Hawaii's Train to Nowhere

If you're American, you paid for this

I used to think a train in Hawaii was a good idea. I rode the train a lot when I lived in Japan, and a train would have been a time-saving alternative to being stuck in traffic.

In 2012, INRIX ranked Honolulu as having the worst traffic in the USSA, and ten years later, WalletHub ranked Hawaii as a whole as having the tenth worst traffic and as the worst state to drive in.

Blu_Lou’s response to the 2012 ranking was prophetic (emphasis mine);

I heard this report for the first time while stuck in H-1 [our freeway] traffic, driving to the airport the other day. I come to Hawaii a lot on business and have been telling (skeptical) mainland people the same thing as the study conclusion for years. Now there's independent proof. Being a small island with finite space is a big issue, but much of your traffic problems are self inflicted and avoidable. Not only does Oahu have some of the most ridiculously low and fanatically enforced speed limits I've seen anywhere in the USA, but it's home to some of the worst drivers I've ever seen as well. I've never encountered so many incidents of lane intrusion, failure to use turn signals, failure to observe customary right of way rules, tailgating and just plain inattentive/incompetent driving as on Oahu. There are reckless drivers in the LA and NYC areas to be sure, but that's more a case of calculated, purposeful recklessness rather than the obliviousness displayed by Oahu's drivers. […] I know the reaction to this will be "go home" or "don't come here", but you Hawaii residents all pay the price in those 58 hrs of your life wasted [in your car], higher car insurance rates, damage to your vehicles from fender benders, and all that wasted gas at $4.50+ or whatever a gallon. "Rail" isn't going to save you, it will only get worse if you folks don't change.

Eleven years later, rail finally became a reality. Dream come true, right? But the devil is in the details. The implementation.

One end of Honolulu’s Skyline rail transit system stops in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, there are 150 homes across the road, but I bet few of the residents use the train. You’ll see why as you read on.

This station is the most useless of all. No one lives here.

Can you see Diamond Head in the distance? Waikiki? Honolulu proper? That’s where a train is needed. Not here in the rural part of Honolulu County.¹

Here’s the end of the line.

The elevated rail in the foreground is the eastern end of Skyline.

A stadium that is miles away from Honolulu and that has been closed for the past five years:

A 2019 story from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser noted that the stadium needed $30 million in repairs. KHON-TV reported that the stadium would be condemned and was deemed unsafe to hold any crowds at all.

And here’s the punchline. If you’re American, you helped pay for this. Skyline got $1.55 billion in federal funding. So you were forced to give a few bucks for something you had never even heard of. Big deal, right?

Now consider all the other Skylines, all the other nonsense projects in the states and territories other than your own.

What Skylines am I unknowingly funding in Saipan, Alaska, or South Carolina?

This is how government works. It robs you, pockets some of the money, and hands over the rest to corporations for ‘services’ of questionable worth: e.g., Hitachi, which has a $323 million contract to run Skyline for Honolulu County. Corporations that in turn donate to politicians: e.g.,

In Mayor [and Skyline supporter] Rick Blangiardi’s first six months in office [while Skyline was under construction], donors gave his campaign $639,000, according to a campaign finance report [...] Many of the donations were from construction and contracting executives

The mayor of the city of Honolulu is also in charge of the entire county of Honolulu.

A commenter noticed,

The money starts rolling in just as the Mayor embraces rail. What a coincidence.

And construction money got the mayor into office.

Be Change Now, a super PAC backed by the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters and the businesses that contract for their labor, spent more than $660,000 on television ads and production for [Mayor] Blangiardi. The group also supported Honolulu City Council candidates Will Espero and Esther Kia‘aina, according to new campaign spending reports that cover the period between Sept. 27 and Oct. 19 [2020].

All three candidates support rail construction, an important issue for the building industry and the thousands of employees it represents who could benefit from the largest public works project in Honolulu [County]’s history.

