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Raising GET to fund rail
is money well invested

One of our major goals for the 2005 legislative session is to find a way to address traffic congestion. House Bill 1309 would give the counties the authority to levy a surcharge on the state general excise tax. Each county would have the flexibility to determine the amount of the surcharge, up to 1 percent. The proceeds could be utilized only for transportation improvements in the county in which the GET was raised.

Why is raising the GET necessary? The short answer is because the transportation system, in all counties, is overloaded. The state Department of Transportation plans to begin using smart traffic technologies such as ramp metering to reduce congestion, but while these will help they will not address the fundamental problem: There are too many people trying to move from point A to point B. We need more capacity, and the cheapest way to do this on Oahu is to build a rail system.

The longer answer has to do with Oahu's history with rail projects. Twice in the last 30 years our congressional delegation secured federal funding for a rail project on Oahu. Both times a local source of funding could not be agreed upon. To give our congressional delegation the leverage it needs to obtain federal funding again, a local funding source is essential. Officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation are not going to help us until we have a local funding source in place.

Furthermore, with the federal government running huge deficits, only the most meritorious projects will even be considered. Honolulu meets all the technical requirements for rail (appropriate density and favorable geography), but if we do not have a local funding source other cities (which have raised taxes to fund rail) will get the money instead. A GET increase is the only realistic way of providing this local funding source.

How exactly will raising the GET to pay for transit benefit Hawaii families? For the average family, a GET increase will be more than offset by the savings of having a rail-based integrated transit system in place.

Here is why. Driving a car is expensive. According to the American Automobile Association, if you drive a midsize car 10,000 fewer miles per year you will save $2,165. Savings from not having to park downtown and lower insurance rates from driving less add to the savings of using public transit rather than driving. If a rail system allows you to sell one of your cars, the savings are even greater. The AAA figures indicate that you would then save about $5,300 per year. The impact of the 1 percent GET increase added to the cost of taking the train to work would enable individuals who take advantage of public transit and drive their cars less to realize considerable net savings.

The least expensive, most efficient way to increase our transportation system's capacity on Oahu is to build a rail system. Rail will be an important part of an integrated system including freeways, buses and ferries. Building rail will be expensive, but building equivalent road capacity would require 10 new lanes of freeway and would not address the street level congestion that only rail or ferries can avoid. The sooner we get started, the sooner we will have an alternative to sitting in traffic.

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