Cliff Slater is a determined man — determined to stop construction on Oahu of the 20-mile, $5.26 billion rail system that the city has been trying to build for almost 30 years.
Through his nonprofit HonoluluTraffic.com, commentaries in local media and numerous public appearances, Slater has challenged virtually all of the claims made in favor of the system, including about its cost, energy savings, ridership projections, visual and cultural impacts, jobs, ancillary transit-oriented development and, especially, its effect on traffic congestion.
In the alternative, he has been a strong backer of an improved bus system, as well as of simple fixes such as better synchronized traffic lights.
Unfortunately for him, rail seemed to get the public’s stamp of approval in the latest mayoral election, in which the explicitly anti-rail candidate, former Gov. Ben Cayetano, lost by 8 percentage points. But still up Slater’s sleeve is the lawsuit he filed in May 2011, along with Cayetano and other plaintiffs, of which three out of more than 20 counts were upheld by a federal judge earlier this month. A decision on what to do about those three counts is expected Dec. 12.
Besides working against the rail, Slater is chairman of Maui Divers of Hawaii Ltd., an islands-themed jewelry company with about 600 employees that he’s been with since 1962.
The recipient of many business and community awards, Slater first arrived here in 1961, while delivering a boat from San Francisco to New Zealand for a friend — except that he loved the islands so much that he stayed, and the boat continued on with a different crew. Slater also was chief executive of Ala Wai Marine Ltd. for four years, from 1963 to 1967. In San Francisco, he had worked for a year as an advertising copy writer.
Born in London in 1933, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1959, after eight years in Great Britain’s Royal Air Force, becoming its youngest peacetime officer at age 17. He also served with U.N. Forces in Korea.
Though he doesn’t have a college degree, Slater said one of his proudest achievements was to have an article he wrote, titled “General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars,” published in the academic journal Transportation Quarterly, in 1997.
Slater is married to the former Bobbie Black, originally of Kailua, with whom he has two adult children and lives in Pacific Heights.
QUESTION: You’ve been fighting against rail in Hawaii since the 1980s …
ANSWER: Right. Twenty-seven years. But who’s counting?
Q: After this most recent mayoral election that many considered a referendum on the issue, in which the anti-rail candidate lost — Ben Cayetano — do you have any fight left in you?
A: (Laughter) After 27 years, of course I’ve got some fight left in me. It’s still one of the greatest scams (rail) ever foisted on the people of Hawaii. Not one of — it is the greatest scam.
Q: What about Pacific Resource Partnership’s campaign against Cayetano and other anti-rail candidates?
A: That was, of course, the big thing. And that was outrageous.
Q: Do you think Ben is right to file a lawsuit against the group for libel?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you think he’ll win?
A: If he doesn’t win, we’ll sure learn a lot in the discovery process. … There really should be limits on the conduct of supposedly responsible people.
Q: Do you think this is a Citizens United kind of abuse, or was that U.S. Supreme Court ruling OK with you?
A: No one’s complaining about the money. We’re complaining about the immorality of it.
Q: What about the role of the “Democratic Machine,” so to speak; how did that play out?
A: I think this is more of a crony capitalism deal, like PRP is where the money has been spent in this election. … And, of course, the rail generates huge campaign contributions. That’s why the politicians are all in favor of it. The campaign contributions that come out of the rail contractors are just immense. Do you know that Parsons Brinckerhoff is projected — and I’m sure it will go over — to get income from this of $1.03 billion? That’s why they’re in there funding Go Rail Go! and these other folks.
Q: In a nutshell, why do you think rail is a mistake for Oahu?
A: Well, none of the numbers work out. If you look at the energy issue, … the energy use for rail will undoubtedly be at least twice as much per passenger mile as we currently expend on the bus. … If you look at the ridership, … the exact numbers in the final EIS (environmental impact statement) are that if we don’t build rail, we’ll have a 23 percent increase in automobile trips, and if we do build rail, we’ll have a 21 percent increase. So what’s the difference?
Q: What about the arguments in favor of transit-oriented development?
A: Well, TODs are all highly subsidized. That’s why the developers love them.
Q: Why do you think it is that, despite your best efforts through the years, you have failed to persuade people with the points that you make?
A: Because the major media doesn’t report them. … You know, when I give talks, I have people with total disbelief. They’ll say, “Are you trying to tell me we’re going to spend over $5 billion and traffic congestion is going to get worse?” And I say, “Yes, that’s true, and that’s what it says in the final EIS.”
The fact is that the surveys still show that 30 percent of the voters still believe that (rail) will reduce traffic congestion, and 15 percent are not sure. So that’s 45 percent, and it is, in my view, the most important issue.
The politicians, to a person, without exception, keep talking about relieving traffic congestion. (U.S. Sen.) Dan Inouye says it. (Mayor-elect Kirk) Caldwell says it. They all say rail will relieve traffic congestion. And when you try and pin ’em down, they say it will relieve it from what it might be otherwise, if we don’t build rail. There’s the 2 percentage points there, the 21 versus 23.
But naturally the electorate infers from what they’re saying that they’re gonna see traffic congestion relief. You see it in letters to the editor, you hear it on the talk shows. The people who get angry with me say, “You should be in favor of it. I want relief. I live out in Ewa Beach and I want the traffic relief that I’ll get from rail.”
