Metro picks a contractor to dig the Wilshire subway tunnels through West L.A.

Work progresses on the Purple Line subway at La Brea and Wilshire Boulevard last year. Metro’s decision last year to hire Tutor Perini to build the second phase of the Purple Line reversed Chairman and Chief Executive Ronald Tutor’s long exclusion from L.A.’s rail building boom. Metro chief program office manager Rick Clarke said the cost estimate reflects Tutor Perini’s confidence that it can manage the construction without delays or unforeseen problems. Earlier this month, The Times reported that the state bullet train authority had asked Tutor’s workers to tear down and rebuild a bridge near Fresno, saying it showed “signs of distress.” Tutor said Thursday that officials had changed their minds about the design, and that the issue was “trivial as trivial could be.” Reports that Tutor Perini was at fault for installing the wrong kind of steel on the tracks for a subway project in San Francisco are “even a bigger media joke,” Tutor said, adding that he had sent “all the data” to Metro that would vindicate his company. “We’re very comfortable with the price.” Metro is paying for the Purple Line projects through federal grants, low-interest loans and revenue from sales tax increases that Los Angeles County voters approved in 2008 and 2016.