The City and County of Honolulu City Council members will be meeting to discuss the issue of mass transit on Oahu, the most populous island in Hawaii, for the 5th time, yes that’s five times, today.  The issue has been quite the nightmare and is being explored to death, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on where you stand on the issue.

For advocates of the issue, getting it right the first time is important, so it makes sense for the Council members to be in agreement before implementing a project that could rival the Iraq War in cost (3.7 billion cost, for one county, c’mon).  It’s also important that they hammer out a few details before breaking ground because some of the areas that have been selected initially (Salt Lake) don’t make so much sense (how about linking the UH campuses, another example of students getting it in the …).  Other benefits include clearing up traffic on the congested H1, H2, and at times H3.  Eh, here’s an idea, why not not build an H4, it’d be cheaper, nah, nah, I kid.

Opponents of Mass Transit argue the pollution family (noise, physical blight, and environmental impact) as the reason for not implementing this project.  Others are supportive of the project but wish a different type of rail choice was made over the more reliable but noisy steel.  There is a push to get the Phileas rail installed.  Phileas is a bus transit system that runs on a fixed track and the biggest thing I’ve heard about it is that it makes less noise.  

All this fuss about noise.  I wonder if it really makes that much difference.  I mean a leaf blower and a lawn mower are both loud in my opinion so does it really matter if one is louder than the other?

Will this issue be resolved today or anytime soon?  Is this just a legacy project for Mayor Mufi?  Stay tuned same rail station (that’s a funny one), same rail time….

Dunna dunna dunna dunna Rail!!! (Old School Batman reference just in case you no know)

Shoots.

JMAW

You read that correctly. We just got this bit of news from the Honolulu Advertiser that with the Superferry out-of-service the state could be charged with up to $40 million.

Although we suggest reading the Advertiser article to get the full skinny on what could be costing you the tax payer money in the future here’s what we got from it.

The state was suppossed to recieve about $2 million a year for the first 2 - 3 years of service and then $3 million a year after that from the Superferry company. That money was supossed to be used to pay back the states debt for the project, most notably the improvements to the ports that are to use the Superferry.

Yikes, thats a bit of cash! If you want to way in and give your opinion check out our Hawaii Superferry Opinion Post. There’s already a good opinion over there and we’re hoping to get a little discussion going.