A portion of the Honolulu rail expected to open in July

HONOLULU (KHON2) — The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation has been working on the rail and residents may be seeing a glimpse of their transit future soon.

According to HART, a portion of the Honolulu rail is expected to start operating this July.

HART said they are busy finishing up repairs and trial runs before the public is welcomed onboard the rail.

HART also said that two major things need to happen before it turns over the first portion of the rail to the City.

The first phase of the opening will be from east Kapolei to the Aloha Stadium.

HART said it began the second phase of trial runs three weeks ago. In this phase, they are running five trains and making sure they reach each station every ten minutes.

Another issue HART is addressing is cracks in some of the hammerhead columns.

“There are 21 columns on the west side that have these cracks. So, there are two things that we’re doing to them. One is epoxy, injecting those cracks to make sure additional water and debris doesn’t get into them so they don’t continue to grow. But, there are eight columns that need to have extra rebar put on them externally,” explained Lori Kahikina, Hart Executive Director and CEO.

HART is meeting with the Federal Transportation Administration this week to discuss rail operations.

Construction on the Honolulu rail began on Feb. 22, 2011. It has been 12 years in the making.

For a comparison, the Japanese ‘bullet train‘, a high-speed rail system, was completed in five years. The project began construction in 1959, and the rail was opened to the public on Oct. 1, 1964.