Temporary fix planned for Honolulu rail’s too-narrow wheels

While a temporary fix for the rail project’s ongoing problem of too-narrow wheels on too-wide tracks remains elusive, a new plan for a solution is taking shape.

No local welding company — or hui of companies — bid on a contract, issued in July, to retrofit critical points of track where the automated trains are forced to slow to 5 mph from 55 mph.

The current long-range plan is for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and contractor Hitachi Rail Honolulu to retrofit each car with wider wheels, which could take a year to manufacture, ship to Honolulu and install because of a global supply issue.

Meanwhile, a temporary plan is being considered to plug the half-inch difference between wheels and track at critical X-shaped “frogs” — where HART trains switch tracks — with temporary welds.

“We went out to procurement,” Lori Kahikina, HART’s interim CEO and executive director, told the Hawaii Society of Business Professionals on Thursday. “The problem is nobody bid on it. And, as far as we know, there’s nobody here locally that is certified to do that type of welding; it’s manganese.” So, HART is now searching for a welding outfit on the mainland “that can do this type of work, come here and actually train the local contractors, because this is going to be an ongoing issue,” she said.

Ongoing welding work will be required for the frogs until wider wheels can be swapped out, Kahikina later told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser. There is no estimate of the cost to replace the narrow wheels with wider ones, she said. A search for a qualified, mainland welder began Thursday, she said.

“It’s a temporary fix,” Kahikina told the Star- Advertiser. “That weld is eventually going to deteriorate. Somebody would need to come back and keep beefing it up. Eventually, you won’t need the weld at all because you’ll have the wider wheels.”

Each of the rail project’s 20 trains is expected to consist of four cars, each running on eight wheels, for a total of 32 wheels per train. Only seven trains would initially operate.

Fixing the wheel and track incompatibility problem is critical for HART to turn over the project to the city next year.

“Once we get the weld fix done, we have to go through 90 days of trial running without any glitches,” Kahikina told the Society of Business Professionals. “If there’s a glitch on the 89th day, the clock starts all over again. So if the stars all align, we can get the weld done, the testing certification done, the trial running done” during the first effort.

Kahikina said the earliest possible delivery date to the city would be within an April-May 2022 time frame. “However, no matter when we turn it over to the city, it is still the city’s decision on whether they’re going to open up the first segment,” from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.

The current plan is to run trains along a 20.2-mile, 21-station route from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center. The project is currently budgeted at $12.499 billion and is not scheduled for completion until March 2031. The budget faces a current shortfall of about $3.5 billion, with no simple plan to plug the deficit.

The good news, Kahikina told the Society of Business Professionals, is that the first nine stations are “substantially complete,” and another four are “more than 60% complete.” Additionally, the first 15 miles of overhead guideway, which represents 75% of the project, is “substantially complete.”

Seventeen trains are on- island but have remain idled from daily testing since July, when at least one door was discovered open while the automated trains were running. Each of HART’s trains has 24 double sets of doors, and a train is not supposed to be able to run while a door is open.

A HART meeting planned for today with Hitachi could determine whether testing of the trains can soon resume, Kahikina said.

Until at least a temporary fix of the frogs can be done, each train will have to slow down to 5 mph at the frogs to navigate track switching, which makes them unable to maintain a schedule of having a train arrive at a station every four to five minutes.