Rail on Oahu now has a new problem. Different areas are competing over where it will go. Already the first segment isn’t considered sufficient and many want the huge project that was proposed in the first place, the one Mayor Hannemann decided Honolulu could not afford.

UH-Manoa students want the rail to run all the way to the Manoa campus. If it doesn’t then they say they won’t use it. Having rail go from the UH-West Oahu campus to Ala Moana Center isn’t good enough because then the students would have to transfer to buses from there to get to the campus. Already people are beginning to see the weakness of rail. The vast majority are going to have to transfer to and from buses to use it, some more than once. Experience shows that every transfer reduces ridership.

Another bone of contention is whether the rail will take the route by Pearl Harbor, Hickam Air Force Base and the airport or whether it will take the Salt Lake Boulevard route. One assertion made in the Council Budget and Transportation committees was that the latter route will have more riders and be more economically rewarding. How going through Salt Lake would be better than by the airport and Pearl Harbor is difficult to fathom. Of course, the opposite, the airport route would have more ridership, was asserted by the administration’s representative, chief transit planner Toru Hamayasu.

The city administration is locked into their original route because that is considered to be the most likely to win federal government approval of the project and realize the greatest amount of federal funding for construction.

The battle isn’t over, of course. There will be a final vote to pick the route by the full Council on February 21, but the vote isn’t expected to be an easy one. No matter what the decision there are going to be some mightily disappointed people and this is going carry over to future aspects of the project. An example is where Transit Oriented Developments and transit stations are going to be located, and who will stand to benefit or lose.

The eminent domain condemnation of private land for the rail route and most likely for Transit Oriented Developments is another. There are going to a number of pitched battles as people realize it is their land the city wants and they seek to preserve possession of their property through lawsuits. On the other hand, developers are going to be “rent-seeking” subsidies to build the Transit Oriented Developments and will be competing for these as well. The profitability of Transit Oriented Developments lies in subsidies.

There is a lot that stands in the way of the completion of this project and these early skirmishes are just an indication. The federal government isn’t as enamored of heavily funding rail projects as it once was. Funding has been reduced or cut all across the country. The likelihood is that Honolulu won’t get near the funding approval that it is counting on.

And the struggle to determine just where rail goes demonstrates why it is such a poor choice. It is totally inflexible and people instinctively understand this. Once built Honolulu residents will be stuck with it. If it doesn’t perform as advertised or requires too many transfers to access then ridership will be poor or fall, as it has in so many areas around the country. Some of the people who are now fighting for a rail route through their neighborhoods are going to lose. They just might find they are glad in the end.

Donald Newman is a policy analyst with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

For more information on this issue, see "2 regions want rail extensions" in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.