Search Results for: honolulu rail

Honolulu Rail: $9.9 Billion to Go Nowhere

By | | Transportation
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The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) now says it will cost $9.9 billion to not finish its rail project by 2031. As recently as a year ago, HART insisted it would be able to complete the project by 2031, a mere 12 years late. But now it admits that it has a $1.4 billion funding shortfall that will prevent completion.

The rail line was supposed to go from Kapolei, a community of 21,000 people known as Oahu’s “second city,” to Ala Moana Center, Hawaii’s largest shopping mall. Even now, HART’s website claims it is essential for the rail line to go to Ala Moana “because of the Ala Moana Transit Center, which is the City’s largest bus transit center.” Rail passengers would be able to transfer there to buses that could take them to Waikiki, the University of Hawaii, and other destinations. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Has More Rail Problems

By | | Transportation
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Honolulu rail transit tracks, which as still under construction, are too close together in some spots, which could lead to derailments. This is different from last year’s problem, in which the wheels of the railcars were found to be too narrow for some of the tracks.

Honolulu’s high-cost, low-capacity rail line under construction. Click image for a larger view. Photo by Anthony Quintano.

No one yet knows how much it will cost and how long it will take to fix the new problem. But fixing last year’s issue significantly added to the delay and cost of the project, which is currently not expected to be finished until 2031, eleven years later and at more than twice the cost that was originally projected. Continue reading →

More Honolulu Rail Follies

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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You don’t hear much about Howard Hughes anymore, but he — or, more precisely, a real estate development company named after him — is helping to delay completion of the Honolulu rail line, the $12 billion project we love to ridicule. Hughes is the midst of developing a master-planned community called Ward Village that’s smack in the pathway of the rail line, and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) says it wants two acres for the line.

Hughes is willing to sell the land to the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART), but there is a teensy disagreement over the value of the land. HART offered Hughes $13.5 million; Hughes thought it was worth “about” $100 million more. HART is attempting to take the land by eminent domain, leading Hughes to counter sue, asking for $200 million in damages. HART has already approved $23 million to pay its legal fees in the eminent domain suit.

I wonder if HART is trying to pull the same fast one that Denver’s RTD tried, which was to claim that the rail line would increase the value of the remaining property so landowners should be willing (or forced) to sell the land needed for the train for less than market value. Hughes, however, will probably argue that the success of its development makes the remaining land in the development even more valuable. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Disaster Gets More Disastrous

By | | Transportation
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When we last looked at the Honolulu rail project, less than a month ago, the projected cost had risen from $5 billion (when the city decided to build it) to $11.3 billion and the date it was expected to open had been delayed by more than 11 years. It’s gotten even worse since then.

Wheels that are too narrow will slip off tracks at joints like these, known as “frogs.” Photo by Meggar.

The latest problem is that the railcar wheels are too narrow for the tracks. To negotiate “frogs,” the places on switches where tracks cross, the wheels need to be a half-inch wider. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Disaster

By | | Transportation
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Recent audits of Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) by the city of Honolulu and state of Hawaii provide a backroom view of how the rail transit-industrial complex is scalping taxpayers. Honolulu’s rail line, which was originally supposed to cost less than $3 billion, is now expected to cost well over $9 billion, thanks to poor planning and HART essentially letting the foxes (in the form of outside contractors) guard the chicken house (the public purse).

The first of four state audits (summarized here) says that the city hastily signed contracts committing itself to the project before all environmental and financial reviews were completed. The audit doesn’t say so, but the city did this to prevent opponents, who were marshaling legal and political forces against the project, from stopping it. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail More Boondoggly Than Ever

By | | Transportation
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The Federal Transit Administration’s latest estimates suggest that the Honolulu rail line now under construction could cost nearly $10.8 billion, or more than twice the $5.1 billion originally promised. That’s the “highest possible cost” calculated by its estimation process, while the “likely range” is $7.2 to $8.0 billion. However, two years ago, the highest possible cost was estimated to be $7.6 billion, which is right in the middle of today’s likely range.

Any of those numbers are drastic overruns. Typically, transit agency officials have denied there is an overrun. But now they are proposing to not build the last five miles of the rail line into downtown Honolulu. Since they started construction in middle of farm lands 20 miles from downtown, they would truly have a rail line going from nowhere to hardly anywhere.

