Train door malfunction idles Honolulu rail fleet

Daily testing of the city's rail trains has been suspended for over a week after a passenger door was discovered open while one of the automated trains was moving.

Officials with the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation hope to receive a report on the door from rail operator Hitachi Rail this week or next, when daily testing could resume, said Lori Kahikina, HART's interim CEO and executive director.

HART's fleet of automated trains—each comprising four cars and 24 double sets of doors—are not supposed to be able to run while a door is open, for safety reasons.

HART has 17 trains on-island, which are expected to represent the bulk of 20 eventual trains. Seven were being tested daily when Kahikina was informed of the malfunctioning door July 17.

Kahikina told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Tuesday that she did not know whether the door was open before the train began moving or whether it opened while the train was underway. She also did not know how fast the train was traveling when the open door was discovered.

Each train is designed with 188 seats, with a maximum capacity of 800 passengers.

Although only one door on one train opened improperly, HART officials took the entire fleet out of use "out of an abundance of caution, " Kahikina said.

The malfunction is similar to an open door that was discovered on Washington, D.C.'s metro system while passengers were on board in May 2019, according to media reports at the time. The metro's entire fleet of 274 cars was taken out of serv ­ice and brought back online a day later after a malfunction with the trains' master control system was identified and fixed, according to media reports.

HART's daily tests are intended to find problems and fix them before HART begins passenger service, Kahikina said.

Once HART officials believe the system is ready, it will then undergo an additional 90 days of testing with "no issues " before HART hands over the project to the city, Kahikina said.

The current scrutiny includes "literally hundreds of tests " on various rail systems, she said, including communications, lights and fare gates.

"Any kind of issues, we've got to address it, " Kahikina said.

HART is not required to report the door malfunction to the Federal Transit Administration, HART said.

The 20-mile, 21-station rail project is scheduled to run from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center, Hawaii's largest transit hub, but faces a $3 billion shortfall.

The project is currently budgeted at $12.499 billion and is not scheduled for completion until March 2031.

The door malfunction follows revelations earlier this year that HART's trains each were running on 32 wheels that were too narrow for track "frogs " that are half an inch too wide at 12 junctions where the tracks cross one another.

HART and Hitachi continue to figure out whether it's better to swap out the wheels or replace the "frogs " where the tracks cross.

The trains can navigate the gap by slowing to 15 to 20 mph, Kahikina previously told the Star-Advertiser.

But the trains are designed to operate at 55 mph, and slowing them down would not allow maintaining a schedule of trains arriving at each station every four to five minutes.

The malfunctioning-door problem comes on the eve of Friday's HART board meeting, which will see the return of Colleen Hanabusa, a former congresswoman and former HART board chairwoman.

She was appointed to the board by Mayor Rick Blangiardi after she turned down a HART consulting contract worth nearly $1 million that was written for her.

The City Council also appears poised to place Anthony Aalto, a documentary filmmaker and environmentalist, on the unpaid HART board. Aalto would replace Joe Uno, who runs his own construction cost consulting firm and was not reappointed to the board by the City Council.

Friday's HART board meeting also follows the abrupt resignation of former HART board Chairman Tobias Martyn this month.

Martyn resigned amid calls for state and federal investigations into whether his company—Stifel Financial Corp.—benefited from the sale of rail-­related city general obligation bonds and whether he should have disclosed potential conflicts of interest.

State Sen. Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point )—the state Senate's minority leader—has written to the FBI, FTA and state Attorney General's Office requesting that they investigate HART on a variety of concerns based on media reports.

Fevella specifically alleged that Martyn's actions included "possible criminal acts " while Martyn served as Stifel Financial Corp.'s branch manager and vice president of investments.

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