Rail CEO: Flexibility, creativity required to reach key Skyline milestones in years ahead

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - While the city celebrates the first birthday of Skyline, there are still seven more years of rail construction — and billions more in costs ahead.

Rail leaders say they will need to be flexible to finish the project on time and on budget.

On Dillingham Boulevard, Nan, Inc. is working to move utilities out of the way of the rail guideway route — and they are constantly finding unexpected barriers, driving the public crazy by changing their plans and locations to keep making progress.

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit CEO Lori Kahikina said that’s part of her strategy.

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“So it can be a little bit frustrating for the public,” she said. “Why is Nan going back and forth, back and forth?” But Kahikina says it’s important to give contractors leeway to adjust.

In one recent example, even though contractor STG is not quite finished with stations at the airport and Middle Street, it allowed Hitachi to electrify the line — so it can start testing trains.

“They are letting our follow-on contractor Hitachi onto the guideway and to the station,” Kahikina said. “So it slows down their productivity. But they did that as partnering because we don’t want to delay Hitachi.”

The airport segment, scheduled to open in fall 2025, also includes stations at Pearl Harbor and the Middle Street transit center and is poised to make the system much more attractive.

There will be more riders, trains will into the late evening, and more workers will be on board.

Jason Lurz, Hitachi Rail Hawaii Director of Operations and Maintenance, said the company already employs 250 people operating and maintaining the trains and stations.

“We’re beginning our mobilization for segment two,” he said. “It’s a 12-month mobilization, but we’ll be hiring roughly about 50 to 60 individuals for the operations and maintenance aspect to be able to manage the second segment, also going into three shifts.”

The monster challenge ahead is what’s called the City Center segment, which was shortened by three stations and about a mile to meet budget. It’s the segment Nan, on Dillingham, and Collucio Construction, through Downtown and Kakaako, are clearing the utilities for.

The bids for the final segment are due later this month.

City Transportation Director Roger Morton said that will determine whether the project can be finished, or even extended to Ala Moana.

“The next big key is going to be, how much did does that last segment come in at in terms of bid, if it comes in as planned, then I think we’re in very, very good shape,” Morton said.

The last estimate for the final three miles and six stations was between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. But that was before the Maui fires created new construction demand and the industry was already heating up with plans for government construction, such as Honolulu stadium.

Kahikina said her strategy is to build flexibility into the contracts to avoid delays that have inflated costs before. “It ... allows ingenuity for the contractor because they’re the ones physically constructing whatever we’re asking them to do,” she said.

“They have maybe better ideas on how to implement.”

The good news — at least for now — is that the two contractors moving utilities have kept up with the schedule without serious cost overruns. They are reducing the risk of costly surprises for the contractor that wins the guideline bid.

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