Selling Oahu’s Taxpayers a Former Mayor’s Pipe Dream

BY JOE DEMARCO – It’s almost as if the city officials don’t care at all what the public thinks about rail transit.

I’m going to play the fool card and ask, what exactly is going on here?

Have the people completely lost their voices?

Following in the footsteps of Mayor Mufi Hannemann, the city has continued to go forward on rail transit when it is not clear where the money is going to come from or who is going to pay what.

In fact, I heard the City has already spent $300 million of tax-payer’s money and not a single track has been laid.

While many citizens have called for more transparency, I think the agenda of those who really run the show is pretty clear. Rail has always been an insider’s dream.

The government is selling taxpayers down the river for a bad plan that lacks any realistic funding or ridership projections. “Toru Hamayasu, who heads the city’s Rapid Transit Division, said bus stations would have a larger footprint than rail stations, and would not encourage as much transit-oriented development.”

I thought it was about traffic and jobs, now we are coming to find out it’s all about development.

When there is this much disagreement swirling around a project that has such a devastating and far reaching impact on the future of Honolulu, the wise thing to do is to step back a re-assess.

Reform the project into something more manageable and that more people can agree on.

The project as it is way too big for the taxpayers of Honolulu to bear.

If only our elected leaders were wise enough to see this.

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