Power lines could snarl rail work

The “most significant risk” today to Hono­lulu’s rail project is a complex knot of technical challenges involving power lines along the transit route that could dramatically increase costs and delay the project, according to an outside consultant that monitors the project for the federal government.

The consultant, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., is warning the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation that it should not begin work on the City Center guideway and stations next year until some critical issues involving Hawaiian Electric Co. lines are resolved.

Among the most important problems HART must sort out with the utility is how to navigate HECO’s preference for 50 feet of clearance between the rail guideway and the company’s high-voltage power lines. HECO needs the clearance to provide room for the utility to replace poles in the future, according to the consultant’s report.

“This may have a tremendous impact on both schedule and cost,” Jacobs wrote in its September report to the Federal Transit Administration. “Resolution of this issue affects ongoing (design-build) contracts as well as the future DB contracts.”

The report said, “This is currently HART’s most significant risk to the project.”

Issues surrounding the required clearance for HECO poles and lines already have contributed to construction delays on the 4-mile Kame­ha­meha Highway Guideway phase of the project, which is now eight months behind schedule, according to the Jacobs report.

Similar utility issues also affect the 5-mile-long Airport Guideway portion of the project, according to HART.

In December HART announced it needed an additional $50 million for utility work, money that was mostly earmarked for HECO utility line relocations in the 4-mile-long City Center portion of the project, and to address conflicts between HECO’s high-voltage lines and the rail project.

HART has acknowledged it must place utility lines underground along some sections of the guideway, and last month the rail authority announced it was budgeting yet another $70 million for replacement and relocation of power and other utility lines along the rail route. Much of that money will be used to place electrical lines underground in a 2-mile corridor along Dillingham Boulevard, according to rail officials.

However, Jacobs warns HART could still come up short. The utility relocation money that was set aside by the rail authority is “not enough to cover the full cost if the HECO clearance preferred solution requires complete undergrounding,” the Jacobs report warned.

Worst-case scenario

A consultant for HECO has prepared a report that estimates how much line burial might be required, but Jacobs strongly recommended that HART develop its own independent estimate of the potential costs “given their potential order of magnitude.”

Brennon Morioka, deputy executive director of HART, said he has a “worst-case scenario” estimate of the total potential cost of placing lines underground, but declined to release it publicly because he said it is not realistic.

“The worst case would be to underground everything, and that is not a realistic thing that we’re going to end up doing,” he said. “It’s going to take far less than that.”

Morioka said Jacobs is pointing out risk, “and whether the issue that they’ve raised actually happens or not, or becomes a real risk, it still remains to be seen.”

HART is working with HECO to ensure the utility work does not result in construction delays, Morioka said, which is a critical issue because delays could trigger delay claims that would increase the cost of the project.

“Right now we are reducing the risk because of the way we’re coordinating and the fact that HECO is slightly ahead of schedule” on work on the western 10 miles of the project, Morioka said.

He said the clearance issues are complex because differences in terrain along the rail route require different solutions in various segments of the project. He said HART’s focus at the moment is on larger 138-kilovolt and 46-kv lines, and the rail authority works with HECO “basically on a pole-by-pole look,” he said.

HART has assembled a task force to try to resolve the problem, and according to the rail authority’s most recent monthly report, it has been hashing out “multiple issues” with the utility during weekly meetings. Those include sessions attended by HART Chief Executive Officer Daniel Gra­bau­skas and HECO’s top management.

The options for resolving the clearance issue include relocating power lines that are too close to the rail guideway, attaching them to the rail guideway itself or placing them underground, according to HART.

Another potential solution is to find ways HECO can maintain its lines and poles near the guideway. As part of that effort, HART has agreed to reimburse HECO for the rental of a bucket truck with a telescoping lift mechanism in a test to determine whether that type of truck would allow HECO to maintain poles and lines that are close to rail facilities.

Morioka said HART has been identifying utility lines that are directly in the way of pending rail construction, and temporarily moving them to allow work to proceed. A permanent fix will be found later in those cases, he said.

In the Farrington Highway and Kamehameha Highway contracts at the western end of the project, the utility work was handled separately from the overall rail line construction contracts, and the utility work turned out to be more difficult than anyone expected, he said.

For the airport and City Center segments of the project, HART is either moving the utilities out of the way far in advance of construction, or incorporating the utility work into the design-build contracts to make that the responsibility of the contractor, he said.

Pole-by-pole study

Darren Pai, spokesman for HECO, said in a written statement that the utility is “working with HART on planning the most cost-effective means of relocating utility equipment while ensuring safe, reliable service for our customers.”

“Our objective is to determine the minimum amount of relocation work needed to ensure safe access to our infrastructure so we can respond to outages and other system emergencies as well as to perform necessary maintenance and repairs,” Pai said in his statement.

HECO’s standard work and safety practices require a 50-foot clearance around the company’s highest-voltage transmission lines, and “we are working with HART to identify specific sections, in some cases on a pole-by-pole basis, where this 50-foot requirement may safely be reduced,” Pai said.

Pai said HECO’s work with HART will help reduce the amount of underground work that will be required to relocate overhead power lines. “In addition, we are working with HART’s planners on alternate designs and construction methods that can mitigate the cost and effort associated with any undergrounding of power lines,” Pai said in a written statement.