A deal that would secure $1.55 billion in federal funding for the Honolulu rail project is stalled at the Federal Transit Administration. 

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation back in June had estimated that the packet would already be in the hands of President Barack Obama and his Office of Management and Budget.

Civil Beat’s Michael Levine reports from Washington, D.C.:

If approved, the federal funding would cover about 30 percent of construction costs and be a major piece of the project’s financial plan.

Without federal funding, political support on the ground in Honolulu could quickly dry up. Mayor Peter Carlisle, set to visit Washington next week, has said rail would “plow forward” regardless of federal funding, but he lost his re-election bid last month. Kirk Caldwell criticized Carlisle’s plow-forward approach, and Ben Cayetano has vowed to kill the project altogether.

The federal funding timeline is behind Grabauskas’ expectations, in part, because the draft application and updated financial plan ended up being submitted on June 28, a week or two after Grabauskas anticipated. More importantly, the FTA review, which Grabauskas estimated would take 30 days, has thus far taken 80 days — and counting.

Read the full story here.

Photo courtesy of Ansaldo Honolulu.

— Alia Wong