EDITORIAL: Another rail line project blows through its budget

Don’t look now, but another rail project finds itself mired in costly budget overruns and bureaucratic bungling as a result of political hubris. No, we’re not talking about the sorry boondoggle in California. Instead, the latest public transportation fiasco is draining the coffers of Honolulu and straining the patience of locals faced with paying for the mistakes.

It represents one more cautionary tale as Southern Nevada planners rush to build an expensive light rail system down Maryland Parkway.

The 20-mile rail line in Hawaii started out more than a decade ago as an effort to help residents “bypass what has become some of the world’s worst traffic, whisking commuters from the farmlands and swelling suburbs of West Oahu into the heart of Honolulu,” the Wall Street Journal reported. What’s more, the feds agreed to pay a significant share of the $5 billion cost.

But it has become depressingly predictable for backers of such projects to intentionally lowball costs in order to generate support. Indeed, the Hawaii project is now years behind schedule and 80 percent over-budget thanks to a variety of issues, the Journal found. To cover the price tag — now $9 billion and rising — local politicians have gouged tourists with an expanded hotel tax and imposed an excise tax on businesses, driving up costs for consumers. Honolulu must also pay millions in taxpayer funds to move electrical infrastructure after planners built too close to power lines.

Honolulu’s experience, the paper noted, “shows how badly municipalities can stumble in tackling giant infrastructure projects, especially when they’re powered by political urgency.”

Here in Southern Nevada, many urban planners and other transportation advocates have long been enamored of light rail, arguing it is vital to helping the region meet future infrastructure demands and moving people out of their cars. Never mind that Honolulu’s experience is more typical than not.

Last year, an advisory board of the Regional Transportation Commission recommended building an 8.7 mile light rail line from McCarran International Airport east to Maryland Parkway and UNLV, then north to downtown Las Vegas. The project would run $750 million — at this point to be paid for with magic beans — and the trains would be hauling passengers by 2025, proponents insist. The “investment” also comes with the usual promises of prosperity and economic development along the rail corridor.

The RTC will decide as early as this month whether to proceed with the project instead of opting for cheaper options involving enhanced bus service. Let’s hope the Honolulu horror story proves instructive. But the analytics don’t lie: If RTC board members decide to proceed with the rail line, Las Vegas gamblers will have been handed a lock: Take the over when it comes to the project’s cost and timetable.