Honolulu transit officials filed court documents Tuesday asserting that they’ve complied with a federal judge’s instructions to study the alternative routes and impacts of the city’s rail project.
If Judge A. Wallace Tashima accepts the city’s "notice of compliance," filed in District Court, the move could lift his order blocking rail construction in the heart of Honolulu. Rail opponents suing to stop the project now have 30 days to object to the city’s notice.
Meanwhile, both parties in the federal suit over rail continue to await word from a panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Those three appeals judges held an hourlong hearing on the matter in August in San Francisco. Whatever they decide could make or break Oahu’s $5.26 billion public transit effort.
Hours after the filing Tuesday, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, speaking before the media, implored the consortium of academics, environmental groups and even a former Hawaii governor not to challenge the city’s notice, and to let the 20-mile elevated rail project proceed.
"We’ve now met the conditions set by Judge Tashima," Caldwell said. "Their day in court has happened. Let the project continue."
The city has spent about $5 million combined for outside and in-house attorneys to fight legal battles against the rail project in state and federal court, Caldwell said.
Cliff Slater, chairman of Honolulutraffic.com, said his group has spent about $1.4 million to fight the project in federal court.
Due to legal maneuvers by the rail project’s attorneys, "this has cost us six, seven times as much as we thought it would originally cost us," Slater said Tuesday. The group has raised those dollars mainly via fundraisers and mailings, Slater said. "From the get-go our attorneys have said to us … these guys are just doing absolutely everything and anything to delay the process."
It’s too early to say whether the group will object to the notice the city filed Tuesday, he added.
Honolulutraffic.com’s 2011 lawsuit argued that local and federal officials violated environmental and historic preservation law with a shoddy approvals process.
Tashima’s ruling last year largely sided with the city. But it also required rail officials to weigh more closely an alternative route that ends at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus instead of Ala Moana Center, plus any impacts rail would have on Mother Waldron Park in Kakaako. Tashima’s ruling also had them study whether any "traditional cultural properties" existed along the route in town — and whether such properties would be affected by rail.
The city has now wrapped up those studies. They conclude that there would be no impacts to Mother Waldron Park under environmental law and that it would cost nearly $950 million extra and take two more years of work to use what’s dubbed the "Beretania Tunnel Alternative" — a route along Beretania and King streets to get to UH-Manoa.
"The best alternative is to go the way we’re going," Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Executive Director Dan Grabauskas said Tuesday.
Back in August the appellate judges spent most of their session peppering lawyers with questions over whether the appeals court even had jurisdiction. They wondered whether Tashima’s lower-court order could be considered final if the studies he required hadn’t yet been finished or approved.
If Tashima accepts the city’s notice of compliance, "I think that would wrap up the case from Tashima’s end," said Paul J. Schwind, a retired Honolulu lawyer who occasionally blogs about Honolulu rail’s legal issues at the legal website www.inversecondemnation.com.
"Then the jurisdiction would be more clear," Schwind said Tuesday.
A decision from that appeals court panel could come at any time.
