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Transportation chief
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
seeks Council input
on rail transit
Star-BulletinCity Council members have complained they were left out of planning a rail-transit system in 1992, but Transportation Director Cheryl Soon promises that won't happen this year.
The Council will go through a series of steps -- deciding specifics such as route, technology -- before a vendor is selected through the city procurement process, Soon said.
The first decision, Soon told the Council Transportation Committee yesterday, should come sometime this summer when it decides whether to go with a bus-rapid transit system. If it does, the Council must decide whether to include an expensive underground Sand Island bypass of Nimitz Highway.
Councilwoman Rene Mansho said the Fasi administration did not select the monorail project she and her colleagues had favored in 1992.
That September, the Council rejected by a 5-4 vote a general excise tax increase from 4 percent to 4.5 percent to fund the $1 billion heavy-rail project.
"We'll need to make it clear and make sure that anybody who's building would be acceptable to you," Soon said.
Councilman John Henry Felix said he also is more comfortable with this year's process.
"The major difference between what we're going through now and what we did in the past is that there were no specific performance characteristics that we approved," Felix said.
"The last time, we did design-build, and so both the right-of-way and technology were paired with each other," Soon said. "And here, we will be doing the engineering work and we will be putting the right-of-way in place and then asking people who are capable of running a vehicle on it, tell them we want to buy some vehicles."
Once all the specifications are decided, a "notice to industry" will announce that the city is looking for bidders, Soon said.
That likely won't happen for at least another 15 months, she said.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas is conducting a draft environmental impact statement for the project.
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