Rail project saving $140M on power-line clearance
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Rail construction snakes between utility poles on Kamehameha Highway. Under the new plan unveiled at Thursday’s Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board meeting, most of the overhead power lines running along the rail route’s first 11 miles from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium would stay in place, and HECO crews would work on them using new, specialized trucks and cranes.
COURTESY HECO
Rail’s elevated guideway is too close to the power lines that run alongside it for Hawaiian Electric Co. crews to access those lines in the utility’s standard “bucket” trucks. The issue was neglected for years. Now, the city will buy special trucks that can maneuver in that space — a move that’s expected to be much cheaper than putting the lines underground.
Local rail officials and Hawaiian Electric Co. say they’ve agreed to a cheaper fix for many of the utility-line clearance problems that have plagued Oahu’s elevated transit project, saving about $140 million.
Under the new $61.5 million plan, which was unveiled at Thursday’s Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board meeting, most of the overhead power lines running along the rail route’s first 11 miles from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium would stay put, and HECO crews would work on them using new, specialized trucks and cranes.
Rail consultants brushed off issue over utility lines
The plan avoids a costlier, $200 million worst-case scenario for HART and the city, in which all of those lines would have been relocated underground to avoid rail’s concrete pathway.
Instead, the city will pay for the new equipment and the cost to put just some of the lines underground.
The agreement follows about four years of wrangling between HART and HECO to resolve the clearance problems. By 2015 they posed the “most significant risk” to rail, according to Jacobs Engineering, the independent firm overseeing the project.
“This was an expert-level puzzle, and solving it took a lot of people at Hawaiian Electric and HART exploring options and then testing solutions out in the field,” said Jim Kelly, HECO’s vice president for corporate relations. “There are still some areas that will be challenging and some clearances that will be tight, but we think we can make it work.”
Thursday’s cost-saving plan does not include the overhead power lines that run along the narrow Dillingham Boulevard corridor, however. The city will still have to pay an estimated $70 million to relocate those power lines underground to get them out of the way, according to Brennon Morioka, HART’s deputy director.
The semi-autonomous rail agency aims to save more costs and avoid putting the lines — currently on nine 138-kilovolt poles between Aloha Stadium and Middle Street — underground. Doing so largely depends on HART securing the land easements it needs from the Navy near those poles, Morioka added.
HECO had warned rail consultants in 2009 that its workers would need clearances of 50 feet to safely access high-voltage power lines near the guideway, but the issue was neglected until 2013. The city started building rail shortly afterward without a solution. Since then the problem has become a top priority for rail officials — and they’ve budgeted an added $300 million to deal with it.
Thursday’s utility plan represents a rare instance of good budget news for the island’s cash-strapped project, which has seen its projected cost nearly double from $5.26 billion in 2014 to about $10 billion today.
The roughly $140 million that HART expects to save from its utility-relocation budget will go into rail’s contingency fund, Morioka added.
HECO needs as much as 50 feet of clearance for the “bucket” trucks that carry its maintenance crews to gain access to overhead lines, according to the local utility. Rail and utility officials since 2014 have been testing other trucks and equipment designs that might safely give HECO’s work crews the access they need to the power lines on the rail route’s west side.
Those stretches of the route — along Kualakakai Parkway, Farrington Highway and Kamehameha Highway — offer enough space that special equipment might solve the problem more cheaply than relocating power lines.
The crews “started reviewing everything on a pole-by-pole basis,” Kelly said Thursday.
HART and HECO officials traveled to Colorado to test some equipment, Morioka told the HART board Thursday. Eventually, the two entities agreed that specialized Altec-brand bucket trucks and Phoenix-brand cranes would work for most of the overhead lines on the west side.
Dillingham Boulevard remains too narrow for that solution to work, however, Morioka said. It’s part of rail’s final 4-mile stretch heading into the crowded urban core, a stretch that has seen its projected costs swell by nearly $1 billion.
The city will also have to cover the costs for HECO to find additional storage for the new trucks to serve the power lines along the rail guideway, Morioka said. HART doesn’t yet have an estimate for that cost, he added.
Rail leaders, including Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, are asking state lawmakers for another rail-tax extension to rescue the transit project.
80 responses to “Rail project saving $140M on power-line clearance”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, this thing is going down and taking Honolulu taxpayers with it, and Caldwell is an accomplice to the crime of sticking Oahu taxpayers to the biggest black hole any public has ever been dumb enough to bend over for.
I actually agree with the plan to leave the power lines where they are. It complements the ugly of rail quite nicely.
