With less than a year until its first trip between islands, Hawaii Superferry has moved operations into high gear. So have its opponents.

While ferry officials were making preparations last week to move into their new 10,000-square-foot office space at Restaurant Row and start hiring what will eventually be about 300 employees, critics were equally busy making plans to delay the July 1, 2007, startup date of ferry operations.

Maui County Council members on Friday debated whether the county should join a civil lawsuit that could effectively block ferry operations until a lengthy environmental review of harbor plans is conducted.

Despite the lawsuit and other potential obstacles, ferry officials say they are progressing on schedule to begin service on time next year: The company's first $90 million ship is 80 percent complete and will be ready for sea trials by the end of the year.

Meanwhile ramps and barges are being built in China, at a total cost to the state of $40 million, that will allow up to 866 passengers and 282 vehicles to board the four-story, 340-foot-long catamaran in less than an hour.

"We've stepped things up in the last few months," said John Garibaldi, Superferry chief executive officer.

Critics, especially on Maui, want to slow the process. Backed by a coalition of environmentalists, farmers, small-business men, paddlers, harbor users and others, the County Council earlier this month unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution asking the state to delay Superferry operations on Maui until a harbor master plan and environmental review are completed.

"We're open to the ferry, but there are a lot of questions that still haven't been answered," said Maui Councilman Michael Molina. "All we're asking is what's the rush? Let's slow down and get this done right."

CONCESSIONS MADE

Superferry officials say they are working to address the concerns. In one major concession, they have agreed to scale back the initially planned twice-daily sailings to Maui to one visit instead, a move that will allow the ferry to arrive in Kahului mid-morning, rather than at lunch time when traffic congestion surrounding the port is at its worst. In another development, traffic studies commissioned by the ferry and made available to The Advertiser last week show potential congestion problems around port areas in Honolulu and Maui. In worst-case scenarios, some drivers in 2009 might end up seeing more than a minute added to their waiting time at already congested port-area roads, and several intersections could receive a new F rating — the most undesirable in traffic planning — when heavy ferry traffic is present.

Superferry officials note, however, that the plans are still in the draft stage, expected traffic is likely to be far below the worst-case scenarios and that the reports include several recommendations to mitigate traffic concerns, including new signals that would be paid for by the ferry.

"We're going to be looking very closely at the traffic reports and the mitigation plans," Transportation Director Rod Haraga said. "Can you imagine what the lineup would be like on Nimitz Highway with the extra traffic if we don't do anything to counter it? The Superferry will have to work with us and they'll be financially responsible for any needed improvements."

WIDESPREAD SUPPORT

Despite the concerns, the ferry enjoys widespread support from people throughout the Islands looking forward to a low-cost alternative to interisland passenger and freight air service, Garibaldi says. It also has the backing of Gov. Linda Lingle and the state Transportation Department, which is funding $40 million in harbor improvements that will be used almost exclusively by the ferry.

"The governor is firmly behind the ferry," Haraga said. "She wants residents to have an alternative means of transportation, by sea or air, and we can have that alternative with Superferry."

Many of the concerns, including increased traffic, the spread of invasive species, port congestion and changes in shipping patterns, can be worked out by July 1, officials said. State highway officials are examining the traffic reports and Agriculture Department experts are demanding stringent new protections against the spread of invasive species through vehicles traveling on the ferry.

"Clearly, these are areas that the public is concerned about," said Barry Fukunaga, DOT's deputy director for harbors. "We're going to ask more of the Superferry in terms of inspection than anybody else operating in the ports."

Superferry officials said they'll closely inspect all boarding vehicles and turn away dirty ones that could be transporting exotic species. The company also will provide educational material about invasive species throughout the state and on board its ships, Garibaldi said.

