The joint venture company with an $875 million contract to build the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s elevated rail and stations from areas east of Halawa to Kalihi detailed its ongoing efforts this week.
STG — comprising Shimmick Construction Co. Inc., Traylor Bros Inc. and Granite Construction Inc. — is building the Airport Guideway and Stations project.
That line consists of 5.2 miles of elevated guideway and four stations and associated facilities from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam to the Middle Street transit center.
During a virtual business and community meeting Thursday afternoon, the contractor said the rail segment and its four stations — Makalapa, Lelepaua, Ahua and Kahauiki — are expected to be finished by early 2024.
“We are in the final stages of construction,” Maribell Pabalan, an STG spokesperson, said. “We are no longer putting in columns.”
In terms of station work, Makalapa Station, near Kamehameha Highway and Radford Drive and the adjacent Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam base, and Lelepaua Station, adjacent to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, are both 97% complete, the contractor said.
Ahua Station, at Lagoon Drive and Waiwai Loop, is 93% complete, while the segment’s terminus at Kahauiki Station, at Kamehameha Highway and Middle Street, is 91% complete, the contractor said.
As far as opening the airport segment from Halawa to Middle Street, an official date is not yet known.
“HART expects to complete testing and transfer of this Airport Guideway and Stations segment in mid-2025,” Johnny Reid Jr., a HART representative, said at the meeting. “Once that happens, HART will then transfer assets over to the city Department of Transportation Services, which will do day-to-day maintenance and operations.”
After that, DTS will determine when this segment of Skyline officially opens to the public, he said.
And Reid said that beyond the Middle Street area, more rail line is expected for travel as far as Kakaako.
Under Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration, the city in 2022 truncated the last 1.25 miles of guideways and the planned final two stations near Ward Avenue and Ala Moana Center. That reduced costs from more than $12.45 billion for a 20-mile, 21-station route down to a $9.9 billion system with an 18.9-mile, 19-station line terminating at Halekauwila Street.
The initial nine-station, nearly 11-mile route from East Kapolei to Halawa opened to the public June 30.
During the Sept. 15 HART board of directors meeting, agency staffers said they anticipated a large cash surplus — roughly $580 million — once the line reached Kakaako. That announcement sparked interest in seeing Skyline continue to its original final destination at Ala Moana Center.
To achieve that goal, Board member Robert Yu said he wanted HART to do more planning.
“Instead of just talking about it, maybe we could put together some kind of business plan, from Civic Center to Ala Moana,” said Yu at the Sept. 15 meeting, adding such a plan could include construction costs as well as ways of gaining potential revenue. “We have $580 million; don’t know whether that’s enough, right? It seems like a lot of money, and it seems like HART always uses more money than we estimate. So, a business plan would be good with respect to going to Ala Moana.”
