It’s been a long while since good news topped a status report on the city’s rail project, and yet here it is: Part of the long-delayed, vastly overbudget, 20-mile system will be built not just on time but months early.

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) made the sunny announcement last week, circling October on the calendar as when the first half of the $9.2 billion elevated rail system, East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium, will be ready to ride.

Now the question is: Will the city Department of Transportation Services, which has charge of rail operations itself, be ready to put riders in the seats?

The bottom-line message that city officials need to hear is: Pick up the pace so that taxpayers won’t be left waiting outside empty rail cars. If the hardware is ready, the service should be geared up to start.

In its long march toward project completion, of course, HART still faces a major threshold to cross. The agency just postponed the deadline for submitting proposals on its critical public-private partnership (P3) to build the final City Center segment of the guideway. The former due date of Feb. 23 has been put off until April.

HART spokesman Bill Brennan said on Friday that this was in response to requests for an extension from the potential bidders, who needed more information on the timetable for the relocation of utilities along the Dillingham Boulevard corridor that’s now underway.

Bidder interest is “keen and competitive,” he said. The anxiously waiting public hopes that is correct.

And interested observers may be nervously waiting for any word from the federal investigation of the HART records. This probe seeks information on any irregularities that could explain costs that have skyrocketed over time from the original $5.3 billion. A flurry of subpoenas related to this case came down in the past year.

That, of course, is beyond the control of HART, which has seen its best course of action as pressing ahead with the work. And on Thursday, there was enough of a payoff from that to precipitate a hopeful New Year’s look-ahead on the project. Hope is a commodity sorely needed here, given that the system is now pegged for a completion to its Ala Moana terminus in 2025, six years behind schedule.

Andrew Robbins, HART executive director and CEO, spoke at the Halaulani Rail Station at Leeward Community College (LCC), one of nine stations slated to open this fall with the first half of the rail alignment.

The LCC station, along with the West Loch and Waipahu Transit Center stops, were built by Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. Two more groups of three stations on either side of those were the work of another contractor, Nan Inc.

The company running the system, Hitachi Rail Honolulu Joint Venture, is contracted to put the steel wheels in motion on those steel rails on Dec. 20.

The city agency overseeing rail service, DTS, had built its budget on the assumption that it would need funds in the coming fiscal year for rail — but not until Dec. 20. Now, Wes Frysztacki, DTS director, said he’s contemplating ways of moving up some of those budgeted funds for an earlier service start in October.

That would be smart. For one thing, a good way to promote a new transit service that delivers riders from the West Side to Aloha Stadium would be to pair it with at least the remaining home games in the 2020 University of Hawaii football season. That is the biggest stadium draw of the fall each year, and it would be a great showcase for the new rail service.

If those funds can be shifted forward — and if Hitachi can make the move as well — they will have to cover associated operational costs, such as station maintenance and security. Also there must be adequate DTS staffing, including those posted at the just-opened Joint Traffic Management Center.

That’s supposed to be the nerve center for coordinating, among other complexities, the interplay of the rail and bus systems. And so far, it’s still anything but clear how well those systems will support each other.

For starters, the fare system needs to be settled, and the Honolulu Rate Commission, after a public-input process that began last summer, will need to produce a fare scheme. The goal was to submit its recommendation at the end of last year, and the City Council had slated six months to push out a final bill.

That schedule surely will need to accelerate to give DTS the time it needs to prepare for an earlier opening. This must include a robust public education campaign to acquaint riders with how the new HOLO fare cards will work.

There is no time to waste. In what is already promising to be a busy year — as election years always are — this is a lot to put on the city plate.

Ultimately, though, the public is not feeling indulgent of further delay. Don Horner, the former HART chairman, used to exhort the agency against “moving the goal posts.” Let’s echo that. The goal posts have moved six years down the line already. Let’s get this train rolling.