Oahu rail recovery plan advances at City Council

The new rail recovery plan that would notably shorten the route and delay the construction of the Pearl Highlands parking garage advanced out of the Honolulu City Council Transportation, Sustainability and Health Committee on Tuesday.

The Federal Transit Administration made an agreement with the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to build a 20-mile rail system from West Kapolei to Ala Moana Center, pledging $1.55 billion for the project, provided certain benchmarks were met. The rail project is still waiting on $744 million from the FTA. However, due to cost overruns, HART has been unable to complete the project as planned.

The FTA gave HART until June 30 to establish an acceptable recovery plan to still retain the federal funds.

The recovery plan truncates the project to 18.75 miles and decreases the cost of the project to $9.93 billion from about $11.3 billion. The line would now end at Civic Center Station instead of Ala Moana Center.

It also takes out 1,600 parking spaces in Pearl Highlands due to the high cost of base material. The projected cost for the parking garage was $330 million, with each stall costing $200,000.

HART CEO Lori Kahikina said the agency is looking for alternative options such as building a parking garage in collaboration with the University of Hawaii at Leeward Community College or with Alexander &Baldwin at Pearl Highlands Shopping Center.

The University of Hawaii was concerned that a parking garage for rail at Leeward Community College would create traffic problems as the road leading into the campus is small, but was willing to continue conversations with HART, Kahikina said. She added that Alexander &Baldwin was interested in the idea, although no specific plans have been discussed.

Council member Brandon Elefante asked whether it would be possible to build even a gravel lot in the area, but Kahikina was concerned about it being in a flood zone.

“Constructability-wise we could do it, but I just don’t know the feasibility of that,” Kahikina said.

“That would save on costs.”

However, Kahikina questioned whether building a parking garage would be the ideal strategy to increase access to the rail line.

“If you go to other municipalities, people aren’t driving to a parking lot to get onto a train. They’re using mass transit to interconnect,” she said during Tuesday’s meeting.

“So even though we’re going to explore other options, I’m not sure that a parking garage is the right answer. I think working with (Department of Transportation Services) to get access to the other communities via bus is a better answer.”

It was also floated that if HART would need to spend $330 million to build a parking garage, the money could instead be used to extend the rail line to Mililani.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi came to the meeting to advocate for the plan.

“I believe we are on firm footing with this community on what we’ve proposed,” he said.

“I realize there’ll be people out there who are going to feel like, ‘Oh, we should go to Ala Moana, perhaps we should have built that garage.’ But our intent was to say, How much money do we have there? How far can we possibly take this? Because we want a fully functional rail system.”

The city’s new 3% transient accommodations tax will exist in perpetuity, and a third of it currently goes to rail construction. However, Kahikina said HART ends the use of that funding stream at the end of December 2030 in its financial plan.

Elefante asked whether the Department of Transportation Services could use a portion of the TAT to fund rail operation and maintenance.

Although that decision is not up to HART, Kahikina supported the idea.

“I think that is the long-term goal. And that was one of the reasons we didn’t put it in our financial plan,” she said.

“That’s something that Council (and) administration would have to agree to, but it is also something in our back pocket to help us get to Ala Moana.”

The Transportation, Sustainability and Health Committee passed the measure unanimously, with Council member Augie Tulba voting with reservations.

The plan will need to be approved by the full Council during its meeting June 1 before being submitted to the FTA.