There’s new hope for a short-term fix for the rail project’s mismatch between too-narrow wheels and too-wide track junctions — and to train a local welding workforce for long-term maintenance of the planned 20.2-mile rail line.

The state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has granted a temporary exemption to allow welders without Hawaii licenses to make temporary repairs to fix the rail’s manganese track crossings called frogs.

No Hawaii welders or companies are licensed to retrofit the frogs and no local welders — or hui of welders — bid on the work earlier this year.

So the new plan is to bring in specialized welders from the mainland who don’t have a Hawaii license, Lori Kahikina, interim CEO and executive director for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” livestream program Wednesday.

Bids are due Friday.

A successful welding bidder would have 60 days to apply for a “specialty contracting license” in Hawaii to do the work, Kahikina later told the Star-Advertiser.

The DCCA’s exemption would expire in early summer. If no one bids on the latest contract, Kahikina said, “we’re out of luck. The exemption expires.”

HART’s trains currently are outfitted with wheels that are a half-inch too narrow at the frogs, which forces each train to slow to 5 mph from 55 mph.

The temporary welding fixes to the frogs are designed to build them up to allow the trains to run at operational speed with the current, narrower wheels, and keep the trains on schedule to arrive at each of the planned 21 stations every four to five minutes.

Building up the frogs is designed to accommodate the current wheels and new, wider ones being designed by rail operator Hitachi Rail Honolulu, Kahikina said.

The hope is to get the larger wheels designed, manufactured, imported to Honolulu and installed within 18 months, she said.

Kahikina anticipates two months for the initial frog welding to allow Hitachi to then conduct over 2,000 tests for 90 days in a row with no problems.

If problems are found on the 89th day, then the 90-day testing period starts over.

“If all the stars line up,” Kahikina told Spotlight Hawaii that HART could turn the project over to the city in July for operations from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.

Just under a year after taking over as HART’s interim leader, Kahikina told Spotlight Hawaii that she is “humbled” to have accepted a contract to become the permanent CEO and executive director, starting Jan. 1.

Her annual salary will be $275,000 with options of up to 20% for bonuses. Kahi­kina will earn more than the mayor but, unlike her predecessors, she will not be the city’s highest-paid employee, she said.

Similar positions on the mainland pay $325,000 to $430,000, Kahikina said.

She will have a two-year contract with an option for a third year, Kahikina said.

The latest hart estimates have reduced the overall cost of the project to $11.48 billion and the size of its deficit to $1.97 billion.

Further cuts could be realized by eliminating at least one of the proposed 21 stations — in Chinatown. Each station is projected to cost $50 million to $70 million and one idea is to move the downtown station closer to Chinatown to serve Chinatown riders — but only after consultation with the City Council, HART board and Federal Transit Administration, Kahikina said.

Adding a Chinatown station could come later, she said.

Asked about new funding from the city’s new proposed transient accommodations tax and updated cost estimates, Kahikina told Spotlight Hawaii that rail officials may ask the Legislature to extend its state general excise tax funding, a request that will be “probably unlikely” in the upcoming legislative session.

The current GET funding for HART is scheduled to expire in 2030 and any request to extend it “two or three more years” would depend on potential projections and many discussions, Kahikina said.

“To me, HART has a lot to prove to the legislators, to the public and to the stakeholders,” she told the Star-Advertiser.

Last week the City Council approved a new county transient accommodations tax of 3%, with about 33% going to rail. After the first two years, HART’s share of the proposed TAT then increases to 50%. The TAT requires the signature of Mayor Rick Blangiardi.

Kahikina said the plan would generate, by a rough estimate, a total of $350 million for HART during construction that is scheduled to stretch over the next 10 years, into 2031.