OCEANSIDE -- The North County Transit District will pay an additional $10.6 million to the construction company that built the Sprinter light rail line to settle "all disputes related to the project," transit officials announced this week.

The transit district announced the agreement during a regular meeting Thursday. A copy of the document wasn't made available, but a one-paragraph statement said West Coast Rail Constructors will receive the cash in order to settle "all disputes related to the Sprinter Mainline Project."

The statement doesn't say what those disputes were, and transit officials could not be reached for comment Friday.

The settlement was the second the district has reached with the contractor over Sprinter issues. In May 2007, the district agreed to pay $12.2 million to make up for work delays, allegedly caused by flaws in the project's design.

Even with the payouts, and previous cost increases, district officials have said the Sprinter is still within the $484 million budget the federal government set for the project.

In the 2007 deal, the transit district acknowledged that "there has been an abnormally high number of drawing corrections, permit and easement issues, and design directives during the course of the project, resulting in significant changes in West Coast Rail Company's work plan and schedule."

DMJM Inc. designed the Sprinter line under contract for the transit district. NCTD's attorney, Michael Cowett, said the district and the designer are still trying to sort out whether a rebate is in order on that design work.

The design flaws came to light most noticeably at Escondido Avenue in Vista, where the rail station and tracks had to be redesigned several times while construction was going on.

The district's brief statement Thursday said that $3.3 million of this week's $10.6 million settlement was considered "constructive acceleration compensation." That term generally refers to extra costs a contractor incurs while trying to meet a mandated deadline on a project after circumstances outside the contractor's control arise and the contractor is denied an extension.

The situation seems similar to a $3 million incentive payment included in the 2007 settlement. The transit agency was to pay West Coast an additional $3 million bonus if the company finished all Sprinter construction activities by Dec. 1, 2007. The company did not finish construction until well into 2008, and the line did not open until March 9, 2008.

A call to West Coast Rail majority partner FCI Inc. was not returned.

Transit board member and Encinitas Councilman Jerome Stocks declined to say Friday what specifically prompted the settlement, but said he thought the transit district came out ahead in the agreement, rather than going to court.

"With large projects like these, there are always claims and counter claims, that's just the nature of the beast," Stocks said.

Cowett, the transit district's attorney, was not available Friday to comment.

On Thursday night, Cowett said he was proud of the agreement because it would keep the public agency from ending up in court to resolve construction issues that cropped up as the 22-mile rail line between Oceanside and Escondido was being built.

"This is a good result because it avoids litigation," Cowett said.

Though the Sprinter's federally approved budget is now $484 million, it was not always that costly.

When the district initially sought bids for the Sprinter in 2004, the project's cost was listed at $351 million. As the price tag escalated during nearly three years of construction, the district increasingly blamed the rising cost of steel, concrete and other materials.

Call staff writer Paul Sisson at 760-901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com.