Inside Skyline’s Operations and Control Center
At the Pearl City hub, workers monitor the driverless system and maintain the trains.
Skyline rail system’s 43-acre operations and control center in Pearl City is where workers oversee the driverless system and maintain and clean the trains.
In the control room, five workers monitor the Skyline system with a live map showing where trains are, and they have access to 1,500 security camera angles at the stations and onboard the rail cars.
Every day, workers inspect and clean the five trains that run on the 10.75−mile first segment, which runs from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.
“We wash them, we clean them, we cuddle them and we try our best to have the trains ready every day for the people of Honolulu,” says Marcello Gamba, principal operations & readiness manager for Hitachi Rail Honolulu, the company in charge of manufacturing and maintaining the trains and their technology.
Photo: Nicholas Smith
When segment two, which runs from Aloha Stadium to Kalihi Transit Center on Middle Street, opens in 2025, two more trains are scheduled to be added to keep up with the system’s 10−minute spacing between arrivals.
There are now 19 trains in use or available in the operations and control center, with a 20th expected to be delivered this year.
