3/11/2023 0 Comments Honolulu rail route map![]() Unionized hotel workers who live in Leeward Oahu already consider rail impractical to get to their jobs in Waikiki, said Bryant de Venecia, spokesman for UNITE HERE! Local 5. “I would like to see the route change,” Egge said. If the rail plan can change so dramatically, Egge said, then he would prefer to see the route go down Hotel Street, with the last station closer to the city’s Frank Fasi building and TheBus terminal on Alapai Street. “There’s a bus station on government land right across the street that you don’t have to pay for.”Įgge is a frequent critic of the city, state and federal governments. “Stopping at the Fasi building would’ve been even better,” said Dennis Egge, 82, of Salt Lake. There are bus routes half a block away makai on Ala Moana Boulevard, and the Civic Center Station would be an eighth of a mile away from the city’s busy Alapai Street bus terminal near the mauka end of South Street. The latest rail plan has increased the volume of questions over the cost to build the system and the wisdom of ending construction in the middle of South Street. “But then, why not stop (one station shorter) at Aloha Tower/downtown and declare victory there?” “Given the mayor’s surprisingly poor poll numbers, this would be an ideal situation to take command of what has been a thorny issue and come up with some sort of a solution,” Hart said. The new idea may make political and financial sense but does not answer the question of which - and how many - stations would maximize ridership while making financial sense, Hart said. If approved by the HART board, the City Council and the Federal Transit Administration, HART’s updated June 30 “recovery plan” would require only 19 stations and 18.75 miles of track.Ĭonstruction is currently estimated to cost $11.1 billion to get to Ala Moana, with a $1.3 billion deficit.īut HART is estimated to have enough revenue to end construction 1.25 miles short at the Civic Center Station, Lori Kahikina - HART’s CEO and executive director - previously told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The original plan envisioned in 2012 was to fulfill a federal funding agreement to build a 20-mile, 21-station route from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center, Hawaii’s largest transit hub. Last week in his State of the City address, Mayor Rick Blangiardi announced a new plan to end rail construction near Circuit Court at Halekauwila and South streets in Kakaako and still seek the federal government’s final $744 million of $1.55 billion in funding for the project. “Howard Hughes could ask anything they wanted for the land.” “Howard Hughes had the government in a bind,” said John Hart, a Hawaii Pacific University communications professor. Some 80 witnesses already had been deposed and a trial was scheduled for May. … HHC is asserting a very large claim for alleged damages relating to the Ward Village project (HART believes HHC will seek over $200 million from taxpayers).” HART directors were informed through a series of slides in October that the dispute with Howard Hughes centers around “the value of easements for slightly less than 2 acres of land in Kakaako that are needed for the Kakaako rail station and guideway. A new plan to stop rail construction two stations short of Ala Moana Center would eliminate the need to build a 20th station on less than 2 acres of disputed land in Kakaako projected to cost taxpayers as much as $200 million to acquire.īy October, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation already had spent $23.28 million in legal fees to two law firms in its eminent domain dispute with Texas-based Howard Hughes Corp.
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