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Honolulu Rail CEO Blames Gross Cost Overruns on Critics

Snow job in Honolulu

Hawaii Reporter

August 15, 2014

HONOLULU - Honolulu Area Rapid Transit director Daniel Grabauskas pledged on his watch, the city’s $5.26 billion Honolulu rail project would come in “on time and on budget.”

But as the Honolulu Star Advertiser notes, that’s not the case: “Construction of Honolulu's rail transit system is on track to cost many millions of dollars more than originally thought. Rail officials this week opened the three bids they received to build the $5.26 billion project's first nine stations. All three bids exceeded by well more than $100 million what they had originally budgeted for the work. The least expensive of the bids was still about 60 percent greater than what they had expected.”

Grabauskas is apparently blaming the cost escalation on two legal challenges that halted the rail’s construction for just over a year.

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