Honolulu rail line on verge of opening

The first segment of the city’s over budget and long-delayed rail line will begin carrying passengers between East Kapolei and Aloha Stadium sometime in the second half of 2021, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Andrew Robbins told reporters Wednesday in what likely was his last public availability while on the job.

Robbins’ $317,000-a-year contract (not including a $55,000 annual housing allowance) ends on Dec. 31 and the HART board is not renewing it.

“It’s absolutely awesome to be at this stage,” Robbins said, as he stood on the boarding platform of the rail line’s Halawa station, the end point for the first leg.

There’s some symbolism to Robbins’ decision to hold his final press availability at Halawa. It’s 10 miles and nine stations into the 20-mile, 21-station line. It will take roughly 21 minutes to ride from East Kapolei to Halawa, with stops in Waipahu, Pearl City and Aiea along the way.

“The middle of next year, or around that time — summer,” Robbins said. “I look forward to being one of those passengers riding on the system so I’m very excited about that.”

Located on the musubi- shaped property at Kameha­meha Highway and Salt Lake Boulevard across from Aloha Stadium’s main vehicular entrance, the Halawa station is on property that many stadium event attendees called “the spillover stadium lot.” Besides the station, there are about 600 park-and-ride stalls on the property.

Public access onto the train will be through a ticket gate on the stadium side of the station. After moving through the electronic turnstiles, passengers will have the option of making their way up one of two escalators, one of two elevators or walking up three flights of stairs to get to the elevated guideway.

The platform offers spectacular views of historic Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, but military officials have asked that frosted window panes be put up through much of the station, ostensibly to obscure that view due to security reasons, said Frank Kosich, HART director of construction and engineering.

The facility is largely complete. “We’re ready to open the first 10 miles next year,” Robbins said. “HART’s responsibility, of course, is to get the system completely tested and certified and we’re well into that right now.”

While HART is tasked with building the system, it’s the Department of Transportation Serv­ices that is responsible for operating and maintaining it.

Robbins said the first segment should be handed over to DTS by the summer. Lost in all the media coverage about the project’s recent problems is “the fact that we’re on track for a 2023 opening to Middle Street,” he said. “That segment to the airport is 80% complete right now. I think the public really needs to understand you don’t have to wait 10 years to use the system. It’s going to be open next year, the first 10 miles.”

Robbins said that it’s not the construction of the guideway and stations that he’s most worried about, but the relocation of utility lines along Dillingham Boulevard. HART and other city agencies have been locking horns about the relocation plans.

“The key really is to get those utilities moved, that’s really been the major struggle,” he said. “It’s not so much actually building the rail project but getting the utilities out the way. When we think of Dillingham Boulevard, that has been and is a major utility corridor for the city. You have everything running through Dillingham Boulevard — water, sewer, gas, (Hawaiian) Telcom and then of course you have the high voltage overhead that we have to relocate underground. But it’s also the center of that community so it’s important to put the rail system there.”

The 62-year-old lifelong transit executive has headed HART the past three years, succeeding former chief Dan Grabauskas after he received public pressure to resign.

In 2013, when the city entered into a $1.55 billion grant agreement with the Federal Transit Administration, the promise was for the project to be completed by 2025 at a cost of $5.26 billion.

Today, transit officials are saying the whole line likely won’t be done until at least 2028, perhaps longer if funding cannot keep up with the construction timetable. The project’ price tag is now $10 billion, factoring in financing costs.

In the last year alone, the project was delayed an additional six months and the total cost was revised upward by about $1 billion, although Robbins insisted most of that was caused by the economic impacts caused by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

Most city officials, including Robbins and Mayor Kirk Caldwell, have concluded that finishing of the project will need to be done in phases due to the anticipated slowdown in hotel room and excise tax revenues, the two main sources of funding for the project.

“It’s going to have to be figured out, how to phase the project,” Robbin said. He stressed, however, that all governmental agencies at all branches of government are committed to building the entire line to Ala Moana.

He declined to discuss why he was fired. “The decision’s been made, so it’s time for me to move on,” he said.

“I think it’s time to look forward,” Robbins said. “I may be moving on but I leave a great team here at HART … And they’re going to carry on, they’re going to do a great job.”

Robbins said he wants to spend some time with his family, including a pre-teen son, during the holidays.