The rail project — along with related improvements in public transportation — is running late.

That is not much of a headline. Everyone knows that construction of the years-overdue 20-mile system is still about a quarter-way shy of completion, with more financial, engineering and managerial headaches than anyone imagined at the outset.

That said, there’s really no sense in the city government rushing to add more delays that are not absolutely necessary. There is real work to do in coordinating Oahu’s multi-modal transportation network, and the public ultimately will not be served by prolonged postponement of working out the problems that are sure to come up.

The Honolulu City Council was contemplating the notion of a delay last week. Yes, the budget crisis is severe. But so would be the long-term repercussions of indefinitely postponing the partial opening of the completed segment from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.

In the transition between the administrations of Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Mayor-elect Rick Blangiardi, the numbers will be crunched, and the numbers won’t be pretty. The Caldwell administration projects a $400 million deficit, one of numerous budget challenges for the new mayor.

A more concerning issue is the coronavirus pandemic, which has complicated, along with everything else, the logistics of fully completing the partial line, according to Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.

Those plans include the test engineers for Hitachi Rail Honolulu (HRH), the operators of rail, who must be on hand to make sure the line can open safely — and inbound travel to Hawaii has been anything but a simple matter.

These complications may indeed push the “soft-opening” date to July 2021, Jon Nouchi, acting director of the city Department of Transportation Services, said in a letter to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

“When HART and HRH can turn over a safe, thoroughly-tested, and 100%-certified, ready-for-operations segment to DTS, it is our intention to run this 10-mile inaugural segment immediately,” Nouchi wrote.

Such a reality check is rational. But while much is uncertain about the prospects for the next several months, it would be premature to pre-emptively terminate plans for the partial launch.

For example: There are multiple vaccines for COVID-19 soon to be available, and the latest projections for their effectiveness are highly promising.

This could untangle some of the knots in travel, and make public transportation a safer option again — both factors that could lessen some of the hurdles now in HART’s path.

The delayed-start proposal came up in a discussion Wednesday before the Council, during a discussion of bus revenue. Fare collections have dropped significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, with riders feeling less safe to come aboard an enclosed vehicle where the respiratory virus could more easily circulate.

In that context, City Councilwoman Kym Pine, who represents West Oahu and has long supported the project, seemed willing to accept the delay if it produces a savings that could help balance the city’s operating budget of about $3 billion.

But that’s a big “if.” A long pause could be a false economy. Without getting the system to an operational footing, potential undetected equipment kinks ultimately could add to rather than subtract from costs in the long run. Some allowance of funds for partial operation of the rail line should be viewed as a priority budget item.

This delay issue is only one of the myriad fault lines that underlie the project, some dating back months or years but still bedeviling progress in 2020.

HART is still awaiting the release of the remaining $744 million in federal subsidy, and the Federal Transit Administration won’t clear that until it approves the revised financial plan for construction.

And that financial reconfiguration was upended when Caldwell recently decided to withdraw the city as a party to the public-private partnership (P3) proposed contract on the final segment, ending at Ala Moana Center. The price tag would have been too high, the mayor said, though the details on the P3 proposals have yet to emerge.

The P3 — a design-build-operate-maintain pact with a winning bidder aimed at saving money over the long term — had been central to the financial plan HART would have presented to the FTA. Now Andrew Robbins, HART CEO, and Caldwell have agreed to work on a new, more conventional design-build plan.

The construction of the problematic Dillingham Boulevard segment has bogged down in unanticipated engineering delays and, to cap everything, Robbins has come under fire from the HART board, so his tenure is uncertain.

The entire troubled project desperately needs the forward progress that a partial reopening would bring. The city must see that this, too, doesn’t slip into a murky future.