HONOLULU — The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s nearly $10 billion, 19-mile Skyline fixed-rail system is pending its final run to Kaka‘ako.
The remaining 3-mile portion of Skyline — the estimated $482.4 million City Center Guideway and Stations project — would begin at Middle Street and end at Halekauwila Street. The deadline to submit formal design-build contract bid proposals for the City Center segment was July 23.
According to HART, the notice of award will be issued Aug. 23.
During a special HART board of directors meeting Tuesday, the panel discussed the CCGS contract’s procurement in a closed-door executive session but offered few details afterward.
Before the executive session, however, board member Natalie Iwasa questioned the content of the nonpublic meeting scheduled to offer an update on the CCGS contract as well as “hypothetical funding source scenarios” for the project. Iwasa is the panel’s state-appointed, nonvoting member who’s unable to participate in executive sessions, in part, because she’s declined to sign a confidentiality agreement requested by the city.
“And would you please clarify whether those potential funding sources will also be discussed in executive session?” Iwasa asked.
In response, city Deputy Corporation Counsel Daniel Gluck told the board that due to “procurement law and Sunshine Law, we’re going to need to have an executive session on this.”
“Our intention is after award (of the CCGS contract), which could be soon, that we would release the recording of the executive session, because the executive session only needs to be confidential for as long as those procurement discussions are ongoing,” Gluck said. “So the intention is not to keep this confidential forever, but only until award.”
Iwasa replied, “OK, so that would include the ‘hypothetical funding scenarios,’ which, to me, I don’t quite understand why that would be confidential at this point, but I defer to your legal advice.”
For the current 2025 fiscal year, HART’s capital budget totals $574 million, of which about 84 percent comprises funds earmarked for the City Center segment, reports state.
Ongoing staffing issues at HART could also affect the stated 2031 completion of this third leg of rail.
Earlier this year, as the rail agency suffered the loss of key personnel — including the abrupt departure in April of HART’s three-year project director Nate Meddings — and long-standing employee vacancies, one rail official posed a question about the Skyline project’s future.
“Are you confident that we have a strong enough team to manage the City Center Guideway and Stations contracts once that’s (approved)?” asked board member Anthony Aalto during HART’s board of directors meeting May 17.
In response, HART Executive Director and CEO Lori Kahikina, who at the time was under fire from some on the board over her leadership of the agency before she was granted a new, provisional multiyear contract at the end of June, initially said she was “very confident in our team.”
At that same meeting, which dealt partly with critical position recruitment, HART Human Resources Specialist Sandy Aguilar said the agency — authorized for 135 positions — only had 38 filled positions.
Based in part on those job vacancies at HART, Kahikina later clarified that existing rail staffers were “stretched thin.”
“So I don’t think it’s sustainable to be working at this level through CCGS,” she said, adding that new staff and “additional consultants to take the burden off the shoulders of those working at a very high pace” are planned.
