Several regular Skyline passengers welcomed U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s first ride aboard Honolulu’s rail system Thursday and shared the hope of Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Hawaii’s congressional delegation that it could lead to further federal funding to expand the system beyond its planned, 18.75-mile route from East Kapolei to Kakaako.

Buttigieg told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser exclusively during his trip on America’s first fully automated rail system that the troubles opening Skyline on June 30 are mirrored by other projects around the country, along with community criticisms and financing challenges.

“Any big transportation project has a lot of skepticism around it, especially when big promises are made, and there can be impatience about delivery and there can be progress and setbacks in the process of delivery,” Buttigieg told the Star-Advertiser while sitting at the front of the train from Leeward Community College to the current end of the line across from Aloha Stadium. “At the end of the day, this is clearly a community that will benefit from access to extra transit.

“Often it’s not possible to have the whole network in place on Day One,” he said. “Each time you add to the network, the entire line is better off, and it becomes a more useful service. So, of course, there’s a phased approach here. We’re glad to be supporting the movement to the next phase.”

Buttigieg called Honolulu’s rail system “vital. It’s economically important. … It’s part of people’s everyday life” that will reduce traffic and help people live closer to work or get to work more efficiently from more distant homes.

He praised what he saw at the rail command center near Leeward Community College and said he appreciated the views of Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona memorial and its World War II-era, bookend battleship, the USS Missouri. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz pointed out the landmarks to Buttigieg as they enjoyed the ride.

The ride, Buttigieg said, “helps me get a sense of the level of … sophistication but also the level of commitment there is here to deliver this so it can serve more and more people.”

His visit represented a turnaround from the chill the city previously received from the Federal Transit Administration as the agency held up federal funds beginning in 2017 and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation lacked the money to build rail to its original destination of Ala Moana Center.

Schatz, riding next to Buttigieg on Thursday, called the secretary’s visit “really an incredible moment. This is an important milestone. This project faced multiple near-death experiences over many, many years,” Schatz told the Star-Advertiser.

Blangiardi and Lori Kahi­kina, HART’s CEO and exe­cutive director, visited FTA officials in Washington, D.C., to convince them to sign off on a truncated route ending in Kakaako that the city could afford.

The original plan envisioned in 2012 was to build a 20-mile, 21-station route from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center.

The new route calls for only 19 stations and 18.75 miles of elevated track.

The current route runs along 11 miles and nine stations from East Kapolei to Halawa, across from Aloha Stadium.

Blangiardi and Kahikina met Buttigieg for the first time Thursday aboard Skyline.

Before, the current and previous FTA administrators “basically said, ‘Rick, you better get your act together,’” Blangiardi said.

Passenger Charles Gumm, 64, boards Skyline from his home in Nanakuli, then rides TheBus from Halawa station to get to his job as a Lutheran pastor near Radford High School.

Gumm does not appreciate the $9.8 billion cost to build rail, but said it needs to expand further across Oahu because “we’ve got to get out of cars.” Otherwise, Gumm called his Skyline commute “a great ride.”

He anticipated that Buttigieg would be “shocked at how few riders there are.”

Chase Higa, 24, boards Skyline near his home in Pearl City, gets off at the Halawa Station, then takes TheBus to the University of Hawaii, where he’s a senior studying history.

“The population’s going to go up, and I don’t want to pay for parking,” Higa said. “And it is a pretty nice view.”

Nate Kahele, 25, of Waipahu, rides Skyline “like every day” to get to his job loading cargo at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and to visit his two children, who live with their mother in Kalihi. Kahele does not own a car and said that But­tigieg’s support to expand the system “would be kind of cool.”

Kahele’s commute will be even more efficient when HART finishes building 5.2 miles of overhead track and four more stations this year: at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, Lagoon Drive and Middle Street.

“It’s a lot cheaper than paying gas,” Kahele said.

While trickles of passengers continued to board and depart Skyline trains during Buttigieg’s visit, passenger Shemayah Doi, 21, of Kapolei, said Buttigieg would be pleasantly surprised by the volume of westbound commuters in the afternoons, when Doi returns home to the West Side of Oahu “five days a week” from his studies at Pacific Rim Christian University on Sand Island.

“The train is pretty packed then,” Doi said. “It’s important for our workforce.”

For all of July, including four days of free ridership, Skyline saw 151,633 passengers before ridership leveled off.

In August, 96,178 people rode the rail system, followed by 91,088 in September, 92,578 in October, 83,148 in November, 85,460 in December and 91,634 in January.

This month so far, Skyline ridership ranged from a daily low of 1,791 passengers on Feb. 11, a Sunday, to a high of 3,836 on Feb. 7, a Wednesday — as of Tuesday, according to the city Department of Transportation Services, which oversees the rail system.

With the opening of stations at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the airport and Middle Street, Blangiardi hopes to see ridership soar.

With Buttigieg experiencing the system firsthand, Blangiardi said Thursday represented the start of a new round of conversations with the FTA about bankrolling extensions, possibly as far as Blangiardi’s alma mater, the University of Hawaii.

It also “gives us a chance to demonstrate — I want to say show off a little bit — the first-of-its-kind system in the U.S.,” he said.