Quote:
Originally Posted by Paniolo Man
You probably weren't talking about me but I'm from Oahu and go back twice a year.
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No, I was talking about me.
I don’t support rail for a number of reasons, although I did when it was 26 miles including Manoa and Waikiki for $2.5 billion.
First, according to rail’s own final Environmental Impact statement, traffic will be worse in the future regardless, but rail will only reduce traffic by 1.7% as compared to the no build option. Use the numbers in table 3-12 of the EIS and calculate it for yourself. I don’t think that removing 17 out of every 1000 cars will even be noticeable.
Second, how can it possibly cost $533 million per mile? That’s an improvement over the $620 million per mile estimated in 2021, but it’s still over $100k per FOOT, and they’re building less than one mile per year. The Nagano - Kanazawa Shinkansen extension cost $120 million per mile, and they managed to build 6.7 miles per year with over 40% of it in tunnels bored through mountains. 142 miles, 60+ miles of tunnels, 21 years, $17 billion. I hope that the US Attorneys are still investigating after issuing three or four subpoenas to hart in 2019.
Third, maintenance is going to be a killer as long as it’s in good enough repair to keep running. The city’s maintenance estimate for the first year of operations from Kapolei to the stadium is $109 million, and they estimated ridership at 12,600. Hitachi has a contract for 13.25 years for $918 million, which works out to ~$69 million per year, or ~$190k PER DAY, which I believe we are already paying. Also noteworthy is what this $190k per day DOES NOT include:
“The Hitachi portion excludes electricity, security, administrative oversight and other so-called ‘O&M’ components needed to keep the elevated transit system running.
Under rail’s federal recovery plan, the power costs alone would come to about $19 million in the first year operating the full rail line to Ala Moana.
Administration, meanwhile, would cost about $8 million that year. Security would cost nearly $3 million.” Civil Beat 2/26/2020
Other factors that will make maintaining the system exceptionally painful include a projected fare box recovery of less than 25%, which results in the taxpayers having to subsidize more than 75%. Currently we have no dedicated funding source for maintenance such as a dedicated tax or fee. That means that the only currently legal source of funding for rail maintenance is property taxes. The GET surcharge, by law, can only be used for construction.
“When it's finished and operational, Honolulu’s rail transit system will lead to a 9 percent overall increase in property taxes on Oahu, Gary Kurokawa, deputy director of the City and County of Honolulu’s department of budget and fiscal services told a City Council committee Wednesday.
‘Based on broad calculation, if you need to raise $90 million it will be an overall increase of 9 percent in property taxes,’ Kurokawa said.” bizjournals 1/13/2016
I think they’ll push ahead and maybe even make it to the Civic Center eventually, but $1.3 billion for the last 1.25 miles to Ala Moana is going to be a hard sell to people tired of the gross incompetence, mismanagement, eye watering expense, and the constant stream of half truths, lies, exaggerations and delayed bad news.