Within days of his election in 2010, Mayor Peter Carlisle traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Federal Transit Administration officials to pledge support for the previous administration’s rail transit project.

As he prepares to leave office, Carlisle said one of his last trips as mayor will be to Washington again, after the City Council on Wednesday gave the city administration approval to sign a $1.55 billion Full Funding Grant Agreement with the FTA that would help finance the city’s $5.26 billion rail project.

Council members passed the resolution by an 8-1 vote, with Councilman Tom Berg the lone vote in opposition.

Carlisle, who leaves office in the next few weeks, made a rare appearance before the Council to express thanks for the support.

"Before the end of the month I will be going once again to D.C. and it will be ultimately with the effort to try and make sure that I can sign that little thing that will get us $1.55 billion, which is going to be circulating through the economy and do all sorts of wonders for the future that we have," he said.

"It’s always been our hope to have a lean, clean, smart city in the future that has opportunities for people to stay living here in Honolulu and opportunities for us to grow as a city," he added. "This is going to be the vehicle that will allow us to do that."

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation officials expect to sign the grant agreement sometime after Dec. 19.

Berg said he initially was a rail supporter but changed his mind as the project "morphed" over time, eventually becoming a 20-mile, steel-wheel on steel-rail route from East Kapolei to Ala Moana.

He said newer technologies would be cheaper and more efficient.

"Everything about this is not fiscally sound," Berg said. "This is a nice to have project and if it were monorail, if it were Maglev (magnetic levitation), it’d be a third of the price. We could go to UH, Waikiki, it would be a better bang for your buck.

"But this steel-wheel, steel-rail, archaic behemoth — noisy — is not the solution."

Council members Joey Manahan and Ann Kobayashi voted "with reservations," with Kobayashi expressing concerns on the overall cost of the system.

"It’s not only going to ruin our landscape, but I worry about the money, as usual," she said. "I just don’t know how we’re going to afford this, and I hate to see bus service cut."