Even if it doesn’t finish the line, the city has already purchased and may continue to purchase land in the downtown area for the rail line. This creates uncertainty among property owners. Even further uncertainty is generated by reports of shoddy construction. Meanwhile, the FTA has hinted it might withhold some of the federal government’s share of funding if the line isn’t completed.

Continue reading →

Big Loss for Honolulu Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Opponents of the $5 billion Honolulu rail project prevailed in their lawsuit charging that the city failed to consider a full range of alternatives before deciding to build rail. A federal judge ruled last week that the city was “arbitrary and capricious” in selecting rail and violated the National Environmental Policy Act in failing to present more alternatives in the environmental impact statement.

Construction on the rail line had already been stalled by a previous lawsuit that found that the rail project failed to comply with state historic preservation and burial protection laws when it failed to complete an archeological inventory survey for the 20-mile route before starting construction. Instead, it had planned to do the inventory just ahead of each step of construction.

Basically, the city let construction contracts and began construction prematurely because it wanted to commit funds before voters had an opportunity to stop the project. Voters will get their chance tomorrow, when former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano, who opposes the rail project and was one of the plaintiffs in the recent lawsuit, is on the ballot for mayor of the city.

Continue reading →

FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Internal emails reveal that Federal Transit Administration officials were skeptical of Honolulu’s plan to spend $5.3 billion on a 20-mile rail transit line. City voters approved this line only after an expensive and hard-fought campaign. One FTA email accused the city of Honolulu of “lousy practices of public manipulation” and argued that the FTA should not only avoid being associated with it, it should “call them on it.”

This and other documents were turned over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit arguing that the city’s environmental impact statement (EIS) failed to consider a full range of alternatives. In a 2006 comment on the city’s plans to write the EIS, FTA staffer James Ryan noted, “We seem to be proceeding in the hallowed tradition of Honolulu rapid transit studies: never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over.” Another FTA official, Joseph Ossi, replied, “This isn’t an FTA issue. Let the city deal with it. They have produced 3 failed projects and are well on their way to a fourth, so why is FTA wasting time on the City’s problems?”

“This is different,” a third FTA staffer, Raymond Sukys, answered. “This time [thanks to a tax increase] they have a huge cash flow which will build something. It seems likely that we will get involved in litigation again especially since we have an erroneous NOI out there. I do not think the FTA should be associated with their lousy practices of public manipulation and we should call them on it.” The “NOI” is the “notice of intent” to prepare an environmental impact statement, and Sukys apparently thought Honolulu’s NOI was insufficient because it failed to identify a full range of alternatives.

Continue reading →

Honolulu’s Rail Plan

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Yesterday, in response to the Antiplanner’s post about crony capitalism, Scrappy commented that Honolulu needs rail transit to “reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and get us off the maddening addiction to cars.” He added that, “the environmental community in Honolulu is strongly behind rail.”

I appreciate Scrappy’s comment and don’t want to discourage him from participating in this forum, but I find it sad that my former colleagues in the environmental movement have become so innumerate that they would support a turkey like the Honolulu elevated rail plan. The final environmental impact statement for that project is now available. Let’s see what it says about saving energy, carbon, and driving.

Start with energy. Table 4-21 of the FEIS says the project will save 396 million British thermal units (BTUs) of energy each day, or 144,540 million BTUs per year. Sounds great, except that page 4-206 says project construction will cost 7.48 trillion BTUs. That means it will take 52 years of savings to pay back the energy cost. Long before 52 years are up, huge energy investments will be needed to replace rail cars, worn out track, and other infrastructure. So there is likely no net energy savings.

Continue reading →

A Legal Challenge to Austin’s Light-Rail Plans

By | | Transportation
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking a state court to cancel Austin’s light-rail plans. Capital Metro, Austin’s transit agency, persuaded voters to raise taxes to build light rail in 2020. Soon after the vote, however, the agency admitted that rail would cost a lot more than it had claimed and so less would be built than promised. Paxton says that in doing so it has breached its contract with the voters and its plans should be rejected.

Imagining light rail in Austin. Smiling happy people, no cars, and no crime make this scene a complete fantasy. Source: Project Connect.

Paxton has gotten in trouble over securities fraud and has taken positions on abortion and immigration that I disagree with. I am sure there are rail transit advocates who are gnashing their teeth over the idea that a lawsuit could overturn the “will of the people” to build light rail in Austin. But, while I am obviously biased, I think that defining the election as a “contract” and ruling it invalid if Capital Metro can’t keep its part of the contract is a great idea. Continue reading →