Q: Then, too, the pro-rail arguments morphed into being about more than just traffic congestion, didn’t they? Jobs, TODs …
A: Right, because, you know, there’s no argument that you can win other than jobs and transit-oriented development — or, as we like to say, developer-oriented transit. And TODs are all subsidized.
Q: How did you feel about the argument about rail that everybody chipped in to build highways in East Oahu or over to the Kailua side, and now it’s our turn, meaning the Leeward side?
A: But they didn’t. The federal government paid for more than 80 percent of H-3.
Q: As a plaintiff in one of the two lawsuits against the rail, were you disappointed that more of the counts in the early November ruling weren’t upheld, because it seems none of the counts that were upheld are enough to stop the train entirely?
A: We don’t know that yet. I don’t know what the city’s going to do about Mother Waldron Park, for example. But were we disappointed? Yes. The judge is clearly wrong on the thing. He said going into the thing that he had no experience with Section 4 of the Transportation Act, OK? And that is the whole core of our lawsuit, and he just got it wrong.
Q: One of the counts was that transportation alternatives such as BRT (bus rapid transit) were not given enough consideration in the EIS, but that one wasn’t upheld. Why do you think that was?
A: They didn’t look at BRT. It’s quite clear from the record. You go through the record and it’s not in there.
Q: As a co-plaintiff with him, and in general, how did your association with Ben Cayetano come about?
A: I’ve been working with Ben on anti-rail things since he was lieutenant governor.
Q: What about your co-plaintiffs law professor Randall Roth, and former judge and Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee Walter Heen?
A: Randy and I are fairly close, and Randy worked with Walter on the Bishop Estate “Broken Trust” thing. And Walter and Ben, of course, are very close, so it all came together. Ben has always said he just really liked the work I’d done opposing rail.
Q: Also filing that lawsuit with you was Hawaii’s Thousand Friends. Why do not more environmentalist groups oppose rail?
A: We got The Outdoor Circle in there as a plaintiff, and Life of the Land was trying to be a plaintiff, but they were too late to get in their name. Now, Sierra Club — what are you gonna do with the Sierra Club? They are split down the middle. I’ve gone 27 years trying to talk to the Sierra Club and I’ve had no luck in talking to their board of directors or their membership. Their leadership would like to be pro-rail but their membership isn’t having any of it.
Q: What are you going to do next?
A: We are going to wait and see what the judge says on the 12th of December.
Q: What’s the best you could hope for?
A: An injunction to further halt any construction until such time as they remedy the problems that they have with the three issues: TCP, Mother Waldron Park and the Beretania tunnel.
Q: TCP?
A: Traditional cultural properties. They totally glossed over that. I’ll tell you how bad that is: The city did not list one Native Hawaiian cultural property that should be protected, on the whole island of Oahu.
Q: Are any of those issues a nail in the coffin?
A: The Mother Waldron Park and the traditional cultural properties could be. But, again, it depends on the judge. The problem is this Section 4 statute is something he doesn’t have any experience with.
Q: Couldn’t you have disputed that in the beginning?
A: No, not really, because a lot of times the judge doesn’t know a particular aspect of the law and he just expects to be briefed on it.
Q: If rail goes through, what do you see for the future of the city?
A: Well, the rail alone will push subsidies for transit up to 19 percent of the city budget, from the current 10 percent. This, mark you, from a time in 1972, when they socialized it, when the bus system was profitable and paying taxes. So now it’s going to be 20 percent or so of the city budget. That, by the way, is from the latest FTA (Federal Transit Administration) report; that’s what they say.
That doesn’t include what the effect will be on property taxes of TODs. They’re planning to do TODs around each of the 21 stations. That means that all the property that they develop around the stations will be subsidized. That’s what’s happened in Portland (Oregon) and, as far as I know, anywhere else they’ve built TODs. `
Q: How does that affect property taxes?
A: What happens is, the usual thing they do is forgive property taxes. So city has the costs of all these new developments but it doesn’t have the income. So it has to take the costs and spread it across the people who have not had their property taxes forgiven.
It’s like the second-floor space of the core of Chinatown, which they can’t rent out. The city might come along and say, OK, we’ll forgive your property taxes on that, OK? Then you can use that reduced cost to develop and rent out that property. Well, you’d have all the costs associated with garbage pickup and sewers and all the rest of it, but you wouldn’t have any income. …
Q: Regardless of whether rail proceeds, what else could the city and state be doing to improve traffic flow on the island?
A: Well, the one thing they should have done years and years ago, which they always kind of promise to do, was sort out the traffic signals. How many times do you sit at the lights with no traffic going across in front of you, but yet you’re sitting there at a red light? It’s bizarre.
Q: What about road pricing?
A: Yeah, what the British and the Dutch have been trying to do is establish national road pricing. It’s politically difficult — especially in a whole country. It would be a lot easier to do on an island. If people only understood that we could end traffic congestion in six months, if we adopted a scheme of congestion pricing offset by rescinding all gas taxes associated with motoring. It’s long and complicated, but there are many advantages to it. That’s why people across all income groups approve it. The federal government has done surveys.
