HONOLULU- A letter of no prejudice from the Federal Transit Administration allows the City and County of Honolulu to begin construction on some of the 720 concrete pillars that will support a 20-mile elevated rail line from East Kapolei to Ala Moana.
Sen. Dan Inouye and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) announced the agreement with the FTA Monday afternoon in separate press releases.
“This means we will begin advanced construction of the foundation and pillars for the guideway along the first half of the rail alignment, and move forward on work on our maintenance and storage facility,” said Toru Hamayasu, HART’s interim executive director and CEO.
“The construction of the rail line will create jobs and help a construction industry that is always in need of good work,” Inouye added in a separate statement.
While the letter of no prejudice is a clear victory for the city, it does place certain limitations on how far it can go with ‘advanced construction.’
The maximum the city can spend on this limited phase of the project is $184.7 million. Work must also be contained to the following areas of the route:
the West Oahu/Farrington Highway guideway, the Kamehameha Highway guideway, the maintenance & storage facility near Leeward Community College and all Farrington Highway transit stations.Hamayasu said construction on the $5.3 billion project would start almost immediately, and would likely cause disruptions to traffic.
“We'll let people know because this is going to be done in different locations,” he said. “People in that area…will be certainly notified individually.”Honolulu City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi believes the city should refrain from building any of the concrete pillars, especially since the city lacks a full funding grant agreement from the FTA. The city has long expected to receive $1.55 billion in a FFGA, possibly by September or October of this year.“This is a huge project and if certain things don't come through, then is our local taxpayer stuck with the bill,” Kobayashi asked rhetorically. The controversial project could also get sidetracked by a lawsuit that challenges whether the city provided viable alternatives to the rail line as required under federal law. According to longtime rail opponent Cliff Slater, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, the city has agreed to tear down any construction should the legal challenge prevail. “Since the City is starting construction in agricultural land they tell us that if we prevail in our lawsuit in August, and we believe we will, they will replace and repair all that they will have constructed up to that time,” Slater said in a written statement.
Yet another challenge to the rail project is the candidacy of former Governor Ben Cayetano. Cayetano, who’s also a plaintiff in the lawsuit to stop construction of rail, announced last month he’s running for Honolulu mayor. His top two challengers are current Mayor Peter Carlisle and former acting mayor and managing director Kirk Caldwell. Both Carlisle and Caldwell are ardent supporters of the rail project.
As of November of 2011, the city held $429.6 million from a 0.5 percent surcharge to the state’s general excise tax that began January 1, 2007. The $184.7 million for advanced construction under the letter of no prejudice will be utilized from those existing funds. As of December of last year the city had collected $810.4 million in surcharge revenues. When the surcharge eventually sunsets at the end of 2022, forecasts show the city collecting a total of $3.52 billion, or more then 66 percent of the anticipated cost of the project.Register to log on and leave a commentHave a news tip? Contact Andrew Pereira at 368-7273. Follow Andrew on Twitter at Khon_Reporter or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AndrewPereiraKhon2
