New Rail Chief Sees Himself as Intermediary Between Council, Feds

Lena Tran/Civil Beat

New rail chief Dan Grabauskas stopped by Civil Beat headquarters Thursday after the Honolulu City Council moved the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation budgets forward Thursday.

I asked him about the working relationship with the council, what concerns he's heard from the community since he arrived and what changes he might implement for the project. The juiciest nuggets from our conversation follow below, and we'll have more from Grabauskas next week.

On satisfying both the Honolulu City Council and the Federal Transit Administration simultaneously

"In order to access that federal funding, we need to make sure that the federal overseers are satisfied. So understanding that, I think what I really end up doing, and I've seen this a little bit already, here and in other places, is you end up being sort of an intermediary between two competing but also complementary bodies.

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