We have said many times that the city deliberately started building rail out in the country where it would experience the fewest problems and be able to lay enough track mileage that it would be impossible to stop the project. Starting in the city, it would have experienced grave difficulties and serious cost overruns.

We were wrong; rail is barely out of the country and already is significantly over budget. Businesses along the route are closing and the driving public is increasingly encountering greater traffic congestion.

We were right, though, that the costly difficulties still lie ahead. Dillingham Boulevard construction work stands to severely harm commuters and businesses there, and the necessary mitigation will be costly in both construction costs and delays.

In addition, the city underrates the difficulties it faces in navigating through the area from Dillingham into town. Once it gets close to Nimitz, it will be building the elevated rail line on landfill, since the original waterfront was as far back as King Street. Once on Halekauwila Street, expect protracted delays because this is the old Hawaiian traditional burial grounds.

Attending these construction problems will be the traffic delays. Portions of Dillingham and Nimitz will be closed for long periods as will much of Halekauwila.

None of this should be surprising. Further, no modern elevated rail line has been built in the U.S. that did not go substantially over budget. The average has been 40 percent over — and San Juan, Puerto Rico, an island with a political culture akin to ours, ran 78 percent more than the final federally-approved forecast for its rail line.

And once the whole thing is built, then begin the operating subsidies. The city forecasts these to be well over $100 million annually more than TheBus costs. Nothing has been planned to pay for this and so would have to come out of the city’s general fund, which is to say, from new or expanded property taxes.

But wait, there’s more. The trains themselves will have to be repaired or replaced every 12-25 years. Manila rail transit is replacing half of its worn-out rail lines after only 15 years of service; Philadelphia has permanent crews replacing rails. Overall, we can expect to spend over the next 50 years as much as the rail line cost in the first place (think Aloha Stadium).

Since all the modern U.S. rail lines are in great disrepair and busily searching for new taxes to fund them, the feds are now recommending that cities prepay into a reserve account to prepare for future replacement and refurbishing costs. About $100 million annually should take care of our rail project.

The $100 million annually paid, or incurred, together with the additional $100 million operating subsidy amounts to $200 million annually just to operate and keep rail properly maintained, not to build it.

What do we get for all this?

Energy use? The average modern U.S. rail line uses 75 percent more energy than TheBus. San Juan, Puerto Rico uses three times what TheBus uses.

Traffic congestion? The city tells us that if we do not build rail, vehicle traffic will increase by 23 percent. If we do build it, a 21 percent increase. Huh?

Environment? The Outdoor Circle describes the rail project as “an ugly scar across one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

At this stage, we could convert the rail project into a two-lane reversible highway. It is not engineering that would prevent it, just politics.