law delayed projects

Construction schedule delay claims are a leading cause of disputes in the construction industry. Defending against or pursuing such claims often involve complex analysis of the contractual obligations, the causes of the delay, and the types of damages available. In this case, our client was sued by the general contractor for breach of contract that caused a delay in the project’s timeline.

Construction Delay Claim Dispute Background

Our client, a precast concrete manufacturer, was subcontracted by a general contractor, overseeing the reconstruction of a highway overpass, to manufacture and deliver mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) retaining walls. Over the course of the construction, the project fell behind schedule for various reasons including weather issues and a 90-day delay initiating the project. Our client delivered the contracted MSE walls before the materials were needed at the job site, but after the deadline imposed by the project schedule.

The general contractor subsequently sued for breach of contract stating our client “failed to deliver to work in a timely fashion and caused a delay.” The general contractor sought more than $650,000 in damages across five different categories, including labor disruption, extended home office overhead, increased rental equipment costs, plus attorney’s fees and expert fees.

The subcontractor retained Trey Hendershot and Ian McNeill of Hendershot Cowart P.C., to represent them in the suit.

Are you ready to take action to pursue or defend a construction delay claim? Call (713) 909-7323 or contact us online today to speak with a layer about your options.

Mr. Hendershot and Mr. McNeill teamed up with an expert adept at construction schedule analysis to help formulate a defense strategy. The expert was able to identify relevant documents that would be needed to refute the delay allegations, which were then requested in written discovery. The plaintiff, however, withheld documents—including the project’s daily progress reports.

Mr. McNeill filed and won a motion to compel the plaintiff’s attorneys to produce all of the requested documents and a motion for continuance to request additional time for expert review. Once in receipt of the missing documents, our expert was able to identify numerous flaws in the plaintiff’s methodologies for calculating damages.

Results of Construction Delay Dispute

Mr. Hendershot and Mr. McNeill successfully argued in mediation that there were multiple activities that affected the project’s timeline and that our client’s delay did not impact the actual progress of construction. As a result, the two parties settled the claim, as well as another pending claim, for less than a third of our client’s total exposure. Mr. McNeill also successfully negotiated for extended payment terms of the settlement amount.

Retaining a legal team experienced in construction delay claims early on was crucial for the success of this case. The construction law attorneys at Hendershot Cowart P.C. have a clear understanding of the critical elements of a breach of contract claim and regularly represent both defendants and plaintiffs in construction litigation.

If you wish to discuss a potential construction delay claim or any construction legal matter, call (713) 909-7323 or contact us online to speak with an attorney.

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When completed, the Cedar Viaduct project that runs through the Central Valley in Fresno, Calif., will carry high-speed rail over State Route 99.

Years of Delays, Billions in Overruns: The Dismal History of Big Infrastructure

The nation’s most ambitious engineering projects are mired in postponements and skyrocketing costs. Delivering $1.2 trillion in new infrastructure will be tough.

When completed, the Cedar Viaduct project that runs through the Central Valley in Fresno, Calif., will carry high-speed rail over State Route 99. Credit... Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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By Ralph Vartabedian

Nov. 28, 2021

As Honolulu sprawled into new suburbs west of Pearl Harbor over the last two decades, city planners proposed an ambitious rail transit line that would sweep riders 20 miles into downtown. The $4 billion estimate in 2006 was hardly cheap, amounting to $200 million per mile.

The cost escalation since then has been an engineering marvel all its own. Concerns over Native Hawaiian burial grounds stalled early construction, then problems with welding and cracks in the tracks appeared. Earlier this year, engineers realized that in some sections, the wheels were a half-inch narrower than the rails. Order new wheels? Tear up the tracks?

The launch dates slipped forward and the cost estimates crept upward — at latest count, $11.4 billion, with a target completion date of 2031.

Honolulu’s tribulations are far from a lone cautionary tale. To the contrary, they signal the kind of cost overruns, engineering challenges and political obstacles that have made it all but impossible to complete a major, multibillion-dollar infrastructure project in the United States on budget and on schedule over the past decade.

As the nation sets out on a national spending spree fueled by the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill signed by President Biden this month, the job ahead carries enormous risks that the projects will face the same kind of cost, schedule and technical problems that have hobbled ambitious efforts from New York to Seattle, delaying benefits to the public and driving up the price tag that taxpayers ultimately will bear.

President Biden at a bridge over the Pemigewasset River in Woodstock, N.H., this month. The infrastructure package that he signed into law contains $1.2 trillion to help fix roads and bridges.

American cities and states were long renowned for some of the greatest bridges, water systems and freeways in the world, but challenges have grown more potent. Agencies have less internal technical talent. Legal challenges have grown stronger under state and federal environmental laws. And spending on infrastructure as a fraction of the economy has shrunk, giving local agencies less experience in modern practices.

The $1.2 trillion package has bold goals, directing the majority of $500 billion to highways, $39 billion to urban transit, $65 billion to broadband projects and $73 billion to electrical grids, among other items. The nation’s busiest passenger rail line, Amtrak’s Boston-to-Washington corridor, would get the biggest slice of a $66 billion rail package. The infrastructure spending plan is unlikely to rescue some existing infrastructure projects that are bogged down with problems.

And even with the new infusion of money, analysts say it will be tough to ramp up infrastructure progress as swiftly as envisioned in the current timetable.

