HONOLULU — In a major step forward for the Honolulu Rail Transit Project, the Federal Transit Administration approved the city’s latest rail recovery plan without modification, thus clearing the way for the project to receive its first influx of federal funding since the FTA hit pause five years ago.

What You Need To Know

  • With the approval comes the first tranche of some funding — $125 million — with a second payment of $250 million to be distributed once the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation awards a contract for the city center guideway stations, expected sometime in 2024

  • The remainder of the $744 million in pledged FTA funds will be disbursed in subsequent tranches based on achieving further yet-unspecified benchmarks

  • HART Board chair Colleen Hanabusa praised the urgency and cohesiveness that saw the administration, the Honolulu City Council, the State Legislature, HART and the all-volunteer HART Board put aside previous differences to produce a viable recovery plan

  • HART and Hitachi Rail are conducting 144 emergency scenario drills before HART’s scheduled handover of the system to the city in the first quarter of 2023

With the approval comes the first tranche of some funding — $125 million — with the second payment of $250 million to be distributed once the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation awards a contract for the city center guideway stations, expected sometime in 2024. The remainder of the $744 million in pledged FTA funds will be disbursed in subsequent tranches based on achieving further yet-unspecified benchmarks.

“I would tell you this is both a joyous and a historic day for us,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said Monday at a press conference to announce the approval.

Blangiardi recalled a meeting with FTA administrator Nuria Fernandez and regional administrator Ray Tellis in January in which the stakes of the city’s latest effort to get the embattled project back on track.

“They made it pretty clear in that meeting that the bar going to be held real high and we weren’t ready to submit a recovery plan at that point but they were pretty exacting about their demands, who they were, and the responsibility we were facing given the magnitude of this project and what it represented to the FTA and what it represented on landscape of projects that were being done with federal support.

“It wasn’t lost on us that they had pulled back from the table since 2017,” Blangiardi said. “Much was said about the $744 million that they were withholding. Candidly speaking, you could feel it, because we were there, that while they wanted to be encouraging to us, there had been a real loss of confidence in our ability to execute the project.”

The FTA’s decision to approve the rail recovery plan, which calls for a rail line that is 1.25 miles and two stations shorter than initially proposed, is the latest indication of the FTA’s renewed confidence in the HART and the city.

HART executive director and CEO Lori Kahikina noted during the press conference that the FTA officials were impressed that HART was able to produce an amended agreement a month in advance of its requested June 30 deadline. FTA’s response took a relatively speedy four months, compared with a previous approval that took 18 months, according to Kahikina.

HART Board chair Colleen Hanabusa praised the urgency and cohesiveness that saw the administration, the Honolulu City Council, the State Legislature, HART and the all-volunteer HART Board put aside previous differences to produce a viable recovery plan.

“We parked it at the door, so to speak, because we had one thing in mind: This is the greatest, largest CIP project in the history of this state. You know how much money it’s costing us. For it to work, we have to gain public confidence. And the only way we would be able to gain public confidence is by being as transparent as we could and pulling it off.”

While the recovery plan calls for the rail line to end at the civic center, which will require substantial renovation to properly operate, along with the downtown stop, as one of two main offboarding points, Roger Morton, president and general manager of Oahu Transit Services, said the city will still pursue long-range plans to extend the rail to its originally planned end point at Ala Moana Center and perhaps even beyond.

Kahikina noted that the current allocation of FTA funds cannot be used for that purpose, although other federal funding mechanisms are available for when the time comes.

HART and Hitachi Rail are conducting 144 emergency scenario drills before HART’s scheduled handover of the system to the city in the first quarter of 2023.

Kahikina said Hitachi needs to achieve 98.5% uptime, a measure of reliability, for a 30-day running average before the system can be made available for public use. The project’s structural engineer HNTB and third-party engineer, Wiss Janney Elstner Associates, will also need to resolve problems with cracking in the system’s hammerhead piers.

“Safety is paramount to us, so if we have to go past the first quarter of next year to ensure the system is safe, so be it,” Kahikina said.

Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii.