Island living can carry a high price.

Recently dramatic changes have been sweeping through the islands. Hawaii news outlets reported that the overbudget rail project’s public-private partnership (P3) bids have been rejected by the city administration.

The so-called P3 was to be the savior for today’s taxpayers, but would be the bane for tomorrow’s.

Truth be told, from the beginning of the rail project, there never was going to be enough money to finish it. There always would be a need for more taxes.

Now, after the coronavirus-related lockdowns on Oahu, with fewer businesses and fewer employees paying taxes, the additional tax money needed for rail is part of the coming shortfall in state revenue. Cutbacks in government services are coming.

For a while, the federal government, through Congress, cranked up the money-printing presses and funneled billions of dollars into Hawaii, and trillions more into other states.

But in Hawaii, that was not enough. The state now needs a couple more billion dollars to make it through to the end of its budget cycle.

This year, the federal government printed up and distributed to millions of citizens, some $1,200 each, which went to nearly everyone in the country, including citizens in Hawaii. But it is unlikely that another such payment is coming this year. A gridlocked Congress has turned off the federal money-printing press that served for a while during the COVID crisis.

Now, Hawaii is on its own.

With the apparent failure of the P3 bids, and the continuing COVID crisis, the money needed to finish the rail to Ala Moana Center is just not coming in. And Hawaii taxpayers don’t have much inclination to put up more of their own money to finish rail during these hard times.

So now what?

Originally, I favored stopping the rail at Middle Street. Now I happen to like Nancy Peacock’s and Janet Thebaud Gillmar’s proposed rail solution (“End rail at gateway to Downtown,” Island Voices, Star-Advertiser, Sept. 13). They propose a Chinatown terminus, with three major accompanying bus routes providing connected flow to: 1) the University of Hawaii-Manoa campus, 2) through King Street, which I believe can be a magnificent King Street Esplanade, and 3) to busy Ala Moana Center and Waikiki.

The central Chinatown rail terminus would be served by electrically-powered rail, bringing in commuters from West Oahu, and by state-of-the-art electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses — all of which would be modern, roomy, clean, quiet, wireless internet- served, air-conditioned, efficient and smooth-riding, distributing riders to their destinations in the busy part of the city.

These beautiful surface-road esplanades would thus serve thousands of west-side commuters taking them to their final destinations downtown, in Manoa and in Waikiki — all with an easy interchange at a Chinatown rail terminus.

Thousands of planted trees along the esplanades would provide greenery for cool shade along accompanying walkways and bikeways.

There would need to be the bull-dozing of older properties and the build-out of efficient, attractively-priced housing and new retail along the new esplanades.

A magnificent King Street Esplanade would be a smooth-flowing tree-lined thoroughfare through the Capitol District and the downtown corridor— providing a pure joy for commutes, commerce, or just plain cruisin’.

The magnificent gold-clad statue of King Kamehameha, with outstretched arm would be at the center of it all as if to say to citizens, “Behold!”

It would take all of us working together to achieve a vision of us all moving near-effortlessly, and trouble-free, throughout our beautiful island.

John Henry Felix was a Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board member (2016-2020) and a Honolulu City Council member (1988-2002).