The ferry is the brainchild of Tim Dick, an electrical engineer and founder of several Internet businesses who got the idea after he saw new technology, high-speed catamaran ferries operating in the Mediterranean Sea. Company officials said the most comparable operation in the world to what's planned for Hawai'i is a high-speed open-ocean ferry service that serves hundreds of people daily on the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

NEW TECHNOLOGY

The state's last flirtation with interisland ferry service was the short-lived SeaFlite operation in the 1970s, a startup doomed by slow service, long delays and plenty of seasick passengers in the notoriously choppy channels between the Hawaiian Islands.

Superferry officials say new technology will minimize those problems and they'll learn from the mistakes made by other ferry operations, including a startup operation two years ago between Rochester, N.Y., and Toronto that got bogged down in federal red tape and died. The ferry used in that operation was displayed in Honolulu two years ago as a model of what interisland commuters could expect; it has since been sold for use in Europe.

"In the last 10 or 15 years, there's been a new proven technology that we know will work in Hawai'i. There are growing pains in any startup operation, but our focus is getting things right from the start," Garibaldi said.

When it first proposed its fare structure 18 months ago, ferry officials said a round-trip to a Neighbor Island would be about half the cost of a similar airplane ticket.

With the addition of a new airline into the local market and a resulting fare war, that may no longer be true. Even so, Superferry officials say they will stick by their originally announced fares, as low as $42 one-way for a passenger and an additional $45 to transport a vehicle.

"Airline prices come and go," Garibaldi said. "Our prices are not a promotion."

SHIPPING MARKET

The biggest fallout from the planned ferry introduction so far has been in the local shipping market. After interisland barge company Young Brothers lost an estimated 23 percent of its Kahului Harbor space to the ferry, it announced that it will no longer ship less than full container loads between islands, a move that could leave farmers and other small-business operators struggling to get small-sized shipments from one market to another.

"That's going to have a big impact on small businesses throughout Maui County and beyond," said attorney Isaac Hall, who represents several groups demanding that an environmental impact statement be done before any changes are made to Kahului Harbor.

"The state just stepped in and evicted Young Brothers from part of its harbor land and, given the congestion there already, that just doesn't make sense," Hall said. "None of the issues were adequately addressed before they took the action."

Hall and others suggest that the ferry operations be put on hold until a new master plan for Kahului Harbor is finished and the state considers all alternatives.

"Realistically, that just doesn't work," said Fukunaga, adding that the state hopes to have an updated master plan ready by the end of this year. "You can't just sit back and wait until every planning report is done. You move forward and make adjustments as you go. That's the nature of planning."

Superferry officials say a delay could doom the project.

"There's a huge financial cost involved once we take delivery of the $90 million vessel. We couldn't support those costs for long without putting the vessel into service," Garibaldi said. "We'd be in default of our loan very quickly."

Haraga added that the state can't afford to require an environmental impact statement every time there's a change in port operations.

"The courts have already ruled that we don't need to have an EIS and it would be a very slippery slope to start down," he said. "If we started doing that every time someone new came into the harbor, we'd never move forward."

'MOVING PEOPLE'

Superferry officials say other companies are likely to step forward as freight consolidators, filling the void left by Young Brothers. However, ferry officials say all consolidated cargo on the ferry must be accompanied by a driver.

"We're in the business of moving people and vehicles, not cargo," Garibaldi said. "We're not going to be transporting any unattended vehicles."

Besides security concerns, Superferry officials say that having a driver accompany every vehicle is crucial to the efficient loading and unloading of ferry operations worldwide.

"That's just basic to how ferries operate," Garibaldi said.

State officials say that the ferry operation is just part of a bigger problem facing Kahului Harbor: the lack of space to expand in a time when there's increasing demand from cargo operations, cruise ships and others.

"All those things, including the ferry, have to be rolled into the picture," Fukunaga said. "We should have started working on them long ago, but now we need to make the focus on the bigger picture."

Molina, the Maui councilman, thinks the state should start by dealing with the ferry issues.

"It sounded like a great idea when it was first proposed, but it's morphed into something different now. It's like a chain reaction that's out of control. The farmers are hurt, the small business could pay higher freight charges, and businesses risk going out of business. We just hope there will be some room for reasonable discussion and compromise before this thing turns into an economic Titanic."

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.