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Dive Brief:
- Builders working at $10 billion Skyline Rail Project filed suit against the Honolulu Rapid Transit Authority and the City and County of Honolulu, seeking at least $324 million in damages for breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
- Hitachi Rail Honolulu Joint Venture filed the suit on Dec. 20, alleging that the defendants’ mismanagement of the Skyline project “has led to countless delays and other errors that have resulted in significant cost increases for HRH.”
- Hitachi is a key contractor on the project, responsible for installing and maintaining the operating system for the driverless trains. HART hired the JV, a partnership between Hitachi Rail STS SpA and Hitachi Rail STS USA, in 2011, according to the lawsuit.
Diving knowledge:
This is just the latest in a series of the demands arising from the projectaccording to Honolulu Civil Beat. In 2023, the Shimmick/Traylor/Granite team hired to build part of the Honolulu rail line sued HART, alleging that the the agency did not fix the problems with the utility relocation, which caused costly construction delays. HART later settled for $60 million.
Originally, the entire Skyline project was supposed to open in 2020, but the latest estimates put that completion date at 2030, according to Civil Beat. The nearly 19-mile elevated guideway system includes 19 stations and runs from East Kapolei to Kakaako.
According to Hitachi’s lawsuit, the city chose not to hire a single design-build contractor to develop the entire system “as is customary in the rail industry.” Instead, Honolulu and HART awarded smaller design-build contracts to numerous contractors.
However, HART “was not up to the task of coordinating the many contractors involved, a task vital to the project delivery system that HART chose. HART’s failures in leadership and coordination resulted in delays extraordinary and cost overruns,” the lawsuit alleges.
Hitachi said it could not do its work until other contractors built the elevated guideway, stations and track, and claims it was forced to eat the costs of the overpasses. The JV also alleges that the city “delayed any good faith efforts to resolve HRH’s claims, no doubt to further delay public criticism of its mismanagement of the Skyline project.”
Honolulu officials did not respond to Construction Dive by press time, and HART declined to comment.
“HART appreciates the opportunity to respond, but we cannot discuss or comment on the active claim at this time,” Joey Manahan, HART’s director of government relations and public engagement, said in an email.
