Editorial: Clarity needed on rail hours, safety

The cost of the vastly overdue and overbudget Honolulu rail system has dominated the conversation over a dozen years of construction. Now that its visibility nearer the urban center is increased and the date of a partial launch approaches, other concerns are coming into clearer view: safety and hours of operation.

It’s not the first time safety has been an issue, of course. During the still-ongoing construction phase, headlines about cracks in need of repair on the concrete elevated guideway and supports, and about rail and wheel widths not quite matching up gave an already skeptical public more reason for worry.

As for the hours: The Honolulu City Council was surprised to learn that the operating hours for the initial phase will be 5 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays, 8 a.m.-7 p.m. weekends and holidays. Tyler Dos Santos- Tam, who chairs the Council’s Transportation Committee, rightly said this should have been discussed more fully in a public setting before that got locked into a contract with the operator, Hitachi.

It’s sure to be raised when the safety plan goes to a public hearing, starting at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Council chambers.

That step adds to the startling realization that the first half of the project, from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium, is set to start in July, as Mayor Rick Blangiardi said in his State of the City address March 14. That’s at most four months from now.

The latest update on the second half of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) project came into sharper focus last week, when the joint venture company building the 5.2-mile segment of guideway and hubs from the stadium area to Middle Street announced that it has reached 97% completion of four stations.

That stretch should be ready by the end of this year, said executives of STG, comprising Shimmick Construction Co. Inc., Traylor Bros Inc. and Granite Construction Inc.

Meanwhile, the mayor and his team at the city Department of Transportation Services (DTS) really want Honolulu residents to begin riding the rail and see how their transit needs can be met through a linkage of the partial system and reconfigured bus routes.

At the same time the city is working to get those changes in place, it also will need to overcome any safety fears that are lingering — and quite rational. What will make this a public asset that protects as well as serves the public?

In an effort to answer that question, DTS has submitted its Agency Rail Safety Plan to the City Council. The 100-page document, a requirement of federal law, begins with the statement that “DTS managers are expected to be leaders in promoting safety and security throughout the organization and to provide the authority, support and resources necessary to establish and maintain high safety standards.”

But in laying out the general scope of services, the department’s description of the initial hours of operation raised some eyebrows in the Council’s meeting with DTS before the plan was introduced formally in Resolution 38.

In an interview Friday with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Dos Santos-Tam said the city position on the first-phase rail hours was that they would be coordinated with the schedule for the No. 40 bus to Halawa and would provide sufficient service.

This plainly misses the mark, however. The councilman correctly observed that those wanting to take transit in the evening hours would not feel secure in choosing it if it meant making the switch between train and bus.

“They said that the No. 40 bus is going to be following the route of rail, so people won’t be stranded,” Dos Santos-Tam added. “But the whole goal of bus-rail integration was that it would be seamless.”

Not so much at this point, if things stand.

Dos Santos-Tam said the Council needed to be part of the planning much earlier. Right. And that should happen before the hours for the segment to Middle Street get finalized.

On some key safety points, the plan lays out three tiers of security:

>> Hitachi will hire roving “ambassadors” to provide oversight and customer service in stations and on trains.

>> The city will contract with security officers in the park-and-ride lots, in stations and on trains.

>> Honolulu Police Department will be tasked to respond, as needed.

The Council must press for more details about the level of staffing for these jobs, as well.

The same can be said for other safety elements that sound good but need to be fleshed out. For example, the “whistleblower” protections, ensuring that problems can be reported without fear of retaliation, must be made clear not only to employees and contractors but to subcontractors as well.

Also, a “hazard management process” is defined, but the public needs to hear more about what the potential hazards are.

“This project has to be successful,” Dos Santos-Tam said. “Opening this has to be successful.”

That surely will require the public to engage in the process of building toward that success. Tuesday’s hearing would be the perfect opportunity for that.