Oahu rail system is ‘ready to go’ June 30

Rail trains are running, cracked “hammerhead” station supports are fixed and reinforced and passenger service is scheduled to begin June 30, including a four-hour window on that Friday when anyone can ride and experience the country’s first fully automated rail system for free.

“We’re ready to go,” Lori Kahikina, CEO and executive director of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, said Tuesday at the Pearlridge Station after riding a 200-seat, 276-foot rail train with the Honolulu Star- Advertiser aboard. “There’s no obstacles.”

There will be no charge from 2 to 6 p.m. June 30 for anyone who wants to board a train from any of the nine rail stations from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.

It’s the first segment of what eventually is planned to expand to 19 stations and 18.75 miles of track ending in Kakaako at the so-called Civic Center Station at a current cost of $9.8 billion.

But Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Kahikina already are planning to add another station farther west of Kapolei and all the way to the original end of the line at Ala Moana Center, Hawaii’s largest transit hub that’s intended to get rail passengers to Waikiki and the University of Hawaii and other popular destinations via bus.

A single fare will let passengers ride both the bus and rail when paid service begins June 30, followed by an initial window of four hours of free ridership. Each of five, four-car trains are scheduled to arrive at stations every 10 minutes.

Kahikina and Blangiardi hope the experience of seeing Oahu from an elevated point of view and the convenience and comfort of riding trains traveling at 45 mph — without the hassle of vehicle traffic — will encourage the public and decision-makers to support expanding rail even farther.

Blangiardi represents the fourth Honolulu mayor to deal with rail but the first to see it become reality in the form of actual paid, passenger service.

HART is scheduled to turn over the first leg of the system to the city’s Department of Transportation Services at a ceremony in Blangiardi’s office in Honolulu Hale on June 9.

Along with a new county hotel room tax aimed at Oahu tourists, Blangiardi worked with Kahikina and HART board Chair Colleen Hanabusa to truncate the line two stations short in order to pay for the project.

Kahikina already had been trimming expenses, eliminating consultants and looking for other ways to cut costs.

Then, a once-skeptical and critical Federal Transit Administration signed off on the shortened rail route that the city could afford.

Still, getting the system ready for paid passenger service this summer remained in doubt because of two unrelated issues: repairing cracks to 21 hammerheads while the system simultaneously underwent so-called trial running that required 30 consecutive days of near perfection, or a daily systemwide passing rate of 98.5% for all of the trains’ and stations’ operating systems.

Anything below would have reset the clock and required another 30 consecutive days hitting the 98.5% mark.

Kahikina hoped that trial running would take no longer than 60 days, meaning the rail system could open to the public by July 31.

Instead, contractor Hitachi Rail Honolulu passed its trial running tests in 35 days, on April 2.

The trial running of the system was allowed to go on because the hammerheads support the rail stations, not the tracks themselves.

The cracks were discovered in 2018 and were assumed to have been caused by concrete shrinkage, similar to what occurs in a new concrete driveway.

Repairs to the cracked hammerheads were finished May 21 using epoxy to prevent moisture from further expanding the gaps, along with a system of horizontal cabling to compress “end weldment” plates on either side of the hammerheads, along with layers of vertical carbon fiber wrapping.

The largest gap was .08 of an inch.

Pearlridge Station has four hammerheads but only two required repairs. The biggest gap was .04 of an inch but the horizontal cables and plates span 53 feet, 6 inches from the mauka to makai ends of the hammerheads to reinforce the repairs.

Builder Kiewit Hawaii has borne all of the costs to fix the hammerheads, Kahikina told the Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” livestream program Wednesday.

Kahikina already was under pressure to get the rail system ready for paid passenger service by July 31.

“I technically had until July 31, but we’re going to hit it June 30,” she said. “We’re a month ahead of schedule. … We’re ready to hand this thing over.”

June 30 will represent a milestone in the often- troubled history of the rail system that has included delays, cost overruns and an embarrassing discovery that the trains had been outfitted with too-narrow wheels that did not fit too-wide track at train crossings — issues that all preceded Kahikina.

Kahikina told “Spotlight” that public perception of rail has been the hardest part of her job since taking over as HART’s interim CEO and executive director in January 2021.

“There’s valid frustration,” she said. “Me and my team, we get beat up for that. … In the beginning it was rough, it was really rough public perception. But I think it’s improved quite a bit.”