In 2009, the city of Honolulu had awarded Kiewit Infrastructure West Company a $483 million contract to design and build the first section of the Rail Project. However, delays by the Federal Transit Administration to approve the environmental impact statement will raise the cost to $502 million. Interim Executive Director for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, Toru Hamayasu, stated, "Kiewit, with our request, mobilized the people so that essentially the equipment, the lease, whatever, all of those are accumulating. Kiewit is incurring the cost." Hamayasu warned that additional costs could occur if there are additional delays in the process.
According to city officials, there has been a total of $860 million set aside in contingency funding to cope with delays, change orders and other unexpected cost increases. The city remains optimistic that the project will still come within the $5.27 billion total budget. However, not everyone is pleased with the additional costs. Tom Coffman, a board member of the environmental group Hawaii's Thousand Friends, stated, "It is taxpayers' money wasted based on their timetable not progressing as they had planned it out. They have rushed it, and it has resulted in additional cost in the form of insurance and the form of penalties from delay." Hawaii's Thousand Friends is part of a lawsuit in federal court to halt construction until the city completes a supplemental environmental impact statement.
