There’s no timeline on when the FTA might approve or reject that plan. The city and its local rail agency, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, are poised to deliver the project’s latest so-called “recovery plan,” which will detail the shortened proposal in greater detail, by June 30. Whether the FTA would reconsider its stance remains to be seen. It has refused to release those funds until the city can demonstrate its ability to get rail all the way to Ala Moana.įor years, city leaders have pointed to the threat of losing that federal funding to insist that trimming the rail line or cutting stations wasn’t possible. The agency has withheld rail’s remaining $744 million in federal funding since 2015, when the project first ran into serious financial problems. The FTA will have to approve Blangiardi’s idea in order for it to work. The agency did agree to his sharing the idea with the public, he said. The city doesn’t have enough money to make it to Ala Moana, and the mayor is proposing to shorten the route to end on Halekauwila Street. Major rail construction has made it as far as Middle Street. On Tuesday, Blangiardi said that the FTA hasn’t yet approved the proposed reductions in scope or vetted his plan. The mayor’s announcement follows his first in-person meetings in Washington, D.C., last week to discuss the struggling project with Federal Transit Administration officials. It would affect the city’s ridership projections, the mayor acknowledged, although he didn’t have numbers on that. The shorter line might be completed in May 2029 instead of the current 2031 estimate, Blangiardi said Tuesday. It’s not enough to get rail to Ala Moana, which local rail officials now estimate would cost some $11.4 billion. That’s enough to build the shortened rail system, he said. The goal, he said, is to build a “functional rail system … that serves the riders by going as far as possible based on the available funding sources.” Currently, the city expects to collect some $9.8 billion for rail from its city, state and federal funding sources, he said. Mayor Rick Blangiardi delivered his annual State of the City address at Mission Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday. Blangiardi said that hub would eventually be built, although he didn’t say when. The plan would also “defer” construction of a Pearl Highlands parking garage that’s been needed for commuters coming from the North Shore and Central Oahu – but is also currently estimated to cost some $330 million. The move, which Mayor Rick Blangiardi unveiled during his annual State of the City address, would have the rail line end near Halekauwila and South streets instead of its long-planned terminus at Ala Moana Center, leaving the system with 19 stations instead of 21. According to a separate article by Hawaii News Now, 9,000 people rode Skyline on its first day of service to the public.With Honolulu rail facing its latest, seemingly insurmountable budget deficit, the city’s mayor proposed Tuesday that the future transit line be trimmed from 20 miles to 18.75 miles and that its two easternmost stations be eliminated. The paywalled article, linked again below, also offers more guidance on the how to use the system, including info about parking (there is only limited parking available at three of the new stations). The current plan will build 19 stations and 18.75 miles of track, ending in Kakaako at the Civic Center Station, or Ka‘akaukukui. A 2012 iteration of the plan called for the entire project to span 20 miles and include 21 stations, from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center. Nakaso’s article focuses mostly on how the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and city leadership overcame funding obstacles to get this first leg of the project open, including adopting a new county hotel tax aimed at tourists, approved by the State Legislature, and reducing the scope of the project. The opening is just the first phase of a $9.8 billion plan. Honolulu’s new rail service “seemed a near impossibility just 2-1/2 years ago when it was digging a deeper financial hole and federal transit officials had lost faith and were withholding millions of dollars in badly needed funding,” reports Dan Nakaso in a paywalled article for the Star Advertiser. The Honolulu Rail Transit Project, now named Skyline Rail, opened to the public on Friday, June 30, culminating a half century of planning and overcoming serious obstacles with delays and funding shortfalls in the final years.
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