While our eyes are on Eeeelon - on the Trump vs. Zelenskyy show - the silent robbery continues.

We residents and hotel guests have to pay special taxes to finance this monstrosity. And what do we get?

Honolulu [County]’s Skyline rail operation suffers poor ridership, has less-than-­adequate features for the disabled around its stations and does not offer multilingual signage to better inform its ridership base about ongoing changes to the city-run transit system, according to an Office of the City Auditor report released this week.

Multilingual signage is not multiqulti Woke nonsense in Honolulu County, where 28% of the population doesn’t speak English at home.

Let’s look at the comments at Pravda to sample how the literate Anglophone slice² of the population feels about that latest revelation about Skyline:

The rail’s final EIS [environmental impact statement], table 3-12, states that they expect the rail to reduce daily car trips by ~48k in 2030, AFTER 10 years of full time operation to Ala Moana 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. [It is now 2025, and Skyline is still nowhere near Ala Moana which is in Honolulu proper, far from the stadium end of the line.] Unfortunately, they also expect traffic to be ~2.8 million daily car trips at that time, resulting in a 1.7% decrease in traffic, or roughly one out of every 59 cars. Probably not noticeable, and a poor return on our $10 billion+ “investment.”

BTW, DTS [Department of Transportation Services] said they collected $617k in fares during the first year of operation. That’s a farebox recovery ratio of well under 1% vs the publicly stated DTS goal of 25 - 30%.

What was the daily ridership [of Skyline], less than 4,000? That’s about how many people browse through a single ABC store [a store catering to tourists] in Waikiki in a day. How much did they pay to ride, $2 maybe? So the city earns less than $8,000 a day on a $14 billion investment? Wonder how much operating expenses are per day? Sounds like a money pit doesn’t it?

I believe most of the riders already have bus passes so on average it’s probably less than $2. But even using $2, that’s less than $3M/year. On a $14B investment that’s about a .02%, effectively zero, return. When you factor in no noticeable improvement in traffic, this project is a disaster.

What an explosive news article about the rail fiasco. Finally an audit that exposes the failures. So why publish on a Saturday?

The Pravda has no print Saturday edition. Only online subscribers can see this story.

Late Friday evening into Saturday is where news stuff goes to die

when the controlled media does not want people to pay attention.

You now know more about Skyline than most people who actually live here! Apart from what it’s like to board and ride. A pleasant experience, because so few use it. Still not worth $12+ billion³, though.

Remember the stadium where Skyline ended? Its replacement will supposedly cost $650 million. More like a billion, I fear.

The top three most respected comments:

This is just a stupid idea altogether. I don't want one of my tax dollars going towards this albatross. We don't have the sports teams to fill a stadium! What a ridiculous way to spend money by our government!

For the LOVE of God (or whoever)!!! Has this state NOT LEARNED????? Can we kill this albatross/money pit NOW??? Before the politicians can say "too late to stop since it has now started"?????

Hard Stop. NO! No more. No more living outside our means. No more wanting things we shouldnʻt have. Just because big teams on the continent have big stadiums (with other teams in driving distance or short flights), does NOT mean we have to have one. Havenʻt we learned anything with Rail? Anything????

All this money being talked about is OUR TAX MONEY!

Dis Hawai, bra (This is Hawaii, brother). Nobadi lan nating (Nobody learns anything)!

The politicians who wasted all our money - who will waste our money - will be reelected.

It’s the local way!

1. Although Skyline does not serve Honolulu, it is in Honolulu County which is equal to the entire island of Oahu.

2. The ability to speak and understand English does not entail the ability to read complex text. Lots of people here watch Marvel movies, but only about 80,000 supposedly read Pravda - about 8% of the population. Who knows how many ‘readers’ mostly look for ads and coupons? And I often see copies of Pravda lying in driveways untouched.

3. The most recent figure I can find for Skyline is $12.4 billion as of 2021, two years before it opened.