The city has announced that rail construction will begin soon. Nowhere in the announcement did the city mention that it might be required to take everything down and return the land to its original condition later this year.

That’s exactly what the city will have to do if: (1) Congress fails to appropriate the requested $1.55 billion in federal funds; (2) Federal Judge Wallace Tashima rules that the city violated federal law in any one of the seven ways alleged in our lawsuit; or (3) former Gov. Ben Cayetano is elected mayor.

We expect all three to happen, but the city will waste hundreds of millions — perhaps even a billion — of taxpayer dollars if any one of the variables occurs.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye has promised to do whatever he can to secure the needed federal funding, but he has stressed that he cannot guarantee the funding. Especially in an election year with trillion-dollar deficits likely to be a central issue, the city is foolhardy to assume that Sen. Inouye will be able to secure a $1.55 billion earmark.

As for the lawsuit, although Judge Tashima has issued an important preliminary ruling against the city (allowing plaintiffs to proceed with the suit), the case will not be finally decided until August. So we asked the city, "What will you do if the project ultimately cannot go forward?" The city’s response: "We can just tear it all down."

In short, the city is betting hundreds of millions of dollars — your tax dollars, that is — on a long-shot trifecta: getting more than a billion dollars in federal funding during a time of fiscal austerity; changing the mind of a federal judge who has already refused to dismiss the legal challenge to the project; and an electoral loss by a candidate who holds a double-digit lead in the polls.

So why is the city rushing to start construction? It’s not as though the people are clamoring for it. A clear majority in a recent Star-Advertiser poll said they wanted it stopped ("Rail support falls," Star-Advertiser, Feb. 12). In addition, there is the following quote from the city’s own consultant, Parsons Brinckerhoff:

"Public input received in hundreds of Vision Team and Oahu Trans 2K meetings and workshops attended by thousands of Oahu residents revealed widespread agreement that while an elevated transit system might serve goals of improving in-town mobility and strengthening connections between communities, such a system would not foster livable communities. The predominant sentiment among thousands of participants was that a grade-separated transit system would be unacceptably: (1) intrusive on the visual environment; (2) divisive of communities; and (3) too expensive" (final environmental impact statement for the bus rapid transit project, Federal Transit Administration and city, July 2003. p. 2-57).

A few people have suggested that the city’s rush to begin construction makes sense because the current level of traffic congestion is intolerable, and that it has to be fixed as soon as possible.

The problem with that explanation is that the city and the FTA are both on record as acknowledging that rail will never reduce the current level of traffic congestion.

The city’s transportation director, Wayne Yoshioka, wrote: "You are correct in pointing out that traffic congestion will be worse in the future with rail than what it is today without rail" (Appendix A, Final EIS, p. 1251). The FTA’s regional administrator, Leslie Rogers, has also acknowledged that rail will not relieve the current level of highway congestion.

We think the public ought to know how city officials would answer the following question:

"Why is the city rushing to spend billions of local taxpayer dollars before first finding out: (1) whether any of the requested $1.55 billion in federal funds are actually approved by Congress; (2) how Judge Tashima rules on our federal lawsuit later this year; and (3) whether the voters of Honolulu elect as their next mayor someone who has announced his intent to stop the rail project regardless of how far it has progressed by the time of his election?"

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Walter Heen is a retired judge and former state Democratic Party chairman, Cliff Slater is a businessman who founded Maui Divers, Randall Roth is a professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law and Donna Wong is with Hawaii’s Thousand Friends. They and Ben Cayetano are among plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city over this rail project. Pearl Johnson is with the League of Women Voters and Bob Loy is with The Outdoor Circle.