Is this possibly an attempt to show the feds they are serious about saving money? Are the feds that dumb to accept this kind of paper savings when we all know this thing will go to 15 billion in the next 6 months if allowed to continue. The mayor touts his affordable housing but this is all just a mass development scheme designed to fill the pockets of the elite political class here that are never voted out of office. Who ever thought bringing 50 thousand more residents to Oahu was a good thing?
If it quacks like a duck…. of course rail construction is all about saving costs. That’s the nature of the work. This is not a fantasy as you are thinking.. or just not even thinking at all.
Of course your right about all that you said. And can anybody imagine that if Uku was still running HART how much these little savings would have never come in play.
Sun sun… these are large not “little” savings.
And of course, they would be done if Grabauskas is still running the show. I suspect he is still being asked about some things because the new director is still being briefed on the current status.
Is this the same $140M that they forgot to include in the first place and never had covered?
Lets not forget the faulty Trains that have already been delivered and built with bad welds on the main Beams that hold the cars together. Now they have to re-build all 27 cars + the one they delivered to Honolulu as a showcase 7 years before the first choo choo choo’s. So now we have Steel tendons that hold the tracks on the guide way snapping, 265000 plastic shims that need to be changed because they cracked in the sun, cement that is crumbling on the columns where they connect to the guide way, columns that are sinking into the soft farmland requiring more shims to hold the guide way in place. still now ideas as to where the electricity to run this MONSTER is coming from or how?? from 2.6 Billion and 36 miles to
10 Billion and almost 11 miles of track but no stations or LOW COST HOUSING HAS BEEN BUILT. Less than 500 local jobs were created instead of over 10,000. 75% of the workers were brought in from the mainland
areas of Texas, Florida and Washington state’s, the local businesses that suffered have not been offered anything other than BYE BYE future from the city. We have been lied to in every instance and now they want a BLANK CHECK BOOK TO COMPLETE THIS MONSTER BOONDOGGLE– WAKE UP HONOLULU AND SAY ” NO”
Rail leaders, including Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, are asking state lawmakers for another rail-tax extension to rescue the transit project.
Sorry Kirky Boy no more money for you to waste. Tell your HART bozos to start cutting out the fraud, waste, mismanagement. Yes, they will have to actually do their jobs, do real work, break a sweat.
Rail is just another endless money pit like pensions, educations, and infrastructure.
RUSTY THE HATED SCREECHING MONEY SUCKING RAIL REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN. WAKE UP HONOLULU AND STOP THIS MONEY PIT THAT WILL DESTROY HUNDREDS OF LOCAL BUSINESSES ON DILLINGHAM BLVD.
Name 20 businesses on Dillingham. Not McD,Popeyes,or JDS karaoke.
I can easy bro why you cannot? Starting with Gaspro and Marukai and work my way up. Bale bakery. I can name 10 easy including the prison.
I can probably name 40-50 just on the main corridor of Dillingham Blvd. from restaurants, wholesale, retail, service, etc. etc. etc. Most are individual owners who’s only means of support is the business.
Like the Waipahu area most have been there successfully for 20-30 years and like in Waipahu the RAIL will destroy them.
Don’t know much about power lines but there must be a way that they could run the power lines along the rail concrete. Anyone have any experience about running power lines close to the transportation?
Pretty much every European nation.
I’m not buying it until it’s done.
Anyone remember Mufi’s 2.7 billion dollar rail budget with a generous contingency, and factored in rising material and labor costs, as well as inflation? Now we’re a about 9.6 billion and the mayor says “Just round it up to 10 billion” as if 400 million is a drop in the bucket.
Don’t forget how he “locked in prices….”
Do you mean the ones that cost us an additional $70+ million because the contracts were signed prematurely?
Dillingham Boulevard? Really? Why is this even mentioned when rail will end at Middle Street Bus Terminal?
Power lines are just one of the problems on Dillingham Boulevard as underground utilities must be moved along with the wires. This would result in shutting down a major road for years, effective gridlock on the other streets.
No money was saved with the new trucks as taxpayers are still stuck with the bill. Just a con game, find the peanut under one of the three cups.
Another day in the little 15th world of Hawaii Nei.
Contingency fund means “spending money”.
Dinner at Ruth’s Chris!!!!!
So now the mayor’s good right? No need the GET extension. All is good.
So HART saves money on their budget by now the City picks up some of that cost. What difference does that make? We are paying one way or another.
I thought the story would be that HEI would be buying those new cherry pickers since HART is going to be one of their biggest accounts.
We’re getting it coming & going and no one is kissing us 🙁
Will the $300 million reduce to rail cost to AMC from $15 Billion to $14.7 Billion? Stop rail at Middle St!
140 million dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire cost estimate. Now if they can find another 3 billion in savings that would be worth reporting. Here’s an idea, let’s tax mayor Caldwells car a million dollars per pound for it’s registration that would cover the rail overages.
