There was a good story by Kevin Dayton in yesterday’s Star-Advertiser which traces “irregularities” the bid process that led the city to cancel a contract award for an umbrella “owner controlled insurance program” that would have covered all rail contractors. Nonsubscribers might try this link: http://fpn.advisen.com/articles/article163579071-2099913611.html Dayton reported: An internal investigation by the city Department [...]
Tags: Honolulu rail transit
We were just a couple of blocks from home on the last leg of yesterday’s early morning walk when a friend stopped her car and rolled down the window. She was laughing. “You’re being quoted on public radio right now!” It was a surprise to me. It was late afternoon before I learned that Honolulu [...]
Phil Craig, the consultant who prepared the alternative rail study for Kamehameha Schools, spelled out in a recent email the reasons he believes the city’s rail project is vulnerable to legal challenge. I’m taking the liberty of quoting him at length. I suggest a careful read of the Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental [...]
Tags: Honolulu rail transit
A letter to the editor in yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser from Mark Scheibe, vp at Parsons Brinckerhoff, the city’s primary transit consultant, pointed to several prior studies that recommended against a light rail system running at street level. He argued: In 1976 an “Analysis of Transit Alternatives” looked at a light rail alternative that included grade-separated [...]
Tags: Honolulu rail transit
Back in April 2009, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects held a panel discussion at which a mainland transit consultant predicted Honolulu’s rail EIS could be “in trouble”. As I wrote at the time, the problem is “the city failed to deliver an environmental impact study that fulfilled what was promised in [...]
The Advertiser’s Sean Hao reports today that there are only three bidders for the initial rail contract here in Honolulu. Hao correctly notes that the specifications for these contracts lock in a particular technology, despite prior official statements that the specific technology would not be chosen until the environmental impact statement was completed and officials [...]
How time flies. I “knew” it was Wednesday because the crew arrived at 5:30 a.m. to pick up our trash. But my brain still let a “Tuesday” headline into the original version of this entry. An early morning short-circuit! There was a lot of traintosterone at Blaisdell Center yesterday at the city’s rain transit symposium, [...]
I’m heading off this morning to attend the city’s rail transit symposium at the Blaisdell. Funny thing about it is that the city has been featuring Dan Doyle, who was a transit official in Vancouver, B.C. during construction of the SkyTrain system, the model for Honolulu’s proposed system. But most of the rest of the [...]
Tags: Honolulu rail transit
