We learned a bit more over the past week about Honolulu’s beleaguered $6 billion rail project, and for a change, a spoonful of good news was mixed in with a healthy helping of bad.

First, the bad news. As Civil Beat’s Nick Grube and Bob Porterfield reported in an analysis published June 11, budget projections from the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation show that in the first 12 years, costs for operation and maintenance will total more than $1.7 billion. Fare revenue will cover less than one-third of those costs, leaving an annual O&M deficit of about $100 million a year.

While O&M deficits of that magnitude may be news to Civil Beat and its readers, they’re apparently not to HART, city leaders or others close to the project. The city’s transportation services director is said to be devising a plan to address those costs, but issues such as the lack of clarity around fare pricing and other potential revenue sources (advertising and station naming rights, for instance) have to be addressed first.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

This leaves officials searching for ways to come up with operating funds, and some are signaling that a boost in property taxes or a further extension of the general excise tax might be necessary to cover the shortfall.

Sen. Jill Tokuda called the fact that the city could produce no plan during the recently concluded legislative session to cover O&M costs “quite alarming,” and said it caused her to refuse any GET extension beyond five years. “They seriously need to look at what their operating costs are going to look like,” she said of HART and city leaders.

To be fair, Civil Beat’s analysis also found that all transit authorities around the country operating heavy rail lines similar to Honolulu’s receive O&M subsidies. But for taxpayers funding a construction project already swimming in more than $900 million of red ink, the idea that such subsidies are routine is of little comfort. Particularly since they already subsidize operations for TheBus and Handi-Van for more than $200 million per year.

New bids opened Tuesday for construction of three West Oahu rail stations, however, provided something of a palate cleanser for the previous week’s news. Unlike earlier requests for station construction bids, HART’s newly refined specifications helped generate a group of bids that were all within or under the $65 million to $80 million budgeted range. The lowest, from Nan Inc., was about $9 million under the range’s low end.

HART Executive Director Dan Graubaskas was encouraged by the lower-than-expected bids, but pointed out that these will likely be the cheapest of the project’s 21 stations to build, given their location in areas less heavily developed than some of the rail stops in downtown Honolulu.

Rail’s enormous financial challenges are unlikely to be completely resolved — particularly since no one yet knows the depth of that budgetary black hole — but making even modest progress in addressing them will be the result of many changes that save a bit here and a bit there.

Our enthusiasm is tempered, as well. These are bids, after all, and project delays, change orders and other unexpected variables can potentially drive up actual costs, quickly erasing even a $9 million savings. For a project that has shown a poor ability to control costs, particularly overruns from the subcontractors that HART contends it has no responsibility to manage, the real challenge will be making sure those projected savings actually materialize.

Still, we were pleased to hear of HART’s new efforts to streamline and economize. In the case of the three station bids, for instance, construction companies were allowed to replace requirements for stainless steel components with powder-coated aluminum, a cheaper material and a design difference that shouldn’t be notable to riders.

The rail project’s enormous financial challenges are unlikely to be completely resolved — particularly since no one yet knows the depth of that budgetary black hole — but making even modest progress in addressing them will be the result of many such management changes that save a bit here and a bit there. We’ll be watching closely to see what the next round of station bids look like for the Pearl Highland, Pearlridge and Aloha Stadium stops when the request for bids goes out in August.

The O&M costs will be a more difficult challenge, but the same principle applies. Taxpayers should expect creative, aggressive ideas, not only with regard to selling station naming rights and advertising, but on other innovations that can reduce the public’s ongoing bill and rail’s impact on state budgets.

Otherwise, the project may cause more problems than it solves, for decades to come.