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Tel Aviv light railway tender will be postponed further 5 months
The competing consortia announced that they would not meet the March 31 deadline.
Gal Nissim 17 Jan 05 19:22
The deadline for submitting bids in the Tel Aviv light railway tender will be postponed by at least five months. At a meeting with NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System, representatives of the three competing consortia announced that they would not meet the March 31 deadline for submitting bids, and asked that it be extended.
The tenders committee, headed by Ministry of Finance deputy Accountant General Haggai Miller, is due to decide soon on another postponement of at least five months. The tenders committee has not yet convened to discuss the request by the consortia, but it is believed that the request will be granted for lack of choice.
The deadline for submitting bids in the build, operate, transfer (BOT) tender for the Red Line of the Tel Aviv light railway project has already been postponed twice. The original deadline was August 2004, and the deadline was first postponed to November, and then to March 31, 2005.
Under the original timetable, the railway was scheduled to go into operation in 2010, but the operating date will now be delayed until 2012.
Representatives of the consortia gave two reasons for their request for a postponement. The first is changes in the composition of the consortia as the result of the withdrawal of some companies, and the addition of others. The participating groups said that they had directed their efforts to assembling their consortia, and had not had time to prepare their bids. The second is that the tender is expensive and complex, requiring a high level of engineering expertise.
NTA general manager Yishay Dotan told “Globes”, “The groups have made a request, but the decision about a postponement will be made by the tenders committee.”
The cost of the project was initially estimated at NIS 1 billion. NTA now says that it will cost over NIS 6.5 billion, and the Ministry of Transport estimates the cost at NIS 8 billion.
Published by Globes [online] -
www.globes.co.il - on January 17, 2005