The controversy over the rail line was the dominant issue for local politics leading into the 2008 Honolulu elections, and culminated in a city charter amendment which left the final decision to a direct vote of the citizens of Oahu. Plans for a mass-transit line to connect Honolulu's urban center with outlying areas began in the 1960s, but funding was not approved until 2005.
2.3 Federal Transit Administration's request for recovery plan.2.2 GET surchange extensions and "Hotel Tax" surcharge.2.1 Initial General Excise Tax (GET) surcharge.1.3 Impact on Honolulu mayoral elections.The tax increase legislation passed in 2017 also requires the State auditor carry out an audit of the project's accounts and to consider alternatives for completing the system. Critics have called for a "forensic audit" to establish the cause of the increase. The final cost has grown from preliminary projections of $4 billion in 2006 to as much as $12.4 billion by 2021. The first major contract for that section, estimated at $400 million, was awarded in May 2018. The process was restarted in September 2017 and is expected to take eighteen months. The process to award the contract for building the final 4.3-mile (6.9 km) section through downtown Honolulu was suspended in 2015. After much wrangling, the state legislature in 2017 approved $2.4 billion in additional taxes to allow the city to complete the project according to the original plan. The FTA stated that its contribution is contingent to completion of the line all the way to Ala Moana Center and will not be increased. After major cost overruns, the tax surcharges were extended in 2016 by five years to raise another $1.2 billion however that additional funding was only sufficient for construction out to Middle Street in Kalihi.
The project is financed by a surcharge on local taxes as well as a $1.55 billion grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Other groups object to its cost as well as paying for the line without it serving their neighborhoods. In opposition, freeway advocate Panos Prevedouros questions its cost-effectiveness compared to "road widening or lane addition" and claims that it will have marginal impact on traffic congestion. They assert that the urban agglomeration in south Oahu is ideally suited to rail. Proponents of the system say it will alleviate worsening traffic congestion, already among the worst in the United States. įor more than 20 years, debate over the development of a rail system in Honolulu has been a major point of contention in local politics, especially leading into the 2008, 2012, and 2016 mayoral elections. Its second phase continuing the line across urban Honolulu to the Ala Moana Center terminus is due to open in March 2031. The first phase of the project, linking East Kapolei on the ʻEwa Plain and Aloha Stadium, is scheduled to open by the end of 2022. It will become the first large-scale publicly run metro system in the United States to feature platform screen doors and driverless trainsets. The mostly elevated system features design elements from both heavy rail systems and light metros, with a commuter-rail-like design incorporated into trains and suburban stations. The Honolulu Rail Transit Project (also known as the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project) is a light metro system under construction in Honolulu County, Hawaii, U.S.
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