Rail’s gone from savior to multiplier of burdens

Supporters of Oahu’s rail project started out sounding visionary. In the beginning, before anything was built and they hadn’t yet picked the upholstery colors for the train cars, they would talk of this quiet, streamlined, civilized train that would effortlessly beam West-side workers and college students into town in the morning and carry them, cool and comfortable, back home at the end of the day. The horrific daily commute would be a thing of the past and families would prosper, propelled on angel wings of rapid transit. The Second City of Kapolei would prosper. Downtown was depicted as a hip, happy tropical metropolis. Yay us! We’ll have a train.

Now, supporters of the train are sounding strung-out and desperate.

Ah, c’mon! Just a little more! We can’t stop now! Check your pockets. Check between the sofa cushions. There’s gotta be more. Come on!

Parking fees?

The City Council approved a budget last week that includes a menu of plans to pay for city operations. While increasing parking fees will not directly go toward paying for building rail, the money will go into the city’s highway fund, which pays for things like road improvements and public transportation including, eventually, running the rail. (Yup, we gotta find money to run the dang thing if it ever gets built! What are the chances THAT plan is solid, yeah?)

Street parking downtown, including Chinatown, and in Waikiki will double, going from $1.50 an hour to $3 an hour.

No big deal if you’re just driving downtown to pick up some jin dui for the office potluck, but if you rely on metered parking for your downtown job, as some people do, that’s potentially an increase of $60 a week, not to mention the increased registration fee for the car.

(And no, for many people, the solution is not to walk or ride the bus to work. For some, it’s not practical to go to work without a car. Kids have to get picked up and ferried to soccer games and doctor appointments. Bus rides can add significant time to a daily commute. It takes a certain lifestyle to get by without a car.)

During the legislative session, an idea arose to increase the hotel room tax by 1 percentage point as part of a package to pay for rail. It seemed like a brilliant solution — if somebody has the cash to fly to Hawaii and stay in a swank hotel, they’re not going to notice that increase when they’re already OK paying an extra “resort fee” to use the pool, eating $8 M&M’s from the in-room mini bar and paying $40 a day to park their rental car at the hotel. The hotels went crazy, crying that such a burden would hurt poor, helpless, overburdened tourists.

So naturally, they turn to the poor, helpless, overburdened residents, the people who have the audacity to think we can live middle-­class lives on middle-class salaries. Meanwhile, the vision of rail has gone from this cool, ultra-modern service that will rescue and restore Honolulu to this bottomless money pit that makes living on Oahu that much harder.