L.A. Now Live: City Hall staff silent on L.A. streetcar red flags

Join Times reporter Laura Nelson at 9 a.m. to discuss the ballooning price tag for a Los Angeles streetcar line and the red flags about the cost increases that city officials remained quiet about.

When downtown voters agreed last winter to bring back the streetcar, the campaign pitch sounded simple: a $125-million trolley through the heart of the central city, with funding split between federal grants and a new property tax.

Inside City Hall, however, staff members had been quietly warning that the project’s price tag was not a detailed estimate and could rise, a Times review of city memos, emails and meeting notes has found.

Records also show that aides to City Councilman Jose Huizar were reluctant to incorporate higher estimates into public discussions, partly because of concerns they could slow the streetcar’s progress.

The red flags proved accurate. Officials recently announced that cost estimates have more than doubled, to as much as $327.8 million. Earlier budgets had not accurately accounted for inflation or the potentially high cost of relocating utilities. The route probably will be shortened, no longer passing by two high-profile venues, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

With no clear way to close what could be a $200-million funding gap, the fear now at City Hall is that the streetcar’s shot at a crucial federal grant is in jeopardy, potentially delaying construction by several years.

The bumpy saga of L.A.’s modern-day streetcar may yet end with a sleek new transit loop. But records and interviews shed a fresh light on the technical and financial problems that have dogged the project, largely out of public view, in the months before news of the additional costs was shared with taxpayers.

“We thought it was too early to go with any kind of number,” Huizar’s chief of staff, Paul Habib, said of the reluctance to make public the higher potential cost. Not enough engineering work had been done, he said, to move beyond a “guesstimate.”

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