The critical importance of the upcoming mayoral election has come into even sharper focus for those who believe the rail project is the fundamental issue — whether they’re for or against the city’s $5.26 billion, 20-mile elevated rail system.
The project was already dealt a major setback by a state Supreme Court ruling that compelled the completion of a required archaeological survey before proceeding further. The verdict on another legal challenge — a federal suit alleging that the project’s environmental impact statement was inadequate — has yet to be rendered.
Finally, late last week, Federal Transit Administration officials signaled that the agency would not award the federal portion of the project’s cost — $1.55 billion — until the end of the year, after the general election.
What was left unsaid, but remains a reasonable interpretation, is that they are hinging their decision on the outcome of Honolulu’s mayoral race. Former Gov. Ben Cayetano, who was the top vote-getter in the three-way primary contest, has made the project — meaning, the defeat of rail — his signature issue. His two primary opponents drew a combined vote that exceeded his, but it remains to be seen whether their supporters will unite against the former governor.
Kirk Caldwell, who faces Cayetano in the runoff Nov. 6, has tried in recent week to broaden his pitch for the job.
"While rail transit is an important issue, this election is about so much more," Caldwell told the Star-Advertiser.
We would rephrase that. The mayor’s job is about so much more — public safety, repairing infrastructure, managing the tax base and all the rest — but the election is about rail. For better or worse, it’s politics that both will determine our next mayor and seal the fate of Honolulu’s largest public works project.
Cayetano has said he will kill the project if he is elected. Even if the City Council pushes back, the feds are certain to read his election as a sea change in the project’s popular support — and be reluctant to commit Uncle Sam’s largesse, even after Cayetano leaves office.
And while he’s in office, Cayetano could throw up barriers in numerous ways. The mayor appoints four of the nine voting members of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, the agency that manages the project, and a fifth member is his own Cabinet member, the city transportation services director. Another nonvoting member would be the mayor’s planning and permitting director.
Although the mayor can’t block the HART budget, he could impede supplemental funding requests related to rail or obstruct other approvals needed for transit-oriented development and other project elements.
In short, it would likely be death by a thousand cuts, but it would still be death.
The Star-Advertiser and its predecessors, The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin, have long advocated the completion of the rail project as part of a strategy to provide more reliable transportation and align more dense development along the transit corridor.
But above all, Honolulu needs a system with a significant carrying capacity, especially as the island’s popu- lation continues to grow. Oahu will add more than 200,000 residents by 2035, according to projections by the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization. Rail anticipates this growth and is big enough to handle it.
Many opponents argue that the federal government will be happy to provide funds for an alternative, such as the bus rapid transit system that Cayetano has proposed. Don’t count on it. The chances of Honolulu winning federal funds for BRT or any transit alternative after backing out on rail at the last minute — for the second time — are uncertain at best.
More to the point, it is difficult to see how BRT would solve Honolulu’s long-term traffic needs, given that it would remove a lane from freeway travel for part of its route and part of the already-busy streets of Hono-lulu nearer its terminus.
West Oahu is the fastest growing part of the island. For those who don’t live on the Ewa plain, it would be worth a visit to grasp the ongoing expansion of that community, one that each morning funnels through inadequate and badly congested ground-transporta- tion corridors.
For those who do live there, your voice needs to be heard, and loudly. After all, at the end of the day, it’s not Cayetano, Caldwell, the FTA or HART who will decide if rail lives or dies. That decision belongs to those who vote on Nov. 6.
And in an election that likely will be close, every vote will count, on an issue that will affect Oahu’s quality of life for decades to come.