Both Honolulu dailies endorse the airport route for the 20-mile minimum operable segment of the rail project. It is in everyone's best interest to carefully consider the following facts before stepping up to support the route.

» Construction cost. The airport route costs $220 million more than the Salt Lake Boulevard (SLB) route. We need to avoid the mistakes of other cities and analyze whether funding estimates are what taxpayers can afford. For example, extending Denver's FasTracks, which was estimated in 2002 to cost $4.7 billion, now costs $7.9 billion. Denver officials are contemplating raising their sales tax to fund this increase.

» Ridership levels. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement lists 95,310 daily passengers on the train by the year 2030. This means that when the rail line is completed by 2018, ridership and transit-oriented development potential for the airport won't be reached for 12 more years. In comparison, you don't have to wait until 2030 with the SLB route, which would go through the densely populated community of Salt Lake, where there would be a solid ridership from day one.

The estimate of 95,310 daily passengers on the airport route is questionable. There are about 12,500 civilian employees with free parking at Hickam and Pearl Harbor and about 727 state and 15,000 private sector employees at the airport, and more than 7,000 parking stalls at the airport, including the new 1,800-stall parking structure.

These are all disincentives for employees at the airport, Hickam and Pearl Harbor to ride rail.

In comparison, San Francisco International Airport has more than 34,000 workers and higher visitor arrivals than Honolulu, yet SFO has had difficulty reaching a daily projected ridership of only 17,800 on a BART extension. Since the extension opened in 2003, ridership is nowhere near what BART officials had hoped and the route is losing money.

» Operation and maintenance costs. Currently, taxpayers subsidize the TheBus at $130 million per year. With rail, the O&M cost for both is estimated at more than $200 million.

When the initial rail segment is built from East Kapolei to Waipahu, who will ride it? This first segment might not relieve traffic since gridlock begins where H-1 and H-2 merge. As you extend the first segment, it will still be “;a train to nowhere.”; With less ridership and farebox revenues, taxpayers will pay more for O&M, which will continue to increase until it reaches downtown.

The above arguments are good reasons to build the first segment from downtown to East Kapolei via SLB; delay the airport route and give the state/city ample time to plan and build a station closer to the passenger terminal; and construct a Waikiki spur.

The advantages of adding a SLB station in Mapunapuna are: 1. the landowner is willing to donate land and help with station construction costs, and 2. there are better opportunities for affordable housing and transit-oriented development.

  The debate between Salt Lake Boulevard and the airport should not pit one community against the rest of the island. This is not a popularity contest but a serious pocketbook issue with billions of dollars at stake.

Other than encouraging commuters to leave their cars at home, a successful rail project shouldn't bankrupt taxpayers' pocketbooks. Simply put, the Salt Lake Boulevard route is cheaper and better than the airport.