Rail project delays cost less than anticipated, HART says

The cost of construction delays tied to a recent Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that suspended the city’s $5.26 billion rail transit project are coming in lower than anticipated, the project’s oversight agency announced Thursday.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation said overall delay costs so far for three major rail construction contracts came in 31 percent lower than budgeted. Costs include labor, construction equipment and materials and overhead.

All construction on the rail line was stopped in August after the state high court ruled the city was required to complete an archaeological survey of the entire 20-mile rail line before construction could begin. The city had been conducting the survey in sections. The full survey is expected to be finished early this year.

The city previously estimated delay costs at $64 million to $95 million.

“HART will continue to work with the contractor on future delay claims and how to keep these costs as low as possible until rail construction can resume later this year,” Dan Grabauskas, HART chief executive officer and executive director, said Thursday.

On another front, former Gov. Ben Caye­tano said he expects to appeal a federal court ruling in a separate lawsuit on the project.

Cayetano, in a speech to the annual conference of Smart Business Hawaii on Wednesday, said, “The appeal will be not only on the judge’s latest ruling, but also on the ruling he made earlier, because we think that he really made some mistakes there.”

Cayetano and rail opponents sued seeking to stop the project until a supplemental environmental impact statement could be done to examine alternative routes and design technology.

U.S. 9th Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima ruled last month the city could proceed with work on the first three phases of the rail project while it reconsiders alteratives to its fourth phase, the downtown route.

Tashima earlier told city and federal officials to reconsider alternatives of routing the rail through a tunnel under Beretania Street and reconsider the project’s effect on Mother Waldron Park in Kakaako and on traditional and cultural Native Hawaiian sites along the route.