Rail construction might be sidelined until spring

The Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that stopped construction on the Hono­lulu rail line is expected to delay work for the next nine months while the city completes an archaeological survey along the route and obtains new permits to resume building, transit officials were told Thursday.

City officials have previously estimated that every month the rail project is delayed costs the city $7 million to $10 million, which suggests the Aug. 24 court ruling that halted construction could cost the city as much as $90 million.

Daniel Grabauskas, executive director of the Hono­lulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, was asked by HART board members Thursday to delay release of his estimate of how much that construction delay could cost.

The board members said they wanted Grabauskas to provide more detailed calculations later that take into account various scenarios, including the possibility construction will be allowed to resume earlier on some portions of the rail route that have already been surveyed.

The $5.26 billion rail line is the largest public works project in Hawaii history, and the city has already agreed to pay more than $22 million in contractor claims because of delays.

Concerns that the discovery of Hawaiian burials along the rail route will delay construction were underscored Wednesday afternoon when a crew conducting the archaeological survey in Kakaako unearthed the first human remains discovered within the rail route.

The city has been surveying the 20-mile rail route in sections and has not completed the portions of the route in urban Hono­lulu where experts agree that burials are most likely to be found.

Last month the state Supreme Court ruled construction should not have begun on the $5.26 billion rail project until an archaeological survey was completed for the entire rail route.

In a unanimous ruling, the court found that rules governing the State Historic Preservation Division did not allow that agency to agree to the rail project until the city finished the survey to determine whether there are Native Hawaiian burials or other archaeological resources in the path of the rail line.

The city then stopped construction on the rail project, and has accelerated work on the archaeological survey.

Grabauskas said Thursday in a briefing for the HART board that each day of delay in construction because of the Supreme Court ruling will in turn delay the opening date for the first segment of the rail line.

The first 10 miles of the train system from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium had been scheduled to begin operations in June 2016, and Grabauskas’ new timeline suggests that first segment might not open until sometime in 2017.

However, Grabauskas said the city still intends to open the entire 20-mile rail line from Kapolei to Ala Moana Center in 2019. The city plans to keep to that schedule by pressing forward with a variety of work at the same time to compress the project timeline, he said.

The archaeological survey will be critical because it must be completed before construction can resume.

The city expects that it can reasonably excavate 15 to 17 trenches each week, and at that pace the archaeological survey could be completed by January or February, he said.

Once the survey is complete, the city needs 30 days to prepare a report for SHPD, and SHPD needs another 30 days to review it, he said. That would allow the project to move forward in April or May, he said.

However, one issue that could have a major impact on the schedule is whether private property owners are willing to allow the city access to their land to do the necessary excavations.

Grabauskas said the city has identified 10 property owners who control land that is needed for 60 trenches. Some of those owners indicated they are "reluctant" to provide access to the city, while one of the 10 recently agreed to provide access.

Other property owners were only notified in the past two weeks that the city needs to get access to their land, and the city is in discussions with a number of landowners, he said.

If a property owner resists and tries to fight the city, the legal process the city would need to follow could require another five to 11 months before the city could get access, Grabauskas said.

Any discovery of a burial also requires a three- to six-month process to allow the SHPD and the Oahu Island Burial Council an opportunity to decide how to handle the burial.

The options for treating burials could include leaving the remains in place, moving them out of the way of the construction activity or redesigning elements of the rail line to avoid them.

Grabauskas said there are three crews working on the survey this week, an increase from the one crew that had been in the field previously.

Longtime rail opponent Cliff Slater said he believes the project will not recover from the Supreme Court ruling and the setback it represents.

"It’s viable if everything goes right, but I don’t think everything’s going to go right," he said.