So far in the Oahu rail project’s troubled life, timetables and target dates have amounted to very little. Appallingly little, to the taxpayers’ dismay, as the project now eyes completion in 2031, nearly a dozen years later than the promised 2020, and with a budget ballooning to $11.4 billion from the initial $5.2 billion.
Still, for the record, here’s another optimistic date, from the project’s new CEO, Lori Kahikina: The rail could be turned over to the city Department of Transportation Services around July, for operation from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium. Getting interim rail service up and running would indeed be key to creating ridership excitement and convenience.
That is, “if all the stars line up” to overcome a host of hurdles — including a series of stringent test runs mandated for safety; and finding a fix for problematic “frogs,” the track crossings built too wide for trains with too-narrow wheels to maintain the 55 mph running speed.
A critical deadline for welders to bid on a work-around fix on the frogs came and went Friday — but unfortunately, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation won’t be providing any details of a procurement until after the bid is awarded, when and if one is.
And that’s the less-troubled first half of the 20-mile rail system.
The second half, to run through Honolulu’s urban core and end at Ala Moana Center, brings a bevy of costly, still-unmitigated conditions. Chief among them is the Dillingham Boulevard corridor, fraught with utility relocation difficulties.
On the Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” webcast Wednesday, Kahikina provided an updated timetable on this area: Doing a guideway “mauka shift” on Dillingham Boulevard would ease some problems, but still requires a revised plan that’s now expected in the second quarter of 2022, then a bidding and procurement process for construction. All told, Kahikina projected, Dillingham utilities relocation alone would take about four years.
Clearly, it would be neither time- nor cost-efficient for other stretches to sit idle while Dillingham work plods along. To that end, Kahikina said, the plan would be to also forge ahead with work from the town end, to ultimately meet up with the system coming from Dillingham.
On paper, that makes sense. But given the history of rail snafus and design flaws so far, sharp eyes and sharper calculations must be involved, to be absolutely certain that things do line up — the stars and guideway alike.
