All work on the proposed King of Prussia Rail — the four-mile transit extension to the Norristown High Speed Line — has halted. Thomas Fitzgerald reported the cessation in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The SEPTA plug-pull resulted from an assessment that a recent Federal Transit Administration (FTA) denial of a new-transit capital grant will propel costs to unsustainable levels.
Since the idea of a railway from Norristown southwestward to King of Prussia was proposed, projected costs have swollen. The price tag is now estimated at more than $3 billion, about 54 percent more than calculated at the project’s launch.
The financial shut-off valve from the FTA came as it considered cost overruns — an assured infrastructure construction reality — and its ability to pay for them amid other projects underway elsewhere.
SEPTA has already invested nearly $90 million into the King of Prussia Rail.
Those funds came from a scrubbed idea for a Philadelphia-to-Reading railroad and SEPTA’s own coffers.
More on the future of the King of Prussia Rail is at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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This 3-D video certainly extolled the advantages of the King of Prussia Rail project, now jeopardized by funding.
