Self-serving city leaders steered rail off the tracks

The city was quick to warn that the cost of the $5.26 billion Oahu rail project will rise after the state Supreme Court stopped construction until an archaeological survey of the full 20-mile route is done.

It’s time political leaders and rail officials own up to the reality that the delay and additional costs are nobody’s fault but their own.

They ignored good advice to avoid cutting corners on archaeological and environmental studies, rushed to sign construction contracts years before they were ready to build and failed to write the contracts to protect taxpayers from delays caused by legal snags.

The big rush was a politically motivated gamble by the Mufi Hannemann and Peter Carlisle administrations that went bust.

And if the flawed mentality that got us here doesn’t change, city leaders will be digging the hole deeper instead of digging us out.

The Supreme Court ruled that the city illegally started construction before surveying the entire 20-mile rail route for Native Hawaiian burials.

City leaders recklessly gambled that if they laid enough track before hitting the urban Honolulu segment where burials would most likely be found, the court would consider the project too far along to be stopped.

Never mind that justices made clear in the Hawaii Superferry case that they’re sticklers for the letter of the law on environmental and cultural protection, no matter how far along a project is.

Now the city seems to think resuming construction is a simple matter of accelerating the archaeological survey, scheduled for com­pletion in March.

But the survey is the easy part; the thornier issue is reaching agreement with the burial council on how to deal with remains that are found.

Consider the burial disputes that have bedeviled the Kawaiahao Church expansion, the Keeaumoku Walmart and the abandoned Whole Foods Market at Ward — all in the vicinity of the rail line.

No money should have been spent on final design or construction until these issues were worked out.

This setback could threaten the city’s application for $1.55 billion in federal funds, and problems could worsen if a federal judge upholds another lawsuit challenging the rail environmental impact statement.

The city signed the first $483 million rail construction contract in 2009, three years before groundbreaking would occur, despite warnings from the Federal Transit Administration that the city was putting itself in a "pickle" with "unrealistic dates."

Another FTA memo from 2006 was prescient: "We seem to be proceeding in the hallowed tradition of Honolulu rapid transit studies: never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over."

It’s fair to ask whether those who caused this costly mess and never seem to learn from their mistakes deserve a chance to do it over.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.