The opinion page in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin today, February 21, 2006, finally got closer to the truth. The cost of the building and running the rail system is projected to be $7.2 billion, not the $2.7 billion that has been bandied about endlessly by proponents. This figure was gleaned  from the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization’s plan on its website. If true to form in nearly every other city this projection will fall short of the real cost.

It was reported that the plan was developed by City Council members, state legislators and transportation experts. Notice what is missing? Any business leaders or private enterprise transportation providers. In other words it only includes people who get to play with the Monopoly money provided by our beleaguered taxpayers. The people who could provide a real solution, private enterprise, were never consulted.

Equally revealing was the funding mix reported by the Star-Bulletin (SB):

“Only 16 percent of the cost will be paid over 15 years by revenues from the city's 0.5 percent surcharge on the state's 4 percent general excise tax, scheduled to begin next year, while 46 percent will come from the city's general revenues, mainly property taxes. State and federal contributions will be 20 percent and 21 percent respectively, according to the draft plan.”

This explains Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s desire to raise the property tax. The city currently cannot afford to fulfill all its responsibilities, let alone fund 46 percent of $7.2 billion ($3.3 billion) for rail. What this really means is that the GET will have to be raised yet again to fund a greater portion of project. This is inescapable. Thus the city and state have started down the slippery slope of continual and endless GET increases until they drive the state into recession, which will be the inevitable result.

The real problem is the refusal to face the reality of rail. It doesn’t decrease traffic congestion. It never has in any city in this country where it has been built. Yet once again the editors at the SB repeat the mantra that all advocates repeat endlessly:

“In stark terms, a draft plan unveiled last week shows how rail stretching from Manoa and downtown to Kapolei is essential in avoiding intolerable congestion during the next quarter-century.”

Rail has never been shown to reduce traffic congestion anywhere in the U.S. This is the faith driven belief of public transit advocates that simply isn’t true. Other solutions, such as High Occupancy Toll lanes, have reduced congestion but this isn’t the favored solution of biased city planners, environmentalists and “transportation experts” or main stream media so it isn’t considered.

The strange thing about the above is that it completely escapes these people that it is in the best interest of “transportation experts” to promote a solution the guarantees them high paying jobs for the foreseeable future, but if the situation were reversed that would be the first objection to private business interests in the same position.

This last point illustrates the real objection to private enterprise solutions, a hatred for private enterprise and automobiles in particular. While the SB article does report on the highway spending increases that are part of the plan, the main endorsement of the editorial is the heavy rail project. Considered the “axis” of the transportation plan this is merely wishful thinking. The true axis is, and will always be, the highway and roadway system which will carry far more commuters than rail will ever be capable of.

The point is the tremendous amount of money that will be spent on construction, operation and maintenance for rail would be far better spent on other solutions. The issue here is called cost/benefit analysis and in that regard rail falls far short of other solutions. The costs per passenger mile are anywhere between 5 to 20 times as much for rail depending upon the what type of technology is used.   

Rail is the bad idea that just won’t go away. It will only be after it is built, costs more than projected, has a lower ridership that projected (which is also the case with every rail project of the modern era), drives up construction costs and thereby housing costs, drives up the cost of electricity, damages the economy of Oahu and does nothing to relieve traffic congestion will the people of Hawaii come to realize they have been taken in by a ideological pipe dream. But by then, it will be too late.