6NEWS

Charlotte's light rail system is millions of dollars over budget because of design flaws.

The firm hired to design the light rail project has been fired. That's because the project will go over it's $427 million budget and the designer could soon face a lawsuit from the city. A CATS spokesperson said the light rail's lead designer made one too many costly mistakes.

Now they plan to go after the company and go to court if they have to, once the project is complete next year.

Charlotte's light rail was designed to put the Queen City on the fast track. Now the city finds itself backtracking.

Parsons Transportation Group was lead designer until the city took them off the project in early 2005 and after a series of recent mistakes, dropped them from the project completely.

“The plans that have been prepared by the designer are not the best quality, and that's what's costing us extra money and delays in the project,” said Ron Tober, CATS Chief Executive officer.   

Just how costly are these mistakes? The city won't say.

“Some of the errors won't show up until we hit them at that phase of the construction. We just can't speculate on a number today,” said Mac McCarley, City Attorney.

Former City Councilman Mike Castano calls the project a black eye for Charlotte.

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“It's the taxpayers that always foots the bill, you know that and I know that. There are some answers that have to be given,” Castano said.

The city said CATS will pay for the overruns with the half cent sales tax that goes to the transit system, and the light rail project is still on course to begin running in November of next year. Whether the latest developments have shaken public's confidence remains to be seen.

“We're going to learn from this experience and do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again,” said Tober.

CATS said the final blow was a $1.4 dollar mistake, a design error that forced them to go back and drill twice as deep.  The project is only a little more than half way complete, so the city could find more mistakes. It will tally the bill next November.

6NEWS called Parsons Transportation Group based in Pasadena, California. A spokeswoman said they were checking their contract to see if they could talk to the media and had no comment at this time.