Friday, February 15, 2019

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation has been served with a sweeping federal subpoena seeking construction documents in connection with the $9.2 billion rail project


the subpoena covers all construction records for the rail project as well as all records that HART provided to the Hawaii State Auditor.

The rail line from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center is the largest public works project in state history, and the city has struggled for years with cost overruns and construction delays.

The city signed an agreement with the FTA in 2012 that called for rail’s elevated guideway and 21 stations to be built for $5.26 billion by 2020, but the project is far over budget. Construction and financing of rail are now expected to total about $9 billion, and the rail authority expects to finish the system in late 2025.

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/02/14/breaking-news/feds-subpoena-honolulu-rail-authority-for-construction-documents/

6 comments:

  1. Is there a pattern here?...Hawaii and California both Democrat states..BOTH had "High Speed Trains" and the same agenda...both are done, but they wasted TONS of tax dollars.

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    1. Aside from your poke at the politics, which, unless you're a politician, you don't notice day to day (been here 24 years, haven't seen a republican or democrat yet, just surfers, skateboarders, sailors, car guys, van guys, rich guys, etc.
      Just a reminder, politics and religion are both ugly, and invisible. Neither make for good conversation.
      But to the pattern... both states are on the Pacific, both are warm, both are overcrowded, and yet no high speed train in Hawaii is possible, it's too small, and all those stops make anything over 70 just not viable for a travel speed. I lived on Oahu for 4 years, when I was stationed in Pearl Harbor. I can tell you that it's only 20 minutes BY BIKE from the bay to downtown Honolulu/Waikiki. No high speed anything is likely to ever be there on the island, the distances are too small. A bullet can make it from one end of the island to the other, or over the mountains. It's a small place.
      Summed up, you got it wrong, BOTH didn't have a desire for high speed trains. Just California, which is very very long, and not many states have as many miles from one end to the other, so, a high speed train would be AWESOME, as I'd love to hop on a train and see San Fran, or go further up the coast to Seattle, or Vancouver. It makes sense to get a high speed train across the USA, if only to provide an alternative to airliner travel for getting across the country from east to west, and on either coast and up the middle, from North to South. We'd be so damn happy to jump on a train, and be in Florida today, California tomorrow, and Seattle on the 3rd day. That's a cool hope for the future. Think how much faster your Amazon purchase could arrive!

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    2. Oh, and Hawaii had one of the most corrupt bureaucracies when I was there, I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's still that way, and a big part of the cost over runs and delays. It was so bad, the Navy threatened to close the damn shipyard that kept us in the Pacific part of WW2, because the locals were milking it for all they were worth, like any union's most illustrious milker ever dreamed of.
      It's the nepotism and Asian culture, in my opinion, it's all about hiring friends and family to help them get rich and take care of each other, but, run amuck.
      It's the buddy hook ups in the small town contractors, the union bullshit (they sure as hell haven't produced anything on this Hawaiian train project that is quality built) and local politicians wanting to get elected, re-elected, or blame the opposition for. Instead of doing something with open books, clear and consise goals, and lots of leadership, this debacle is a typical boondoggle. Amazing how 80 years ago we could build an entire freeway system around the nation, and dams, and all the rest, faster, cheaper, without computers, communications tech, etc, because people were more honest and did better work, under budget, on time.
      Now, with the cost of a house, more than people made in a lifetime, greed is the motivator, and the cancer killing a once respectable country. We don't make anything anymore, we import it. We don't value anything, we consume, or we flip, and we then dispose of it regardless. Here today, gone tomorrow.

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  2. The article said it was a "9.2 Billion dollar project." This rail line is 20 miles long, my math comes up with a cost of 460 million dollars PER MILE. And it may be more than that. By comparison the Transcontinental railroad cost 64 million from coast to coast, adjusted to 2019 dollars that's just under 2 billion!

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    1. ok. Have you check the price of building a bridge, one lane wide, anywhere in the USA lately? One mile of bridge might be the closest thing I can imagine to making an elevated railroad. I doubt we'll find prices per mile of elevate railroad... but, maybe.
      Elevated multi-lane highways through cities for example, in 1996 New York City area have been $333 million per mile http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume2/v2i1a3s2.html
      So, 460 million per mile for an elevated train, makes sense, for corrupt union cost overruns on a tiny island where a lot of stuff has to be shipped from China and the USA.

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