Honolulu Lite
Honolulu Lite
We've been on the record here for many years as being against the construction of a light rail transit system mainly because such a system in the past frankly just wasn't expensive enough. Honolulu Lite Rail
would be great ideaTimes change, or marches on or whatever it is that time does when nobody's looking and we notice that the price of putting in a light rail system running from somewhere out in the sticks to civilization has ballooned to more than $1 billion. That's ONE BILLION which, to the non-mathatarian is a one with more zeros than you'd find in a box of Cheerios.
It's a number that would choke Alan Greenspan, which many individual investors have wanted to do over the years. Building a light rail system on Oahu now would be so expensive that we simply can't not do it.
The reason is that -- and this is where the chicken skin part -- the federal government will pay 90 percent of the tab. Yowza! That's $900 million of other people's money coming to Hawaii. Just think, we get a cool, modern, elevated rail system paid for by some guy running a 7-Eleven in Montana and a bunch of retired dudes in Florida. Is that great or what?
Gov. Linda Lingle and most of the thinking members of the state legislature are in favor of grabbing all the federal money they can with both hands, but the plan is mysteriously not supported by Mayor Jeremy Harris, who is trying to cobble together a little city bus transit system using actual buses and roads, costing a measly $80 million or $90 million.
LOOK, THAT MAY have been a good idea before George W. Bush got it in his head that we simply must attack Iraq. But now that we are going to war in Iraq and maybe North Korea next we have to remember what happens to Hawaii when people are too preoccupied with death and destruction to vacation anymore. What happens is that hotel rooms go empty, tourist shops go bankrupt, restaurants offer just one entree (Poi Helper), bartenders water down drinks, street walkers join convents, birds stop singing in the parks, children cry and everyone stops advertising in newspapers, which means I have to take another pay cut and my wife and dog leave me and I resort to a life of crime and/or heavy drinking. It's not a pretty thing to see -- the Poi Helper, that is.
So we need an industry that can carry us over this rough spot and there's no industry like the Big Bloated Federal Government of the United States. If we can get that bugger to give us $900 million that will be used to create jobs, keep bartenders from watering down drinks AND result in less traffic, then we have to go for it.
And we shouldn't stop there. We should look into other projects that could be financed heavily from other people's money. I'm thinking a Honolulu Lite Rail system from my house to the nearest supermarket.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com