The construction industry is facing sharply growing costs for steel products, up by 142 percent in the last 12 months, and other key materials. Shortages of skilled labor are worsening, exacerbated by Covid-induced retirements.

“A lot of people would like to see the money quickly spent,” said Anirban Basu, chief economist of Associated Builders and Contractors, a construction industry trade group. “They are going to look at the costs they are facing and extend out the projects because of constraints.”

Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor at the University of Oxford who has studied scores of projects around the world, found that 92 percent of them overran their original cost and schedule estimates, often by large margins — in part, he said, because cost estimates are “ systematically and significantly deceptive .”

“A lot of projects are not delivering what they promised to deliver,” he said.

In Baltimore this month, Mr. Biden lamented that U.S. infrastructure was once rated the world’s best and now, “You know what we rank in infrastructure? Thirteenth in the world. ”

In some cases, U.S. construction costs are higher than those in Western Europe and democratic nations in Asia, according to an upcoming University of California, Berkeley, analysis, said Ethan Elkind, a law professor and director of the school’s climate program.

“It is a lot harder to build projects here, and we are not as skilled at doing it,” he said.

When California voters approved a bond in 2008 for a high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco , the project was supposed to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020 . The job is now projected to finish in 2033 for $100 billion, though those estimates are dated and there is an $80 billion funding gap.

The ambitious project, the nation’s most serious effort to build a full-scale bullet train, has encountered serious delays because of land acquisition issues, environmental litigation, permit setbacks, employee turnover and significant design changes. The problems have triggered political infighting even with the Democratic supermajority in California.

Lengthy delays have also affected New York’s East Side Access extension of the Long Island Rail Road, which is supposed to cut up to 40 minutes off commuter time on the last segment, from Queens to Grand Central Terminal, with up to 24 trains per hour at peak times.

Conceived more than a half century ago, with a construction contract awarded in 2006, that project was supposed to be completed by 2011. Early estimates put the cost at $2.2 billion, then $4.3 billion in 2006 and $6.4 billion in 2008. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority now envisions completion in December 2022 at a cost of $11.1 billion. Design changes, underground tunneling problems and coordination with other agencies were some of the factors in the delays and cost increases.

One of the nation’s most important environmental infrastructure projects, and perhaps the most technically difficult one, has been underway in Central Washington State for decades at the former Hanford nuclear weapons site. Since 2013, major construction has been stopped at two partially built plants to treat and vitrify 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge.

When an independent review in 2015 found 362 significant design problems, the Energy Department announced a 17-year delay and estimated the system would become fully operational in 2036.

The problems included the failure to anticipate the potential for an earthquake to damage equipment and the possibility that the chemical processes to separate high-level radioactive materials could cause explosive hydrogen gas to form.

The delays have pushed the Energy Department to adopt an alternative that would start treating low-level waste by the end of 2023, Washington State officials said. The last cost estimate for the plant was $17 billion, up from $12.3 billion in 2013 and about $4 billion 20 years ago.

The rail project in Hawaii was intended to relieve congestion on a par with Los Angeles along the urban band from East Kapolei to the core of Honolulu.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation believes it can address the latest track problems by welding certain sections of track and later replacing wheels to match the track size, said a spokesman, Harry Cho.

The setbacks that resulted in delays — archaeological surveys, labor costs, utility relocations and land acquisition — are the kind of challenges that plague nearly all major infrastructure projects; the common mistake is in not planning and budgeting for them, said Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University civil engineer and originator of the “Infrastructure Show” podcast.

“You can’t say these were an accident,” he said of most cost overruns. “We could do better. We haven’t gotten honest estimates in a lot of cases.”

Mr. Schofer said many projects are justified by estimating that future benefits will exceed costs, but when the costs go up astronomically, no one recalculates the ratio.

In a candid admission of how the political world operates, Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, once dismissed cost overruns on a transportation hub intended for the bullet train.

“In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment,” he wrote in a guest newspaper column in 2013 . “If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”

U.S. Transportation Department officials declined to comment for this article, but Biden administration officials have said the new infrastructure package will redress decades of neglect and will boost the efficiency of the American economy, address climate change and provide immediate jobs in construction.

“We’re going to reduce congestion,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re going to address repair and maintenance backlogs, deploy state-of-the-art technologies and make our ports cleaner and more efficient.”

Mr. Flyvbjerg, the Oxford professor, said infrastructure keeps getting more expensive at a time when many products, such as televisions, refrigerators and computers, get cheaper or better each year.

“Big infrastructure is becoming cost prohibitive,” he said, a problem he blames on institutional sclerosis at government agencies that keep repeating mistakes and choose infrastructure projects that are unlikely to succeed.

The mistakes, he said, include a lack of transparency to the public, flawed contracts that put government agencies at the mercy of contractors and a failure to attract enough private investment to bear some of the project’s risk.

The new infrastructure law, he said, does little to change the outlook.

Ronald N. Tutor, chief executive of Tutor Perini, a California firm that is building some of the nation’s largest projects, said the industry has done a good job of advancing and completing projects that by their nature are complex and unpredictable.

“All the major projects have cost and schedule issues,” he acknowledged. “The truth is these are very high-risk and difficult projects. Conditions change. It is impossible to estimate it accurately. That is naïve.”

