Original Rail Budget Included Bogus Numbers For Station Designs

Millions of dollars set aside years ago for station design work were actually just “placeholders” with no real study of whether they were sufficient. But they were included in Honolulu rail’s official budget anyway.

Project officials acknowledged that Thursday while presenting the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board with a $5.7 million change order for continued design work on the nine west side stations, from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.

The board approved the order to more than double the “design during construction” funding for those stations. It awards another $3.5 million to the design firm AECOM for six of the stations, and $2.15 million to Anil Verma Associates for the remaining three stations.

So far, each of those firms has paid $845,000 out of pocket to keep the work going after the 2011 funding that the city set as part of its previous $5.26 billion rail budget ran out, HART officials said Thursday.

Read more: http://www.civilbeat.org/2018/03/original-rail-budget-included-bogus-numbers-for-station-designs/