No way, we ought to fine his mouth a million dollars per lie, the rail would have been paid off already.
Wouldn’t surprise me if the snake classified his car as an classic antique, I’m sure there’s an exemption for that, just like his historic home of distinction!
No disrespect to Marcel, but this reads like the SA once again published a press release from HART as “news.”
If that’s not the case, did you happen to ask HART and HE where the electricity would come from to power the train, who would be paying for the infrastructure and how much it would cost?
As for “Rail leaders, including Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, are asking state lawmakers for another rail-tax extension to rescue the transit project.” My understanding is the Mayor Caldwell isn’t asking for a extension, he his asking to make the promised “temporary” rail tax permanent. Has that changed?
The mayor’s position has not changed, but he did say that he would like the extension to go to at least 2047. His written testimony is available on page 13, here – http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2017/Testimony/SB1183_TESTIMONY_TRE-PSM_02-15-17.PDF.
This is like my wife buying something on sale and saying she saved money!
Thursday’s utility plan represents a rare instance of good budget news for the island’s cash-strapped project, which has seen its projected cost nearly double from $5.26 billion in 2014 to about $10 billion today.
Really, GOOD NEWS ? this joke of a project started at 2.7 Billion, so the cost has TRIPLED. With NO final price ?
INSANE
Finally a little sanity on this project. The 50-foot clearance requirement never made sense as the standard in many mainland cities is only 20 feet. This was all about who would have to pay for the new equipment HECO needs to handle the narrower clearances and should have been resolve much sooner, but at least we got to the right answer a the end.
The reality is this is a little tiny drop in the bucket and will probably end up costing another BILLION as it gets closer to actually putting in the guide way. I feel for the businesses on the corridor along Dillingham as they completely killed many if not most of the local business in Waipahu as they destroyed the customer base. Duh, they still haven’t even started on the Waipahu transit station RAIL STATION and Nan Inc says the earliest would be late 2019 & that would only be if everything goes perfect. You would think that station would be priority because its a major BUS Transit Center so that means phase one is still years away if ever. WAKE UP HONOLULU AND STOP THIS MONEY SUCKING MONSTER IN ITS TRACKS.
My major concern is: are we receiving money in our bank from Fed funding on this rail project? With President Trump, although no one in Hawaii is talking about this, we may never get any funding from the administration. If we are getting money, how much have we received so far. And how much more will be available?
According to HART’s last report, they have received $712 million. That leaves $838 million to go.
They will likely have to return whatever they got as the FEDs are growing angrier by the day with the delays, cost overruns and mismanagement of their money to HART. Frankly even the FEDs are under the impression that the rail will never be built so they want their money back.
Tear it down and fix our infrastructure.
“The roughly $140 million that HART expects to save from its utility-relocation budget will go into rail’s contingency fund, Morioka added.”
Uh, what contingency fund? You mean the $1b fund for the $3B rail system to UH Mufi promised us. With project costs currently projected to be around $10b, Hawaii is in the red and borrowing money or raising taxes to finish the project. It would be extremely upsetting after the GET tax extension, debt servicing and money that is being diverted to rail if the $1b contingency fund is still intact. Actually, thinking about it, it makes perfect sense for the way the project has been run so far…
Throw $ will solve all problems?
Somebody gotta let TRUMP know about this. He’ll say drain the swamp!
First Trump will need to deport the illegals and drain the swamp of US traitors that promote and help illegals like like Advetiser1, Klastri, nanakuliboss, daddynotthebelt and poidoggy.
Don’t forget boots, LOL.
True, I forgot about wiliki too! Man, if we could just deport all of them, the whole island will be free of domestic terrorists and traitors to their country.
Nope us kupunas know from experience…. you upstarts haven’t learned your lessons.
weewee your are so F*O*S you are no kupuna. As a real Kupuna I am calling you out
A real kupuna would know that we really don’t care about about swear words.
It really just shows you aren’t better than a 14 year old. You wont get my attention.
Trump also promote dirty coal for electric. So don’t worry about electric for rail. Dirty coal is headed this way courtesy of King Louie. Ooh eeh eeh.
Little do you know you little Libtard that the rail will never be completed in our lifetime. It’s a scam to siphon money out of the taxpayers as it won’t ever pass a safety inspection as it’s already buckling under it’s own weight! Keep pushing your devout “D”onkey Libtard Utopian propaganda and you’ll see that your hood, Nanakuli, will get taxed to the point where you’ll be forced to move out to the Waianae boat harbor camp with the bums!
Baby dragons should watch out for cranky old kupunas.
Fake kupuna like weewee should watch out for real Hawaiian Kupuna like me to show you some Hawaiian law to liars
So… you gonna beat yourself up?