The infrastructure law takes some initial steps at reforms, including codifying a Trump executive order to name a lead federal agency for each project, reducing the number of chefs in the kitchen, said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who formerly oversaw Transportation Department research and technology and now is a George Washington University adjunct professor.

A key factor is the amount of time federal agencies spend to review environmental reports and issue records of decision, she said. In many cases, she said, projects are put on hold for years, while agencies review voluminous documents.

Mr. Biden also named a task force to carry out the infrastructure program with an aim to “invest public dollars efficiently, avoid waste and focus on measurable outcomes for the American people.”

The environmental review process has become so complex, in part to defend against inevitable lawsuits, that neither state agencies nor federal departments can write and review the documents without teams of outside consultants.

Most of the spending under the $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan has been previously authorized, but the law includes $550 billion of new money to be spent in as little as five years.

Federal, state and local agencies were working their way through $270 billion a year in authorized spending in 2019, before the pandemic hit. An attempt to bump that up by an additional $100 billion annually, as envisioned, represents a 37 percent jump that may not be possible to achieve, industry analysts warn.

“It is a very big bump,” said Ken Simonson, chief economist at Associated General Contractors of America, which represents major infrastructure builders. “My guess is that we are not going to see $550 billion spent in the first five years.”

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-governor-wants-to-cut-red-tape-for-green-energy-projects-fa330839

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday pledged to fast-track hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of construction projects throughout the state, including a pair of large water endeavors that have languished for years amid permitting delays and opposition from environmental groups.

For the past decade, California officials have pursued the water projects in the drought-prone state. One would construct a giant tunnel to carry large amounts of water beneath the natural channels of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to drier and more populous Southern California.

The other would be a massive new reservoir near the tiny community of Sites in Northern California that could store more water during deluges — like the series of atmospheric rivers that hit the state earlier this year — for delivery to farmers.

But neither project has been built, despite promises from multiple governors and legislative leaders. Environmental groups have sued to block the tunnel project, arguing it would decimate threatened species of fish, including salmon and the Delta smelt. The Sites Reservoir is still trying to acquire necessary permits to begin construction.

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Newsom is seeking a slew of changes to make it much faster for these projects to gain the required permits and approvals. Other projects that could be eligible include solar, wind and battery power storage; transit and regional rail; road maintenance and bridge projects; semiconductor plants; and wildlife crossings along Interstate 15, Newsom’s office said. His efforts to speed projects would not apply to building more housing.

One key proposal is to limit the amount of time it takes to resolve environmental lawsuits to about nine months. Newsom said his administration is “not looking to roll over anybody,” including what he called the “fierce champions” of environmental stewardship.

“I mean, nine months, you can have a kid, OK? I mean that’s a long time,” Newsom said Friday while visiting the site of a future solar farm in Stanislaus County.

Still, some environmental groups were furious. Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of the advocacy group Restore the Delta, said Newsom “wants to do away with standard environmental protections to build the Delta tunnel.”

“We have never been more disappointed in a California governor than we are with Governor Newsom,” she said. “How is perpetuating environmental injustice, which harms public and environmental health, really any different than red state governors perpetuating social injustice in their states, which Governor Newsom likes to criticize vigorously?”

Newsom says California has hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on infrastructure projects over the next decade, the result of voter-approved bonds, bountiful budget surpluses during the pandemic and an influx of federal cash from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill .

But he said the state is often too slow to approve those projects and that the federal money is “going to other states that are moving more aggressively.” Newsom said his proposals could shorten how long it takes to build projects by more than three years.

His office said the legislation would allow various state agencies, including the Department of Transportation, to more quickly approve projects and issue permits. Newsom also signed an executive order on Friday creating what he called an “infrastructure strike team” to identify fast-track projects.

Jerry Brown, executive director of the Sites Project Authority that is overseeing the new reservoir, said he thinks Newsom’s proposals could allow construction to start a year early, saving about $100 million.

“That saves a lot of money and gets a lot of jobs in the pipeline,” he said.

Newsom wants the legislation to be part of the state’s budget, which must be passed before the end of June. That means, if approved, it could take effect sooner and would only require a majority vote of the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego and the leader of the state Senate, said “the climate crisis requires that we move faster to build and strengthen critical infrastructure,” adding that lawmakers will “ensure we can do so responsibly, and in line with California’s commitment to high road jobs and environmental protection.”

Some Republicans cheered Newsom’s proposal, with Republican Senate Leader Brian Jones saying the governor “is finally taking action.” Others were more skeptical, with Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher saying Democrats in the Legislature are the biggest obstacle to Newsom’s proposals.

“Gavin Newsom loves to brag that he can ‘jam’ Democratic lawmakers. Let’s see it,” Gallagher said. “Republicans are ready to work with him towards real reforms.”

ERC vows sanctions vs NGCP on over 70 delayed projects

At a glance.

Despite delay in the completion of at least 72 projects, NGCP has already been passing on cost recoveries for these facilities in the electric bills of consumers.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) will mete out "the full force of the law" against transmission firm National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) for the more than 70 delayed projects that caused deterioration in the delivery of services and inflating bills of ratepayers.

The delay in 66 typical transmission projects, plus six more projects of national significance had been disclosed by the regulatory body during a public hearing that was convened this week by the Senate Committee on Energy.

ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta firmly stated “We can assure the Senate and electricity consumers that this Commission is conducting a diligent review of the complaints, delays and possible violations of NGCP.”

The ERC chief further stipulated “we are prepared to enforce the full force of the law as appropriate based on the findings.”

Senate Committee on Energy Vice Chairman Sherwin T. Gatchalian spearheaded intensified calls on the ERC “to penalize NGCP appropriately for delayed transmission projects that adversely impact the country’s electricity supply.”

As unearthed during the Senate inquiry, despite the delay of massive NGCP projects, the costs of such infrastructure buildup are already being passed-on in the monthly electric bills, hence, that has been aggravating the financial burden of consumers who are already being saddled with inflationary pressures of rising costs of basic commodities.

Gatchalian thus prodded the ERC “to enforce fines and penalties so we can impose discipline on NGCP. We are not seeing discipline because a lot of projects are delayed.”

The lawmaker stressed “the bottom line is that the projects are delayed and what are the penalties involved because we can’t just let this go. The reason why there is impunity is that there are no penalties imposed. The delayed projects are affecting the entire electric power industry and pose risks for the future of the country.”

On this year’s summer months alone, three critical projects are under close monitoring and scrutiny by the Department of Energy (DOE) – because the substantially stretched timeframe of completion of these facilities could aggravate the tight supply condition already distressing Luzon and Visayas grids.

These highly important transmission projects with snagged commercial operations include the 500-kilovolt (kV) Balsik (Hermosa)-San Jose transmission line with original completion date on June 28, 2019; the 230kV Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone-stage 3 project which has targeted completion on March 31 last year; and the Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP) that was slated to come on commercial stream since January 8, 2021.

Should these three projects been completed on time, stranded generation capacities could have been seamlessly wheeled into the grid and could have guaranteed additional power supply for the country – including 600-megawatt capacity from the Limay coal-fired power plant in Bataan; the additional generation of solar plants in Negros; as well as the export of capacity from the supply surplus in Mindanao which may then be shared to the Luzon and Visayas grids.

The adjustment process on the tariffs to be passed on by NGCP in the electric bills has been anticipated for completion early part of this year, but the voluminous interventions filed by array of relevant stakeholders have been impeding the early resolution of the rate reset case.

Dimalanta noted “NGCP filed its application only in November 2022; and we received 10 intervenors who all needed to be given their day in court. There were also motions filed by NGCP that needed to be resolved to move forward.”

On the delayed transmission projects, NGCP Assistant Vice President and Head of Corporate Communications Cynthia Alabanza expressed the company’s “apologies for the delayed projects,” with her adding that they have been “doing something about it” – and energization of one of the projects is targeted this week.

“This does not mean that we never encountered problems, it’s just normal that there’s disturbance on a day-to-day … and based on the assessment of our performance on that ability to recover, the performance so far is good, although it’s not perfect,” she claimed.

A judge halts South Carolina's new abortion law pending state Supreme Court review

The Associated Press

South Carolina Assistant Attorney General Thomas Hydrick argues during a hearing in Columbia on Friday that a judge should not halt enforcement of the state's new abortion law. Jeffrey Collins/AP hide caption

South Carolina Assistant Attorney General Thomas Hydrick argues during a hearing in Columbia on Friday that a judge should not halt enforcement of the state's new abortion law.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A judge put South Carolina's new law banning most abortions around six weeks of pregnancy on hold Friday until the state Supreme Court can review the measure, giving providers a temporary reprieve in a region that has enacted strict limits on the procedure.

Judge Clifton Newman's ruling that put the state's abortion law back at roughly 20 weeks came about 24 hours after Gov. Henry McMaster signed the bill into law without any notice, which had left dozens of people seeking abortions in limbo and created the potential for a legal abortion becoming illegal as a doctor performed it.

"It's extraordinarily difficult not only for the women themselves, but for their doctors — not just the doctors at Planned Parenthood — but hospitals all across the state who need to understand what to do in an emergency," said Vicki Ringer, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood in South Carolina.

Reproductive rights in America

South carolina is poised to renew its 6-week abortion ban.

The developments in South Carolina are a microcosm of what has played out across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade a year ago, allowing states to decide their abortion laws and leaving patients scrambling to find care wherever they can in situations where weeks or even days can make a huge difference.

The South Carolina measure joins stiff limitations pending in North Carolina and Florida, states that had been holdouts in the South providing wider access to the procedure, threatening to further delay abortions as appointments pile up in the region.

The state has seen the number of abortions climb sharply as other Southern states passed near-total bans. Before the overturn of Roe, less than 1 in 10 abortions in South Carolina were performed on people who lived out of state. Now, that figure is near 50% and the number of abortions each month has at least tripled, according to state health data.

The law passed Tuesday by the General Assembly is similar to a ban on abortion once cardiac activity can be detected that lawmakers passed in 2021. The state Supreme Court decided in a 3-2 ruling that the 2021 law violated the state constitution's right to privacy.

Nebraska passes 12-week abortion ban and restrictions on gender-affirming care

Legislative leaders said the new law makes technical tweaks that should sway at least one justice to change his mind.

But Newman said it wasn't his role to figure out if that would be successful.

"The status quo should be maintained until the Supreme Court reviews its decision," Newman said. "It's going to end up there."

