Honolulu’s $6.7 billion rail project is so far off track that it has managed to bring together the two Honolulu rivals, Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Council Chairman Ernie Martin.
The pair are united not in their admiration for the project, but in their fear that costs will continue to grow, that it will take more than the already extended six years to finish and, along the way, it will create an unprecedented traffic nightmare.
Last month both Martin and Caldwell wrote to Donald Horner, chairman of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, and Daniel Grabauskas, HART CEO and executive director, to say how much they didn’t like how the project is progressing.
First it isn’t progressing. Today’s newborn babies will be in first grade when the train’s wheels first turn in 2022.
To stay on schedule, HART has to come up with a schedule to bury the utility lines along both the airport and Dillingham Boulevard sections of the route. Caldwell is worried that HART can neither do it nor pay for it.
“I remain deeply concerned and, quite frankly, unconvinced that HART is adequately managing and mitigating the potential risks to both project schedule and budget associated with utility relocations,” Caldwell wrote.
Pointing out that consultants have warned that the project’s “most significant risk” is utility line relocation, Caldwell is asking for more information on “risk mitigation and cost containment strategies.”
Costs for utility line relocation was pegged at $63 million last year. That figure this year has soared to $120 million, according to television news reports.
Add to that the big cost and construction unknowns when rail reaches Dillingham Boulevard past Middle Street and plowing through one of Oahu’s most densely populated areas.
Caldwell keeps his questioning on a bureaucratic level, asking if the contractors now readying bids for the Dillingham corridor are working on any “traffic mitigation” plans.
Is the contractor including that in the bid, or is HART going to figure something out after getting the bids? Caldwell asks.
After that’s figured out, Caldwell notes, HART still must come to the city and state transportation departments along with the police to figure out how to run traffic on a narrow viaduct.
Remember how by the end of last year, business was so hurt by rail construction in the Waipahu, Pearl City and Aiea areas that HART was offering free shuttle service to move customers through the traffic nightmare?
Small businesses damaged by the lane-blocking construction reported that at Christmas time, business was down 25 percent, and the incentives such as “Shop and Dine on the Line” had not helped.
Those problems will multiply when rail construction hits Dillingham. It is another one of the unanswered questions that have both Caldwell and Martin nervous.
Caldwell said the public needs to “be aware of the complexity of this project and the potential for cost, schedule and scope changes.”
Martin added that the City Council set a budget and will not exceed it.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” Martin wrote.
Those letters may serve to inoculate Caldwell and Martin from this year’s irate voting public, but will do nothing to calm voters trapped in the mounting costs and looming gridlock of Dillingham Boulevard.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
