Fresh off his trip to Europe, the city’s top rail executive said Wednesday that the operators of driverless transit systems similar to the one slated for Oahu are pleased with their trains’ performance.
Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation CEO Dan Grabauskas said he spent more than a week in Europe touring the three driverless systems completed by the same firms producing the rail system on Oahu. They are an 11-year-old rail line in Copenhagen, Denmark; and lines that launched earlier this year in Brescia and Milan, Italy.
Grabauskas said he met with the owners and engineers running those systems and top executives from AnsaldoBreda and Ansaldo STS — the two Italy-based train firms contracted to design, build, operate and maintain the city’s planned 20-mile elevated system.
The trip comes ahead of some final design choices for Honolulu’s trains and its maintenance facility, Grabauskas said. His conversations in Europe confirmed that the city’s transit system should include screen gates along the 21 stations’ platforms, he added.
HART’s board likely will consider the added expense for those gates in the coming months. European rail officials also touted having a test track for new trains at their maintenance facilties, Grabauskas said, adding he planned to recommend adding that feature here as well.
Grabauskas did not visit Belgium, as HART’s board finance chairman said earlier this week. Nonetheless, Grabauskas said he did visit the factory in Pistoia, Italy, with AnsaldoBreda CEO Maurizio Manfellotto where the firm produced the V250 "Fyra" trains and inspected one of them the day after news broke that Belgium was canceling its order for the vehicles.
The Netherlands’ rail operator later canceled its Fyra order as well because safety and reliability questions.
The factory is the one where Honolulu’s driverless trains will be built.
However, Grabauskas said Wednesday that "it’s more than apples and oranges to try to compare the two cars." The Fyra is a high-speed train while Honolulu’s 40 two-car trains will be driverless and run at 55 m.p.h.
The issues with the Fyra, Grabauskas said, were described to him as a dispute about whether Ansaldo’s trains had design flaws or the rail operators hadn’t properly maintained the trains.
"You must maintain daily vigilance when it comes to any rail car provider," Grabauskas said. The HART CEO added that Ansaldo officials have agreed to allow a HART-paid inspector to have access to their factory next year when construction of the Honolulu trains begins.
