HART pledges that Dillingham Boulevard will be accessible during construction

With rail construction set to kick into high gear in the urban core later this year, the Honolulu rail authority is promising it will always keep access open for business owners and residents along the busy and congested Dillingham Boulevard corridor.

Rail officials also pledged to keep all Dil­lingham sidewalks open — albeit with some detours — and to keep all intersections open during construction. Off-duty police officers will be used for traffic control, and at least one lane of Dillingham Boulevard in each direction also will be kept open at all times, they said.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation also predicts the city will keep bus service in the corridor at “near its current schedule” during construction. Bus ridership in the corridor is the highest per capita in the city, said Department of Transportation Services Director Wes Frysztacki, and the city is weighing the benefits of an extra shuttle service.

An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 cars travel along the Dillingham corridor daily, and crews are scheduled to begin major construction work as early as Nov. 12, digging up the road and moving utilities to make way for the rail line.

HART now projects it will “substantially complete” the utility relocations and guideway construction in the Dillingham corridor in 24 months, which is a significant reduction from previous projections of 3-1/2 years.

But the job still involves a tremendous amount of work, and getting it done will be a major challenge, said Andrew Robbins, executive director of HART. He pledged to consult with the community on the details, and promised the HART Project Oversight Committee on Thursday that there will be a program of “public involvement on steroids.”

Bottom line, Robbins said the best way to minimize the impact on the community while maintaining HART’s budget and construction schedule is simply to do the job faster.

The payoff in the end will be a wider Dillingham Boulevard, wider and more uniform sidewalks, a more attractive streetscape after the huge tangle of utility lines is placed underground, and a rail line with four stations along Dillingham that is expected to carry 60,000 riders daily through the area by 2030.

The impact of construction in the Dillingham corridor has been so worrisome to Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell that he took time out last month to urge the rail authority board to “make sure that you’re on HART’s ass to make sure that they are doing what they need to do in a timely manner.”

Robbins said Thursday the crews working in the corridor will work in two 10- to 12-hour shifts each day, five days a week, with weekend work as needed. The least noisy work will be scheduled for the nighttime hours, he said.

“We understand that construction is never fun for folks who have to live with it, so we’ve been working very hard on the construction plan,” he said.

HART has been considering whether to use trenching or a “direct pipe” micro-tunneling method of placing utilities underground, and finally selected trenching. John Moore, East Area construction manager for the rail project, said trenching may be a bit slower, but Hawaiian Electric Co. prefers that approach because it will make maintenance and power distribution easier for the utility in the future.

Crews need to do the trenching at a pace of at least 60 feet per day to stay on schedule, Moore said.

HART will hold a “Stakeholders Alliance Group” meeting Friday that will include large landowners, community associations, the principals of area schools, the Kalihi and Sand Island Business Associations and others.

That will be followed by a communitywide meeting Oct. 24 to discuss the project and mitigation steps, and HART plans to use direct mail and advertising to publicize the meeting. There also will be door-to-door canvasing and social media advertising to alert people in the area to what is happening.

In other business, the HART Project Oversight Committee recommended approval of an $18.2 million change order to resolve delay and other claims by Nan Inc., which is building six rail stations.

Under the proposed change order, Nan would receive an extra $11.3 million for three stations that make up the West Oahu Station Group, which would increase the value of that contract to a total of $87.1 million.

The original contract to build those three stations was for about $56 million, but HART already has approved 32 other change orders that added $19.7 million for the WOSG contract.

The committee also gave preliminary approval to a proposal to pay Nan Inc. an extra $6.87 million for its work on the Kamehameha Highway Station group. That work was originally supposed to cost $115.8 million, but HART already has approved 43 change orders. With the latest change order, that station group would cost $131.1 million.

The money for those change orders will come from funds that have been budgeted for contingencies, and will not cause the cost of the 20-mile rail line to increase beyond its current $9.2 billion budget.