Planned Parenthood immediately sued after the law went into effect Thursday, saying South Carolina's abortion clinics were flooded with canceled appointments from patients further along in their pregnancies and doctors were forced to carefully review the new regulations on the fly.

The abortion rights group said the new law was so similar to the old one that clinics and women seeking treatment would be harmed if it were allowed to stay in effect until a full court review.

Nearly all of the 75 women with appointments for abortions over the next several days appeared to be past six weeks, Planned Parenthood attorney Kathleen McDaniel said.

"There is irreputable harm. It is happening. It has already happened," McDaniel said.

Shots - Health News

The abortion pill mifepristone has another day in federal court.

The majority opinion in the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling striking down the 2021 law said that although lawmakers have the authority to protect life, the privacy clause in the state constitution ultimately gives women time to determine whether they want to get an abortion and most women don't know they are pregnant six weeks after conception.

Justice Kaye Hearn wrote the opinion. She has since had to retire because she turned 72 and was replaced by a man, making the South Carolina's the only high court in the country without a woman on the bench.

"I would say that nothing in the law has changed," McDaniel said. "The only thing that has changed is there is no longer a woman on the Supreme Court."

The changes in the new law are directed at another justice in the majority, John Few, who wrote his own opinion saying the 2021 law was poorly written because legislators didn't show it did any work to determine if six weeks was enough time for a woman to know she was pregnant.

Lawyers for the state leaned on the hope Few will change his vote

"We would strongly encourage the court to review that decision very carefully, to understand it focuses on one law, the 2021 act," state assistant attorney general Thomas Hydrick said. But, he said, the new law is a good faith attempt to correct flaws lawmakers saw in how the justices interpreted the 2021 law.

Newman said that's outside his role as a lower court judge. "Am I being asked to overrule the Supreme Court?" he asked.

Lawmakers continued to say they are confident they wrote a bill that will stand up to the high court's scrutiny this time.

"While I respect Judge Newman's decision, I remain convinced that the heartbeat bill is constitutional and that the Supreme Court will agree," Republican state Senate President Thomas Alexander said in a statement.

South Carolina

Moscow Metro Station Proposal

Variant Studio

Moscow, Russia

A proposal by London-based design and architectural studio VariantStudio to create a noise-absorbing metro station. The station would be covered in porous ceramic panels that would absorb the train noise and the echo from the tunnels, therefore providing a more relaxed atmosphere in the station and creating a much more positive journey. The quietest metro station in the world? Possibly!

Design Team

In the subway tunnels and its premises, the underground trains and a constant passenger flow create a lot of noise and a strong echo. The conceptual idea of the architectural design for Novoperedelkino station in Moscow is to cover the walls and ceilings with acoustic and sound absorbing elements, therefore reducing the possibility of the sound waves to bounce off the walls and ceilings and create echo.

The three dimensional pyramid and prism panels would be created from lightweight and porous ceramic, that would be sound absorbing and fire safe. The finishing of the station would not only absorb noise, but it would be also used as an element for passenger navigation. The walls, floor and ceiling would form a pattern that would point the way to the platform, nearest exits and indicate from which side the train is approaching, therefore helping the passengers to navigate easier in the subway station. Walls and ceilings are created in a neutral ochre tone, but functionally significant elements that require attention are highlighted in more bright blue indigo.

Though the station requires only low and simple maintenance, we've also developed an innovative solution for cleaning the platform wall. The platform walls would be cleaned with a method used in car washing—during the nighttime, incorporated brushes move along the wall and remove tough train grease.

The visual language of the entrance pavilions reflects the main purpose of the station: simple movement. The area between the pavilions is provided with multi-level green zones, pedestrian walkways, shrubs, flowerbeds and recreation zones. Just like the station itself, the green zone is designed to absorb noise from the nearby highway. The bushes are planted and trimmed, therefore absorbing a noise of 40 decibels from the passing vehicles.

Architectural design will provide the passengers comfort and safety.

The quietest metro station in the world? Possibly!

Learn More About This Project x

I realize you left the brushes uncovered for visualization purposes, but as I'm sure you know, they would have to be covered so as not to fling grime on passersby! Also, I couldn't help but notice the benches facing the tracks and thought I would paste this: http://www.core77.com/posts/35103/Designing-a-Solution-to-Stop-Drunks-from-Falling-Off-of-Subway-Platforms - For consideration

There are many Montreal stations that had a bright style to them when new. Now, half the lights are continually burned out and spider webs seem to never be removed. Let alone the inevitable filth of 100,000 people bumping in and out everyday.

Looks annoying to clean.

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Wetlands bridge adds delay and $72 million to light-rail project

Sound Transit passengers will have to wait until 2026 to ride light rail between SeaTac and Federal Way, because contractors must build a 500-foot-long bridge over unstable wetland soil.

Transit staff reported Thursday that this new elevated trackway design, in a Kent segment of the project, will require $72 million extra. A long span is needed because the ground is too seismically unstable to support several ordinary columns.

The agency revealed an updated 2026 grand opening estimate this month after a long period of uncertainty, and it’s nearly two years later than the goal announced to voters during the ST3 tax measure campaign of 2016.

