Last week city council will also considered awarding a contract to build 24 Brio stations on the Montana route for $19.6 million dollars.
That means that each station will cost $816,000.
With the median home price in El Paso at $126,000.
That means that each Brio stop is worth the same as 6 and 1/2 houses.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
what purpose do the brio lines serve? every route the run has already had bus service for years
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They haven’t run out of options for wasting tax dollars yet, have they? I, too, would like to know the point of this expanded service for a system that has been steadily hemorrhaging riders for years.
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Someone’s cousin (from City Counsel) . .in the Bus Stop Construction Business ?
Sometimes “competitive bids” come from 3-4 or 5 cousins and LETTING one win.
So, one cousin bids at $600,000. each, another at $700,000 each and another at $800,000 each, so the City Counsel picks the one for $600,000 each, as that SEEMS to be the lowest bid.
(They all work on the project and split the money.)
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Sometimes bids are selected based on the AVERAGE of the bids . .to insure that the Lowest Bid, might have something wrong with it.
So when you have 5 bids and the AVERAGE is $600,000 or $700,000 then the lowest bid of $123,000, seems out of place and not trustworthy.
(But the $123,000 bid . .IS . . correct . . and what they should cost.) The other high bids are cousins and relatives that are scamming the system.
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Can you name one time (name of project and coverage showing that this was found to have happened) that what you described is what actually happened?
What actually happens is that sometimes the highest, the lowest or occasionally both highest and lowest are disqualified or evaluated very closely because in an environment where people/companies are in competition the bids that are similar tend to be evaluating apples to apples so they won’t come in at 20% of what everyone else did. The only way you ever get someone coming in very low compared to everyone else is when they either a) make a mistake or b) think of a creative alternative way to perform a project. Another favorite for low bidders is to spot places where the plans or specs are vague or incomplete and then jumping on those issues with nicely padded change orders which is where most of a firm’s profits come from.
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Mostly in El Taxo, “Who” gets the JOB, “Winning bid” depends upon how much the El Taxo politicians, Public Officials are getting “off the top” for “Pay-offs, campaign “Donations”. That’s why “Projects” have to be “re-poured, re-done, re-built”, “Cost over-runs, add on’s”. It’s just El Taxo and inherent public, political corruption. Everything HERE always cost US MORE.
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You have to think like a progressive. Brio doesn’t have ridership because there aren’t enough stops. If we build more folks was start riding. And when that doesn’t happen they’ll come up with some other costly and likely to fail strategy.
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Would be interesting to know what “Friends, Family” of the Mayor, Clown Council, City Manager, “Staff” got these OVER PAID give aways. A MILLION$$$ bucks for a little shed-cover over benches? Kick-backs must have been really BIG. Could have bought these things at Lowe’s for $600-800 . But then these people have plenty of OUR money to WASTE. THEY can always TAKE MORE. from US. Waste, tax, spend, tax some more.
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BRUTUS: The four BRIO routes have been planned for years, plus some of the planning meetings have been reported over the years in the news media. Serious planning for the BRIO goes back to when John Cook became mayor. The four planned routes are for Mesa, Alameda, Dyer and Montana. At this late date, I’m at a real loss to understand why no one has even picked up on the issue?
My more than reasonable guess is, that $19.6 million covers much, much more than just each individual bus stop. A simple Texas Open Records request, which can be submitted electronically to the city through the city’s website, should allow anyone interested to obtain information on these BRIOs.
Any serious ‘public input’ about the building of this public transit initiative is now well closed. Any public bitching about it is simply that, Monday morning, after the fact bitching, and a useless waste of time.
It seems a more productive use of people’s time would be to focus on the actual ridership level of each BRIO route. Is each route meeting its ‘projected’ ridership level; is it below that level; or is it above that projection level?
For all the outrage expressed on this and other blogs; I’m puzzled they don’t seem to be candidate discussion topics during city council election races?
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I don’t recall any opportunity for “serious public input” on the BRIO system, it was simply announced under the Wilson-Shang regime. And one of the Council Clowns at the time, Ms. Acosta, assured us that the Trolley would not affect the Brio or the Sun Metro regular system because they would serve different categories of riders. WHEN did Mayor/City Manager/Council ever ask the public if they should do something?
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Unfortunately you are incorrect as this BRIO issue was covered at both city and MPO meetings. In addition, it was covered at more than just one or two meetings. All these meetings are broadcast on the local public access cable TV channel.
Anyone concerned about this issue can request information on it from the city using a Texas Open Records request.
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Old Fart is right, there were quite a few meetings throughout the City several years ago and most of the reps discussed the Brio plans at their own public meetings at various times. I attended several of the meetings so I can vouch for the fact that they happened.
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Old Fart: You are right. There is a lot of infrastructure that has to go in to do each station on the various Brio routes. For example on Dyer, one of the stops required the demolition of an old Army pedestrian bridge that the Army didn’t want because it would have been impossible to make that bridge ADA compliant. Along those lines every pair of stations was based around an intersection (even if they weren’t always right by the actual intersection) and in many cases this meant that the traffic lights needed to be upgraded with new ped-heads, sidewalks, ADA ramps, audible warnings etc. Traffic lights are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. On Montana I would also think that doing things like running telecommunications lines in order to provide things like wi-fi, security monitoring, and other things of that sort would add a good bit to the cost of many of the stations.
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I think the cost includes a 10 hole and then re-enforced street to support the weight of Brio Bus while stopped…to bad they do not fix the rest of streets 😦
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It’s only money.
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This is almost as ridiculous as having to carry an alcohol beverage package out of the convenience store in a bag. Does somebody’s nephew in Austin have a bag factory in this state?
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I see people carrying beer out without bags all the time.
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Brutus, thank you for pointing this out. Please keep us up to date on the status of the contract. We shared this on the El Paso History Alliance page.
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Let’s get a better bid Mayor
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THEY, the El Taxo politicians do not want a “Better, Lower” bid on ANYTHING that WE are going to PAY for. THEY don’t get as MUCH “off the top”, if WE pay LESS for ANYTHING.
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