Hawai’i Transportation Projects Receive Federal Grants

State officials say they need around $15 billion to mitigate the impacts of rising seas.

1 minute read

February 28, 2024, 12:00 PM PST

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


White Honolulu Skyline train on elevated track.

A Honolulu Skyline train. | eli fessler, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons / Skyline train

In a visit to Hawai’i, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg expressed strong support for Honolulu’s partially opened Skyline rail line, reports Marcel Honore in Honolulu Civil Beat.

“But U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it remains unclear whether the rail, which has seen its costs more than double since 2012 to about $10 billion, would ever get more federal dollars on top of the $1.55 billion that his agency has already committed to getting it done,” Honore adds. Buttigieg gave no timeline for when Federal Transit funds, withheld since 2014, will be released, but the signing of a key agreement unlocks roughly $744 million. 

Buttigieg also visited a coastal roadway slated for relocation to ensure safer evacuations, acknowledging that many more coastal roads need similar work, and “the site of the future Kapalama Container Terminal, a project that’s been in the works for at least three decades to expand port operations at Honolulu Harbor” that is using a $40 million federal grant to fund zero-emissions cranes and a solar microgrid.

Thursday, February 22, 2024 in Honolulu Civil Beat

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