Federal Way Link Extension will provide 8 miles of grade-separated rails, built between Highway 99 and Interstate 5 south of Angle Lake Station. New Kent/Des Moines, Star Lake and Federal Way Downtown stations are under construction, along with 3,200 park-and-ride spaces.

Trains would carry a projected 29,000 to 34,000 daily riders this decade, to increase in the 2030s when a future segment reaches Tacoma. The $2.5 billion budget includes $790 million in Federal Transit Administration grants and $629 million in low-interest federal loans .

Sound Transit board members voted Thursday to approve a $110 million increase, with $72 million for the bridge and the remainder to pay assorted lesser costs, and to raise the potential contract payments with Kiewit Corp to $1.64 billion.

Also due to the delay, they boosted a consulting contract $33 million , to a total $139 million for quality assurance, technical support and construction management .

Both expenses can be covered by the project’s own contingency funds, without siphoning cash from other transit improvements, said staff reports.

“It really does set the project up for success with a clear and achievable schedule and funding,” said Sepehr Sobhani, deputy executive project director.

Sobhani said he’s confident the Federal Way line will be done without exceeding the $2.5 billion budget, which contained a large contingency fund. It’s 70% built and the worst cost risks were resolved Thursday. “We’re up and out of the ground. The biggest issues are under the ground, and we got bit by one,” he said.

Finding a quagmire

The troubled area is south of South 259th Place and alongside I-5 in Kent, where tracks will go between the freeway and McSorley Wetland .

Kiewit filed notice in late 2020 that the soil was weaker than represented in preconstruction geotechnical records. Sound Transit investigated and agreed that during a severe earthquake, “Soil in the area would have the potential to liquefy causing the adjacent slope to fail and slide” into the train guideway.

Builders designed an alternate version, with flexible bridge bearings to absorb seismic forces. But then last July, a soil section there collapsed , briefly closing a lane of I-5 and causing the team to rethink its bridge strategy, a staff report explains. Kiewit finally designed a 500-foot-long bridge where the foundations straddle the poorest soil.

This span, the longest in Sound Transit’s network, will be made from concrete poured directly into cantilevered segments, which will look like the Duwamish River crossing in Tukwila and the future South Bellevue crossing above I-90.

Commonly in megaprojects, especially tunnels, the government sponsors fund the soil studies and take on financial risks of problems below the surface — otherwise bidders would shun the project or seek exorbitant payments.

After lengthy negotiations, Sound Transit and Kiewit agreed on a $110 million increase this spring. To not sign the deal, Sobhani said, would cause a toxic relationship with transit and contractor officials fighting over every issue, causing distractions.

Sound Transit’s soil sampling effort in the 2010s was hindered by woodlands, before the job started and builders cleared out the tree cover, the staff explained.

Board members have briefly talked about a first-phase grand opening at Kent/Des Moines Station, where the tracks arriving from Angle Lake Station will be entirely north of the wetlands.

Concrete and steel station structures are already finished, while ceilings and glasswork are underway, so the Kent/Des Moines Station is on target to be completed by fall 2024, reported Linneth Riley-Hall, the Federal Way line’s executive director.

So far, there’s no decision or formal analysis to bring the trains there early.

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The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

TikTok sues Montana to block ban, citing First Amendment

The federal lawsuit will set the stage for a broader debate over the short-video app and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which some critics in the United States have said is vulnerable to Chinese government propaganda and espionage.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the law, which Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) signed last week and is set to go into effect Jan. 1. The legal challenge will probably delay the measure.

Gianforte said the law would “protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.” Neither Montana officials nor the U.S. government has supplied evidence supporting that claim.

TikTok, which says it has 150 million monthly active users in the United States, said in its lawsuit that the state’s “extraordinary and unprecedented measures [are] based on nothing more than unfounded speculation.”

Montana can ban TikTok, but it probably can’t enforce it

In a statement, TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter said that the company is “challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana” and that it believes its case “will prevail based on an exceedingly strong set of precedents and facts.”

The lawsuit cited TikTok data from March to estimate that roughly 110,000 monthly active users accessed TikTok around Missoula, the home of the public University of Montana and the second-largest metropolitan area in the state.

Montana officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In its complaint, TikTok says Montana’s ban violates not only the company’s First Amendment rights on “whether, and how, to host, disseminate, and promote third-party speech created by others,” but also the free-speech rights of its users by “unconstitutionally shutting down the forum for speech for all speakers on the app.”

Five TikTok creators in Montana also cited First Amendment protections when they sued Montana last week over the ban.

“Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests, nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous,” the lawsuit states.

Federal judges supported a similar argument when they blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order banning TikTok and the Chinese app WeChat in 2020, saying the U.S. government had provided “scant little evidence” to justify a ban that would “burden substantially more speech than is necessary.”

This dissident uses Chinese-owned TikTok to criticize China’s government

TikTok’s lawsuit also argues that Montana’s ban would preempt federal law by intruding upon matters of national concern, including domestic security and foreign affairs.

TikTok is negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a cross-government group that reviews foreign business deals, on data-security measures that the company hopes will allow it to remain operational in the United States.

Some in the Biden administration have pushed ByteDance to sell TikTok, arguing divestiture is the only measure that would resolve their concerns over foreign influence.

TikTok’s lawsuit argues that Montana’s ban would violate the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which restricts state laws that could impair the flow of business across state lines.

