Honolulu's planned rail mass-transit project has missed two key dates.

A draft environmental impact statement and an engineering application were scheduled to be finished in the spring, but completion has been pushed back to this fall.

City officials say the $3.7 billion project is still on track to break ground in December 2009 and begin partial operations by the end of 2012.

"The project overall is still very much on schedule" Mark Scheibe, deputy project manager for Parsons Brinckerhoff, said in an e-mail.

However, delays could increase the cost of the project and affect the federal government's contribution.

The city plans to complete the full 20-mile elevated commuter line in about a decade. It will be the largest public works project in state history and will have major environmental, social and economic impacts.

Completion of the draft environmental impact statement — which will assess, among other things, noise and visual impacts, residential displacements and financial costs — has been pushed back to October. The application to begin preliminary engineering also has been delayed until this fall. The city hasn't said what month it will be done.

Despite the delays, environmental and engineering studies are proceeding on a schedule that should allow construction to begin as planned in December of next year, Scheibe said.

Still the change in timing decreases the margin for error if problems are encountered during review of the project's environmental impact.

According to a timeline on the city's www.honolulutransit.org Web page, a review of the draft environmental impact statement was expected to begin in spring 2008 and run through spring 2009. The process is now expected to run from October of this year to October 2009, city officials said.

The additional time is being used to further refine the impact statement, Scheibe said. A preliminary report on the project's environmental impacts was released in 2006.

The change in timing is significant because the city cannot begin construction on the train system until the the environmental impact statement receives federal approval. If that approval is delayed, construction will have to be put on hold. Project delays could cost the city $10 million a month in added inflationary expenses.

The current estimate is that the $3.7 billion cost, which is in 2006 dollars, will rise to $5 billion by the end of the project because of inflation.

FUNDING TIMING COUNTS

In addition to inflation, delays could affect the timing of the federal government's contribution to the project.

Entry into the preliminary engineering phase of the transit project is a major step toward securing an estimated $700 million in federal funding. It also will allow the city to begin to draw down $15.5 million in previously awarded federal funds.

During preliminary engineering, the city will finalize management plans, refine the route's alignment and project costs, and identify benefits and impacts. After preliminary engineering is completed, which usually takes between 15 and 30 months, transit projects enter the final design phase, according to the Federal Transit Administration. If the project passes muster at that time, the Federal Transit Administration provides what's called a full-funding grant agreement.

The city expects to be awarded full federal funds in the spring of 2011.

The delay in the application for preliminary engineering follows new federal requirements, said city consultant Scheibe.

"The city is currently undertaking activities which in the recent past would have been considered PE (preliminary engineering) activities but which are now pre-PE activities," Scheibe said. "The activities are the same in moving along a continuum from conceptual design through preliminary engineering and then through final design, it's just the labels of which phase one is in that have changed."

The only actual "delay" in the project was minor and related to the City Council having difficulty in deciding which type of vehicle technology to use on the elevated guideway, Scheibe said.

CAST YOUR BALLOT

If the draft environmental impact statement is released in October, the public likely will have less than a month to review the findings before taking a vote on whether the city should build the train.

The nonprofit Stop Rail Now is attempting to place an anti-rail ordinance on the November ballot. If that effort fails, the city will put its own version of a rail question on the ballot.

The sooner the city releases the draft environmental impact statement the better, said council member Donovan Dela Cruz.

"That's because there's this question on the ballot," he said. "The findings may change opinions of people."

Council member Todd Apo said the upcoming vote on rail is critical. However, residents won't need to know the details in the environmental impact statement to make that vote, he said.

"Obviously those issues will affect the project in other ways, but the ballot question is about are we doing this type of project?" Apo said. It's "not going to go into the details of things like those that would be in the EIS."

Once the draft environmental impact statement is released, the city plans to provide at least 45 days for public comments. At least one public hearing will be held.

Under the project's current timetable, there's about a 12-month window between the date the draft environmental impact statement is released and a possible final approval, a so-called record of decision, in October 2009. That window appears to be in line with several recent federally subsidized train projects.

For example: