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July 30, 2010

Transit station renovation bids come in higher than expected

By SCOTT SMITH Tribune staff writer The Kokomo Tribune Fri Jul 30, 2010, 08:30 AM EDT

Kokomo — Kokomo city officials are ready to begin work on a downtown transit station for the new city fixed-route bus system, putting a September start date on the horizon.

Four companies submitted bids to renovate the former downtown Bureau of Motor Vehicles building on South Union Street Wednesday. The Kokomo Board of Public Works and Safety is due to award a contract next month.

Kokomo city engineer Carey Stranahan said the contractors will be asked to finish a public waiting room before completing the rest of the project, in an attempt to give the bus-riding public a place to wait, out of the weather.

The waiting room should be finished by Sept. 1, he said.

The rest of the renovation, which includes gutting the interior of the building and installing a new heating, cooling and ventilation system, will be done within three months.

Local transportation planning director Larry Ives said all four of the bids came in high, meaning that about $97,000 more will be needed to fund the low bid of $347,000. That bid was submitted by Monroe Construction Group LLC, Kokomo.

Ives said he’ll ask for the additional funding, 80 percent of which will come from federal funds, rather than scale back the project.

“There’s not any place to scale it back,” he said. “The big expense is to put in a new heating and cooling system, which needs to be done because the one in there is 15 years old.”

Ives estimated between $20,000 and $30,000 in additional tax dollars will be needed to complete the project.

The federal stimulus bill has already funded the $440,000 purchase of the building, along with most of the cost of purchasing three buses for $146,700 apiece. The buses are built to look like old-time trolleys, complete with a cowcatcher on the front and wooden-slat bench seating.

Ives said the city, which will run the service, hopes to be able to run two buses, 10 hours per day, five days a week, for about $200,000 a year.

In the first year, stimulus funds will pay most of that cost, and the rest of the funding will come from existing federal transportation funds Ives administers.

Until now, those transportation funds have been going toward running the city’s First City Rider and Senior Bus programs.

Those programs will continue, but city officials have already said they will re-evaluate whether money should be diverted from First City Rider to the as-yet-unnamed bus service in the future.

• Scott Smith is a Kokomo Tribune staff writer. He may be reached at 765-454-8569 or via e-mail at scott.smith@kokomotribune.com

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