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Bidders hoping to win the contract to build the elevated rail line from Middle Street through Honolulu’s urban center were required to submit their proposals Tuesday, but the rail authority is not saying yet how many proposals it got or whether those bids are affordable.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation estimated in early 2023 that this 3-mile rail segment with six stations would cost $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion. But no one knew for sure if that estimate would hold up when the bids came in.

The costs of construction labor and materials have increased along with almost everything else in recent years, and Honolulu is in the midst of a construction boom that could cause further price escalations.

Joey Manahan, director of government relations and public involvement for HART, said in a written statement Tuesday only that “HART will be able to share the information once the contract is awarded.”

This segment of the rail line is known as the City Center Guideway and Stations, and will extend from Middle Street to a site near the intersection of South and Halekauwila Streets. The city has dubbed that spot near state Circuit Court the “Civic Center Station.”

The rail line was originally supposed to extend to Ala Moana Center, but the rail authority agreed to a “recovery plan” in 2022 that reduced costs and shortened the rail line by 1.25 miles, ending it at the Civic Center Station in Kakaako.

The Honolulu rail project was expected to cost $5.2 billion when the city finalized a deal for federal funding in 2012, but the project required a series of financial bailouts because of cost overruns. The price tag has now soared to nearly $10 billion.

Today HART has limited access to federal and local funding to complete the project, so it is unclear what the city will do if the bids for the city center segment are too high.

HART’s financial limitations were apparent when it entered into the 2022 recovery plan and opted to defer construction of a 1,600-stall Pearl Highlands Parking Garage.

That parking garage was expected to cost $330 million, but the that “if the parking garage is not deferred, HART is not confident that currently available funds would be sufficient to complete the guideway to the Civic Center Station.”

The city narrowed the field of qualified bidders for the city center portion of the project last year, and HART officials have said more than one bidder was deemed qualified to advance to the second stage of the procurement.

The qualified bidders — also known as “priority-listed offerors” — were given a deadline of Tuesday at 2 p.m. to submit their proposals for the city center segment.

A consultant hired by the Federal Transit Administration to monitor the Honolulu project has reported that market conditions and the possibility of “constrained competition” for the city center contract are seen as a high risk for the overall cost of the project.

To encourage competition, Part 1 of the procurement indicated HART would pay the priority-listed offerors a “conceptual design fee” of $5 million or their “reasonable” out-of-pocket costs for conceptual design work done for their proposals.

Those kinds of stipends have been used by HART as a way to encourage companies to bid.

The city has not identified any of the interested bidders, but a construction company called that it was interested in competing for the city center job.

is a publicly traded company that has built many mass transit and other large public infrastructure projects, including airport terminals, hospitals and correctional facilities.

The company was also one of the bidders in a failed effort by the HART in 2020 to award a contract to build the city center segment. Tutor Perini disclosed to investors that it bid $2 billion for the contract in 2020, which far exceeded HART’s budget for that segment.

HART now has a tight timeline to evaluate what are certain to be complex design-build proposals. HART announced in April that it intends to award the city center contract on Aug. 23, and plans to issue a notice to proceed to the new contractor on Sept. 16.

The city has the option of pursuing a best-and-final-offer process in the month ahead to try to get the bidders to sweeten their proposals, but Manahan declined to say if HART will do so.

The Federal Transit Administration has pledged $1.4 billion in federal funding for the project, and has been dishing out that money as HART makes progress on the rail line.

The FTA has agreed to release the next $250 million in federal funding for rail if the city can award an affordable contract to build this segment of the project.