EDITORIAL: Surprise! Another light rail fiasco

In surely another instance of “Hard To Believe,” a commuter rail project is running off the tracks, this time showing that even in paradise, a boondoggle is a boondoggle.

The Associated Press reported last week that a commuter line in and around Honolulu remains a work in slow progress, only halfway complete after more than a decade. Equally alarming, though not surprising, the project is 30 percent over budget. Originally tabbed as a $9.5 billion rail transit project — one of the most expensive per capita in the United States — the Honolulu line is facing a budget shortfall of up to $3 billion.

This is far from atypical. State and local governments see the feds passing out money for these monument-building projects and want to grab their share, even though the projects never pencil out as planned. Furthermore, ridership estimates are hugely overestimated as a way to gin up support for such endeavors.

The Honolulu-area rail is estimating ridership of 119,600 trips per day, the AP reports, which is double the ridership per kilometer of the rail system in Miami — with a metro area five times the size of Honolulu — and slightly higher than Atlanta and its population measuring six times that of Honolulu.

But among the many bad arguments for commuter rail, one Honolulu proponent proffered perhaps the most laughable one.

“It’s a social justice issue,” said Howard Garval, president and CEO of the nonprofit Child and Family Service. “You have to get the kids up at an ungodly hour just to get into town early enough, and they’re sleeping in their car or having breakfast in their car before school opens, and that’s sad to me.”

Well, then, let’s just keep throwing piles of taxpayer cash on that spectacular bonfire! How “socially” responsible is it to blow boatloads of public money on a project even transit experts say makes no sense?

The Hawaii rail fiasco may even be a bigger farce than the $64 billion — and counting — bullet train planned between Los Angeles and San Francisco. “Right now it’s probably a race between California and Hawaii of who’s going to get their projects built or have the biggest boondoggle in the country,” Keith Millhouse, a transportation consultant and national expert on mass transit issues, told the wire service.

All of this should give pause to Clark County train fanatics, pining for light rail. It will take longer to build than expected, it will be over budget at great taxpayer expense, future maintenance costs will be bloated and not nearly as many people will ride it as proponents purport.

In Hawaii, “aloha” means both hello and goodbye. When it comes to commuter rail, “aloha” means only goodbye — to billions of dollars for years to come.