With an expected Special Town Meeting funding vote less than a month away, the Quiet Zone Working Group continues to try to finalize a budget and a schedule for upgrading the safety levels at the town’s five at-grade railroad crossings to establish a Quiet Zone that would eliminate the mandatory sounding of train horns.
With construction documents 30% complete, the latest price tag for the work has risen to $8.2 million, an increase over the $7 million placeholder value the town has been citing ahead of Town Meeting. It is also twice the $3.5 million estimated cost when Town Meeting voted in May 2024 to appropriate $750,000 for the QZWG to do its design work.
The QZWG’s engineering consultants on the project, Tighe & Bond and Benesch, have been working with the MBTA and its commuter rail operator Keolis to develop the scope and schedule for the project. The equipment that needs to be upgraded is owned by the T, not the town, although the T is not contributing to the cost of the work.
The consultants described the “30% Opinion of Probable Construction Cost” at an April 13 meeting of the QZWG.
“We have already started what we call the final design,” said Samuel Buchanan of Benesch, an engineering firm with a specialty in grade crossings that is working with the principal contractor Tighe & Bond. He said the firm is still waiting on necessary comments from Keolis to refine the design.
Town Manager Katie King, who is a member of the QZWG, said she is communicating with the MBTA about “agreements that we want to have in place — any liability and maintenance agreements.”
“We have talked about wanting to make sure we have those agreements in place before going out to bid, obviously before any shovels are in the ground.”
As for a construction schedule, DPW Director Carys Lustig said early in the meeting, “Our goal in a perfect world would be to bid this project out in the winter.” But the prospects for a winter start seemed unlikely as the meeting played out.
“It’s challenging to put a timeline on exactly when we’ll be able to come to agreement on all that,” said King.
Tighe & Bond provided a detailed 15-page memo summarizing the likely cost required for each of the five crossings. Materials account for 62% of the total and labor 38%.
Other significant cost elements include $898,000 for sidewalks and resurfacing and $500,000 for “Positive Train Control” — the T’s signal system that monitors train locations, speeds and movements in real-time.
In its original 2024 estimating, the town did not anticipate a need to make as many upgrades to the T’s signal systems as the current plan calls for. Those costs were accounted for in the $7 million estimate. The recently added costs are more attributable to unanticipated labor expenses.
“What we found when we got in there was that the condition of the signals was so bad that we could not use the existing signals,” said Lustig.
King explained the T would not be amenable to an expedited construction schedule if it required disruptions to its level of service. “They would be open to some level of service disruption, maybe late at night or to some level on the weekends.”
“But they largely asked us to change the phasing we had to meet their expectations around construction largely happening while the rail is still in service.”
Working around this request would require more night and weekend work, the hiring of flaggers for safety reasons, running more “test trains” and other labor-intensive work.
“So the change in the cost estimate from when we all last met, the around-$7-million figure, to the new updates up to $8.2, was a change in labor cost, largely coming out of that discussion (with the T),” King said.
Lars Unhjem, the QZWG member representing the citizens group SaferQuieter Needham, asked if the project could be done one crossing at a time and was told that was not possible.
“It does have to occur in a layered fashion, just because of the way that they’re inter-linked and they operate,” Buchanan explained. He said the system depends on the signals at May and Great Plain Avenue, which he called “the brains” of the system.
“Those two are required to work for Rosemary and Oak to be able to be put into service,” he explained.
Yet another wrinkle in the process is the fact Keolis’ contract to continue as the T’s commuter rail operator is up for renewal in 2027, meaning the town may have a new project partner.
King said if the town reaches an agreement with Keolis and Keolis is subsequently not renewed, any successor would be obligated to abide by the contract. “In any agreements we have to sign, the T always puts in that they apply to the successor of any of their contractors. We would not need to renegotiate.”
Issues for Town Meeting
The current language in the article for Special Town Meeting calls for the funds to be borrowed. John Connelly, Finance Committee chair and its designee on the QZWG, expressed strong concerns about adding to the town’s debt with the $300 million-plus Pollard renovation project coming up.
He asked if the town would consider funding the project via its Free Cash account, “because I know the Finance Committee is going to have real reservations about tying up debt capacity for a project with no schedule.”
“It would not be schedule-less forever,” replied QZWG Chair Marianne Cooley. “But I think John’s question is absolutely valid and is something that needs to be considered and understood.”
“We just need to be mindful that, two years ago, when the town meeting approved the design, that construction was estimated at $3.5 million,” said Connelly.
The Select Board will discuss the project at its April 15 meeting, and the QZWG will appear before the Finance Committee April 22.
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