It also accuses Montana of an “unconstitutional bill of attainder” by passing a law that would single out TikTok for punishment “based on speculative concerns,” rather than approving a more general law that would cover all social media companies or regulate the practices of the industry at large.

Civil rights and free-expression groups have argued that TikTok presents a compelling case. Seth Stern, a director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote in March that “censoring communications from foreign countries — let alone entire platforms — is plainly unconstitutional” and called on the courts to strike any such measure down.

The law would ban TikTok from operating in the state and impose $10,000-a-day fines on any “entity,” such as the Apple and Google app stores, that allows people in Montana to download the app.

Tech experts told The Washington Post last week that the proposal is “technically incompetent” due to several factors, including that the app stores don’t keep track of everyone who crosses the Montana state line.

And Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond’s law school, said TikTok’s lawsuit makes several compelling arguments and that he expects the federal judges ruling on it may take the company’s side.

“It’s a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment, which requires strict scrutiny and narrowly tailored laws, which this ban is clearly not,” Tobias said in an interview. “The argument about this impairing the free flow of commerce between the states is a strong argument. As is the one about national security, which is clearly within the purview of the president and the Congress, not individual states. It’s a very strong case.”

Appeals Court Partially Blocks ATF’s Pistol Brace Rule

The injunction is unlikely to prevent the agency from enforcing the regulation nationally.

Go beyond the headlines.

Your weekly briefing on gun violence..

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from fully enforcing a new rule regulating guns equipped with pistol braces, a popular gun accessory that has been used in some recent mass shootings. The scope of the court’s injunction is likely to be limited, however, and is unlikely to prevent the ATF from enforcing the rule nationally.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, granted the injunction on May 23 in response to a court challenge attempting to block enforcement of the ATF’s rule. Pistol braces are popular accessories intended to increase the accuracy and stability of AR-15-style pistols. The rule requires owners of the devices to either remove and destroy the accessories, or register the braced firearms with the ATF by May 31.

In granting its injunction, the appeals court appeared to only block enforcement against the plaintiffs in this specific case, Mock v. Garland . The plaintiffs include William Mock and Christopher Lewis, two Texans who own braced firearms; Maxim Defense, a company that sells firearms equipped with pistol braces; and the Firearms Policy Coalition, a pro-gun rights legal advocacy group.

That means that the ATF is likely temporarily barred from enforcing the rule only against Mock, Lewis, and Maxim Defense, while the court hears the case. Other owners and sellers of pistol-braced firearms still face the impending deadline, but the court did not specify whether the injunction also applies to members of the Firearms Policy Coalition and Maxim Defense customers.

Following the decision, the Firearms Policy Coalition asked the court to clarify the injunction’s scope.

“We are very excited and encouraged by the Fifth Circuit’s decision this morning,” Cody J. Wisniewski, senior attorney for constitutional litigation at FPC Action Foundation, said in a statement . “We intend to ask the Court for additional information about who is covered under the injunction, but cannot stress enough just how important this decision is.”

The Department of Justice and ATF declined to respond to questions from The Trace seeking clarification over whether the order would affect its plans to enforce the rule. “ATF is unable to comment on this litigation related to short-barreled rifles,” the agency’s deputy chief of public affairs, Erik Longnecker, wrote in an email to The Trace.

Gun owners use pistol braces to increase the accuracy of assault-style pistols — weapons that combine the maneuverability of a handgun with the increased firepower and capabilities of rifles — while maintaining concealability. While pistol braces were originally marketed as a way to stabilize a firearm against the shooter’s arm, they can also be placed against the shoulder like a typical rifle stock. Estimates from the ATF and the Congressional Research Service show that millions of pistol braces may be in circulation.

The Biden administration first proposed regulating pistol braces in 2021, following a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, in which a shooter used a firearm equipped with one of the devices to kill 10 people at a grocery store. The shooter who killed six people at a Nashville Christian school in March also used a firearm equipped with a pistol brace.

The rule has been met with fierce resistance from pro-gun rights groups and Republicans since it was introduced.

The rule change reclassified guns previously considered pistols as short-barreled rifles if they are equipped with a pistol brace and have a barrel shorter than 16 inches. Doing so brings those firearms under the purview of the National Firearms Act, a law that has imposed tight restrictions on weapons like machine guns since the 1930s.

Regardless, the injunction is unlikely to stay in place for long: the Fifth Circuit has scheduled oral arguments on June 29 in New Orleans. Mock v. Garland is one of several pending lawsuits over the rule. Pro-gun rights groups have filed at least two other challenges, one in a separate case in Texas and another in North Dakota, that could ultimately hamper the rule.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated that current owners of braced firearms must pay a $200 tax when registering their weapons under the National Firearms Act to come into compliance with the ATF’s rule. The tax is waived for current owners until May 31.

Amid nationwide police shortages, it's not clear how long it will take to implement a $230 million school safety bill signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee last week that includes funding to place a school resource officer in every public school statewide.

The new law allocates $140 million to place full-time, armed SROs in each of Tennessee's 1,863 public schools, and $30 million to place more than 100 new homeland security agents in each county to help coordinate school security responses. Funding will become available with the new state budget on July 1. The state Department of Safety and Homeland Security expects to begin distributing funding in the following weeks.

