Rail opens options to improve lives

Once in every few generations, we are challenged to make a tough decision that will significantly better the future quality of life for our community.

These decisions are never easy, and are fraught with controversy at the time. But they look ahead to envision a community that’s better prepared for the future.

Today, we are at such a critical decision-making point. State lawmakers will gather in special session to decide how best to provide an adequate and secure funding mechanism for Hono­lulu’s rail system. At stake is completing the project as planned — which has the support of a majority of Oahu voters — from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center.

Of course, there’s much more at stake than “just” the rail project. Completing the project as planned means we have the best opportunity in decades to encourage the privately funded development of affordably priced condos and rental apartments around the system’s 21 stations through transit-oriented development.

We have the potential to build networked neighborhoods — characterized by affordability, easy access and convenience — for residents ranging in age from millennials to seniors.

It means providing transportation equity for beleaguered residents of West Oahu, who must leave their homes hours before sunrise to have any hope of getting to jobs and school in town on time. And then they must fight traffic to get home after sunset.

It means encouraging sound planning policies to concentrate future development along the mostly urban rail alignment rather than in Oahu’s fast-disappearing open countryside.

And the rail project has the potential to be one of Oahu’s biggest economic catalysts in history, the means by which to encourage entrepreneurship for thousands of local business people. Hundreds of small businesses will have the opportunity to develop around stations, with throngs of customers passing by daily as well as thousands of new area residents.

The financial benefits to the city and state will be immense: tax collections on the new business activity, income taxes on all of the new jobs that will be formed, and property taxes on all of the new residences.

No one is happy with rail’s escalating price tag, or the internal issues that resulted in having five chief executive officers since the project got underway. But let’s not forget that this is a massive undertaking, the biggest construction project in Hawaii history. I know something about large building projects, and the fact is the bigger the project, the more likely are construction-related issues.

But the core issue before state lawmakers is how best to fund the remainder of the rail project to get us to completion. Not whether a different rail technology should now be considered, or turning guideways into elevated bus lanes, or other issues, which only serve to distract us from what’s at stake.

In short, the Honolulu rail project can be the means to realize unprecedented opportunity: housing opportunity, economic opportunity and social opportunity. We’ve never had a project on this scale that offers potential economic and community returns of this magnitude.

We look forward to Senate President Ron Kouchi and House Speaker Scott Saiki providing the leadership to ensure we can complete the Honolulu rail project. Then we can all begin making the envisioned future a reality.

Stanford Carr is the president of Honolulu-based Stanford Carr Development.