Millions of additional dollars will be required to address two safety oversights to Honolulu’s future rail system, according to the project’s top executive.
The budget to design and build the 20-mile line’s control and operations system does not include funds for platform screen gates — transparent barriers to prevent passengers from falling onto the tracks — Honolulu Authority for Transportation CEO Dan Grabauskas said Thursday. The budget further lacks a power-failure backup system so that the elevated, driverless trains could make it to the nearest station in the event of an outage, he added.
During HART’s board meeting Thursday, Grabauskas said he had been "surprised" to learn those elements were not included in the rail budget before he came on board.
"It was discussed but not budgeted for," said Grabauskas, who joined the project as HART CEO just more than a year ago. "For whatever reason" the features weren’t included.
A backup power system would be especially important for rail in Honolulu, where the first trains are expected to start running in 2017, because the track is elevated and passengers wouldn’t be able to leave the cars as they would if they were on the ground, Grabauskas said. There’s "no argument in my book against safety," he added.
He did not give an estimate, but said the cost for those elements would be in the millions of dollars. The rail’s contingency fund stands at $644 million, officials say, but they add that it’s not yet determined where the money will come from for the gates and backup system.
HART is already considering three different vendors to deliver the screen gates, and the board’s finance committee will look at those bids as early as next month, Grabauskas said.
Even as HART dealt with those earlier planning oversights, the semiauto-nomous government agency took early steps Thursday with Oahu Transit Services, the nonprofit group that runs TheBus, to make the two city transit systems eventually run as conveniently and as seamlessly as possible.
"So many people like to look at it as bus versus rail. It is bus and rail," Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell told the two agencies’ board members Thursday before their joint meeting. Caldwell added that he believes it’s "premature" to have voters consider a proposed City Charter amendment in 2014 to have HART eventually run both bus and rail. That idea was floated recently by City Councilman Breene Harimoto, and any Charter amendments recommended by the Council to go before voters next year would have to be approved first by the mayor.
The HART and OTS boards agreed Thursday to form a joint task force to look at ways to integrate rail and bus. The task force will include the agencies’ staff. It will study how to make transit more efficient and combine fare and communications systems, fare structures, operations and maintenance.
Harimoto, who chairs the Council’s Transportation Committee, said he hopes bus and rail passengers will be able to use the same transfers, the same fares and the same ticketing system. "I think that’s what it’s all about," he said Thursday.
Also Thursday, it was announced that Honolulu’s rail project will receive $14 million less in federal dollars this year than anticipated because of budget sequestration cuts.
The project will get $236.2 million for 2013 instead of the agreed-upon $250 million — a 5.6 percent reduction, Grabauskas said.
"Cuts are never good news," Grabauskas said, but the 5.6 percent reduction is "one we can absolutely live with in terms of cash flow this year."
Federal Transit Administration officials signaled in recent weeks there could be some sort of sequestration-related cut in the 2013 funding but that it would be made up in subsequent years of its six-year, $1.55 billion funding agreement with HART.
"I have been reassured by the FTA that while the project is facing cuts now, they will fulfill their promise of federal funding over the course of time," U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said in a statement Thursday. Schatz sits on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
