game," Schroeder said. Reliant Stadium will play host to the 2004 Super Bowl, set for Feb. 1.

METRORail project director Anthony Venturato told the Houston Chronicle recently that no city has built a light rail line faster, noting that there was much more to the project than simply installing track.

New utility lines were installed under the Main Street corridor and Main and other roads were rebuilt.

"Main Street had not been touched since the 1950s," Venturato said. "That whole infrastructure was so old."

Buried 'Treasure'

While the budgeting portion of the project was extremely challenging, actual construction of the light rail system proved to be less stressful - but very interesting.

"When you're out there digging around underneath the city, you sometimes find things you don't expect to find, and you don't find things you do expect to find," Schroeder said.
"It winds up becoming somewhat of a treasure hunt."

For example, construction was halted when excavation crews hit a large piece of formed concrete buried beneath the intersection of McKinney and Main streets.

"It was about 6 ft. on each side, and didn't show up on any plans that we had," Schroeder said. "We dug down about 6 to 10 ft. around it, and found nothing that led into or out of that big chunk of concrete."

Crews later used jackhammers to clear enough space between the track lines and the concrete to continue with construction. Later, research revealed the underground obstacle was the base for a huge flagpole that had been erected in downtown Houston prior to early 1930s in honor of World War I veterans. Unfortunately, the flagpole was the target of many accidents involving automobiles and was moved shortly after its installation. But the base remained underground, hidden under the intersection until light rail crews unearthed it.

"My first thought was that is was a vault of some kind. I wanted to call Geraldo Rivera to open it, but no one thought much of that idea," Schroeder said with a laugh. "Seriously, though, we had photos of that intersection that dated back to the early Thirties, and they didn't show that flagpole. No one in the city remembered it either. Only through some research did we finally find out what it was."

Schroeder added that the flagpole base wasn't the only "treasure" found by workers.

"We found some old wooden conduits that were still active," he said. "They had been owned by Western Union, and when those were sold to MCI, they simply remained active. When we uncovered them, MCI came out and ran their newest fiber optic lines through them, so those wooden conduits haven't outlived usefulness yet. It was very interesting to find that type of old infrastructure, and that was still being used."

Also found were old trolley tracks complete with the wooden ties. No significant archaeological artifacts were uncovered, however. "This part of downtown Houston has been here for a very long time, so we really didn't expect to find any bones or anything like that," Schroeder said. "We were prepared if we had found something like that, though."

Stops Along The Way

Begun in April 2001, the rail begins at the north end of Main Street downtown and traverses the most densely developed areas of the city. There are stops are key destinations such as the University of Houston, the Museum District, Hermann Park (which is also close to the Houston Zoo), Rice University, the Texas Medical Center, and the Astrodome and Reliant Stadium at Reliant Park off Fannin Street.

For 35,000 ft. of its length, the system will be at street level, with rails and communication systems placed in the ground and covered with stamped concrete to give it a cobblestone look. Another 4,100 ft. will be constructed like an old-fashioned railroad line, with ties and ballast above ground, while there is an additional 19,000 ft. of yard track and 9,200 ft. of test track.

Sixteen passenger stations are being constructed along the line, each with slightly different designs but all with 240-ft. boarding platforms equipped with seating, ticket vending machines, canopies and windscreens.

New Headquarters

As the METRORail system comes to fruition, the METRO itself is busily preparing for a new headquarters in downtown Houston. Not part of the light rail construction project, the new Metropolitan Transit Authority Administration Building is a 14-story office building that will house administrative offices and also serve as a bus transit center.

Construction includes a poured-in-place pan slab concrete structure, architectural precast with punched windows on two sides and glass curtainwall cladding on the other two sides.

The new home for METRO also includes a nine-bay, covered bus transit center with a vaulted, standing-seam metal roof and curved metal skylights. METRO customers will be able to change from bus transportation to light rail by using the first-floor transit center portion of the building.

The Houston office of Manhattan Construction Co. is the general contractor for the $60 million, 395,000-sq.-ft. administration building. Houston-based firms Pierce Goodwin Alexander & Linville and Walter P. Moore & Associates Inc. are serving as architect and structural engineer, respectively.

The administration building has an anticipated completion date of February 2005.

USEFUL SOURCES

For additional information regarding this project, check these sources: