On Politics: Has rail’s ridership train already left the station?

Someday the train will come.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi, who held a news conference last week to start talking up the arrival of rail service, issued the latest assurance.

With the mayor urging Honolulu to start preparing for four days of celebration with rail operations to launch on June 30, city officials hailed it as a “momentous milestone.”

Everything connected to Honolulu’s rail project has cautions and caveats attached. For instance, the Blangiardi announcement was for just the opening first phase of the project, running 11 miles from the East Kapolei Station to the Aloha Stadium station, also known as the Halawa Station. The entire project is planned to eventually run more than 20 miles, all the way to Ala Moana Center.

Children born at the time of the June 30 epochal event will be 8 years old when the entire project is completed, if you use the latest city timeline to predict its completion.

Saying he might be “a bit ambitious, we are a bit ahead of schedule,” Blangiardi said “We are going to have people from this island riding on our train on June 30, 2023.”

Cynics may think that geologic time is the best-used ruler to measure progress for Honolulu’s rail project, which can charitably be called overbudget and long-delayed. It was first envisioned in the 1960s and was estimated at several billion dollars. Honolulu’s last passenger train, the Oahu Railway & Land train was started by Benjamin Dillingham in 1889. According to a report by the late Honolulu journalist and historian Burl Burlingame, it ended service in 1947. Honolulu City Council Chairman Tommy Waters last week reminded possible riders that “we got a whole ’nother segment to go.”

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Executive Director Lori Kahikina, who is feeling confident about the $10 billion project, noted during last week’s ceremony that “even the media has toned down the negativity toward HART.”

Still, even HART champions like Kahikina are realistic, saying the city’s biggest public works project has “over-promised and under- delivered.”

Over the years of rail planning starting with Mayor Frank Fasi, Honolulu has gone through six mayors and seven governors. The project is now on the verge of becoming what officials hope will be a successfully functioning reality.

During that time period, things have changed. East Honolulu is not the area of major growth that it once was. Downtown Honolulu is no longer a major destination, and Honolulu’s population is not growing.

All that means the fierce demand for a new, expensive mass transit system has dimmed.

So officials opening up the rail system, to be called “Skyline,” will have to answer three questions: Does it work? Will people use it? And do we even need it?

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.