Green Line extension back on track; cos. certify build within budget

Two companies have certified that they can design and build the Green Line extension to Somerville within the MBTA’s cost limit of $1.3 billion, allowing the long-anticipated project to advance to the next stage, officials said.

“Now we know we have a project that we can build from the resources we have available,” Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said at yesterday’s MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board meeting. “And while there’s lots more work to be done, I think that today really marks the day when we can be sure there’s going to be a

Green Line extension.”

The T had said that three companies competing for the $2.2 billion project’s largest contract were qualified to handle the job: GLX Constructors, Green Line Partners and Walsh Barletta Granite.

Officials declined to say yesterday which of the three could not meet the T’s cost threshhold before the Nov. 17 public price opening. The project, which was nearly derailed two years ago by cost overruns, will let trolley passengers travel outbound from a new Lechmere Station in East Cambridge to six new stops in Somerville and Medford.

In other business yesterday, T officials told the board that the unscheduled absenteeism rate for MBTA employees in the third quarter of 2017 averaged 7.90 percent, ranging from a high of 12.8 percent among full-time bus operators to a low of 2 percent among construction inspectors.

Terminations for violations of the T’s attendance policy rose from 24 in 2016 to 48 so far this year.

From fiscal year 2017 to fiscal year 2018, average absence-related overtime hours among operators increased from 260 to 270 per day, but have fallen 29 percent since fiscal year 2014, when the average was 332.

From fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2017, MBTA rail ridership rose 2.2 percent, while bus ridership fell 6.8 percent.