The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) has achieved another milestone with the completion of four miles of the system’s elevated guideway.

Crews have now constructed more than 170 spans. A span is the portion of the guideway between two support columns. The four-mile mark is along Farrington Highway in Waipahu. To date, 290 foundations have been completed and 204 columns have been built, as the guideway makes its way through Waipahu.

Work at HART’s Rail Operations Center in Waipahu is now nearly 80 percent complete. And early next year the Center will be ready for the delivery and testing of HART’s first train cars. Much of the remaining work at the 43-acre site that sits between the football field at Waipahu High School and the parking lots at Leeward Community College is taking place inside the main buildings.

Those include the Operations and Servicing Building where workers will perform maintenance on the train vehicles.  It will also house the computerized control center where operators will run and monitor Honolulu’s fully-automated rail system. Look for work to be completed in the first half of the new year.  Last month HART officials visited the AnsaldoBreda plant in Pittsburg, California where the first two of the 80 HART rail cars are undergoing final assembly.

All of the major components for HART’s rail cars are being manufactured and tested in plants across the mainland U.S.