Although the bill was filed before a shooter killed three 9-year-old students and three staff members at The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, Lee pushed for additional funding, new security protocols and mental health resources after the tragedy.

"Nothing is more important than making sure that Tennessee students return home from school safely each day," Lee spokesperson Jade Byers told The Tennessean in an email.

As agencies statewide now work to implement the new measures, Nashville leaders are still struggling to staff school security personnel positions approved last year after a deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, rocked the nation.

Metro Nashville Public Schools has 158 campuses and already works with the Metro Nashville Police Department to staff middle and high school campuses with SROs. A total of 38 SROs are currently in rotation — mostly on high school campuses.

So what would it take to get one on every MNPS campus? Here's a look at how the numbers break down, what kind of training it entails and what other safety measures MNPS has in place.

'Am I safe at school?' How parents, students are reconciling grief with action after Covenant shooting

A look at SROs in Nashville schools

In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting last year, Nashville Police Chief John Drake promised higher police visibility at local elementary schools.

Metro elementary schools do not have dedicated officers. MNPD allows officers to volunteer or log overtime to be at elementary schools for arrival or dismissal times. Following calls by some parents for SROs in elementary schools after Uvalde, Director of Schools Adrienne Battle said the district had no plans to place SROs in its more than 70 elementary schools.

“Precinct on-duty officers are providing extra attention to elementary schools,” MNPD spokesperson Don Aaron told The Tennessean in April, after the Covenant shooting.

All 13 MNPS high schools currently have at least two school resource officers, with a daily rotation of officers at its 29 middle schools, according to district spokesperson Sean Braisted. Nine SRO supervisors are also on hand.

But there are currently 23 vacancies for middle and high school SRO positions, Metro Police spokesperson Brooke Reese said.

Additionally, most of the 70 part-time positions in the MNPS school safety ambassadors program are currently unfilled. Announced last August as part of the district's response to the Uvalde shooting, the program places unarmed retired police officers with a police frequency radio inside schools to monitor school safety, and act as a go-between for the school and police.

While the district has received state and federal funding for the program, as of this month, there were nine ambassadors hired and six in the process of being hired, Braisted said. More recruitment and training efforts are underway.

Other safety, emergency measures across Nashville schools

MNPS has added several safety measures in recent months, including employing $4 million in city funds for the following:

Additionally, MNPS plans to install add-ons this summer to existing security cameras, which use artificial intelligence to detect possible brandished weapons.

"MNPS and MNPD have a strong collaborative partnership and meet regularly to review and discuss security plans to ensure we are complying with state law and taking the necessary steps to keep students and staff safe," Braisted said. "We have over the years invested in security upgrades to follow best practices and continue to look at ways we can enhance that safety."

What does it take to train an SRO?

All SROs are also commissioned law enforcement officers. Tennessee law requires all SROs to go through a basic 40-hour training on school policing and working on school campuses. That's in addition to regular police training, which SROs have one year to complete after being hired. SRO training includes classes on topics like conflict resolution, relationship building and supporting students with disabilities.

The state also mandates 16 hours of SRO-specific training each year, which is typically conducted for Nashville officers over Christmas break, according to Reese.

"During this training time we often partner with MNPS to focus on specific items to MNPS students, but we also focus on items that can help the SROs effectively respond to different situations at all schools," Reese said.

Officer shortage may hamper SRO efforts

MNPD is facing an officer shortage, which may compound the issue of expanding SRO staffing across all campuses.

As of May 12, the department was 179 officers shy of the 1,608 it is authorized to employ, Reese said. A class of 45 graduated from the police academy on May 15, with 30 more set to graduate in July and 45 on track to graduate later this year.

When asked about extra funding, recruiting or staff needed to put an SRO on every campus, including elementary schools, Reese said the department would continue to "assess and evaluate" where it should place its resources.

State funding to complement SRO expansion

State agencies will begin recruiting and training personnel to implement the new law when the funding becomes available on July 1, but it's not clear when all new positions will be staffed. Local law enforcement is responsible for recruiting, hiring, training and placing SROs.

The $140 million approved for SRO placements will fund an average annual salary of $75,000 per officer for each of the 1,863 public schools in the state. To access SRO grant funding approved in the new budget, local law enforcement agencies must have a memorandum of understanding with the local school district to provide a full-time SRO to each public school in the district.

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security already has 18 agents placed across the state. The newly approved $30 million will fund total of 122 positions, including existing agents, allowing the agency to place at least one agent in each of the state's 95 counties, and hire several new administrative staff.

Wes Moster, a spokesperson for the Department of Safety, said the agency intends to hire, train and deploy the new agents "as efficiently as possible" once funding becomes available on July 1. The department declined to provide a deadline for when all agents are expected to be deployed in counties.

"These agents will expand on the work of current agents to coordinate with schools, school districts, and local law enforcement; consult on school security; provide best practice recommendations for improving school security; and assist with assessing at-risk behavior — for example, through the Safe TN app," Moster told The Tennessean.

The Tennessee Department of Education will also play a role in implementing the new law, spokesman Brian Blackley told The Tennessean. The department is responsible for collecting school safety drill plans submitted annually by districts. Plans are evaluated by TDOE and the Department of Safety each year. The new law requires schools to expand those plans.

Reach Rachel Wegner at ra [email protected] and Vivian Jones at [email protected].

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