Where’s the traditional discussion going with this?
A $140,000,000 savings for the $10,000,000,000 broken train to nowhere. It is put into the slush (aka contingency) fund. Big deal, tear it down, fix our infrastructure.
This will be the real power source powering the Choo-Choo… http://www.funnfun.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/tractor-trolley-desi-jugaad.jpg
Whoop-dee-dooo! Now tell us what you are going to do with the money saved. Give yourself a bonus? What?
Hawaii being conned again by Hart and SA.
Cheaper Fix? Paying for new equipment and storage area for HECO to be used where ugly rail stands. Ugly rail once constructed might stand forever. Forever costs for new equipment and storage will surely run well over $200 million.
Hart spends 60 million for equipment, puts savings 140 million in contingency and spends it all on rail.
Future and forever costs for new equipment and storage will be at Taxpayers surprise expense of well more than 200 million.
$140,000,000??? Really??? in the grans scheme of things that is NOTHING!
Wow, HECO scores. New trucks and storage facility on the taxpayers dime. These trucks better have the C&C decal on the door, not a HECO one.
…and we all know how those “cheaper fixes” end up; call it a deviation, instead.
Run the rail from Middle Street to Sand Island, then to downtown with a bridge or tunnel. I bet you could even run it at grade. No problems with the Dillingham corridor. No bones because it’s all fill. You could add extra bus lines down Dillingham with some of the money saved.
Dude,it’s meant to go thru Kalihi for workers,students,etc. There is nothing going thru Sand Island. Sheesh.
Nope too many powerful beach front property land owners who don’t want anything to happen to their million dollar views.
Besides the city has good plans for the waterfront through Honolulu. Actually, I can see Weikiki extending to Sand Island.
The Honolulu Community College Rail Station is the major station through Kalihi so it makes sense for the train route to run further inland.
The city has big plans…. ya we know all about your boss and his plans for the waterfront. What makes you think you guys can do anything right all of a sudden. Morons
Baloney… just sour grapes that rail is doing so well.
Whoop de doo
I don’t think they’ve “saved” this much money since they award all those contracts prematurely to “lock in prices.”
Sensible planning… example of how well run rail construction is proceeding.
Keep drinking the cool-aid, wiliki! Can’t wait to see you boarding the choo-choo on stumps after the medical staff persuades you to saw off your legs due to lack of funds at the public hospital as a result of funds being prioritized for the rail instead of insulin supplies!
No fantasy… this article is about the facts. A savings of over 100 million in rail construction.
Your medical fantasy should really focus on your blindness.
wiliki says: “Sensible planning… example of how well run rail construction is proceeding.”
Which part?
The BILLIONS over budget, the YEARS behind schedule, or the completely bogus ridership projections?
This should be blamed on frivolous court suits which have delayed rail…
There you go with your senile lies again.
wiliki says: “This should be blamed on frivolous court suits which have delayed rail…”
How many times are you going to re-tell this lie?
The then Mayor and rail insiders were making a forceful push to get rail started and beyond the point of no return. They tried a shady legal end run around the requirement for a archeological EIS to be completed before starting work. The City was sued by The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation on behalf of cultural practitioner Paulette Kaleikini. She has and had no relation with Ben Cayetano, Randall Roth, or Charles Djou.
The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled UNANIMOUSLY that the city had erred and ordered them to stop work until an archeological EIS was completed. They did, it was, and Paulette Kaleikini was satisfied.
To characterize a rare unanimous decision regarding Native Hawaiian rights by the Hawaii Supreme Court as “trivial” is the height of disrespectful and condescending.
Remember, if you can’t support the rail project without resorting to lies, then you can’t support the rail project.
How many times does Kalaheo have to deny that frivolous suits have delayed rail?
wiliki says: “How many times does Kalaheo have to deny that frivolous suits have delayed rail?”
Maybe this will help.
Name what you consider to be a friviolous lawsuit and then demonstrate how long it it delayed this rail project.
You can’t, because it never happened and you are lying.
Again, if you can’t support the rail project without resorting to lies, then you can’t support the rail project.
It’s like “Look I found a nickel!” Big-whoop. Let’s talk about funding and finishing the rail once and for all. I’m outta patience.
This story was a banner headline in the SA as if it’s a major breakthrough. Why doesn’t the SA ever cover the real headline, the major “forever tax” burden our lawmakers are going to mandate on our small number of Hawaii’s tax payers?
Will the C/C be leasing this equipment,land to HECO?
Very misleading article title. To date, rail is way, way, way over budget.
It’s true that you can fool most of the people all of the time. Oahu had an opportunity to vote Caldwell out but their brain cells were not holding hands so they voted him back in. Oahu voters….gluttons for punishment.