Back on track

Last night’s City Coun­cil vote on the mass tran­sit project did end up in a dead­lock, as I indi­cated might hap­pen. See the Hon­olulu Adver­tiser and the Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin for arti­cles about last night’s meet­ing, and see my com­ments from yes­ter­day in this arti­cle on billso.com

With­out Coun­cil chair Bar­bara Mar­shall, who missed the meet­ing because of a “fam­ily emer­gency”, the coun­cil was split 4–4 between rail and buses. Coun­cil mem­bers have sched­uled another vote for next week to either approve all three tech­nolo­gies or rec­om­mend noth­ing. In either case, the mayor will make the final call. He has always favored steel-on-steel rail.

Mayor moves ahead

In a press con­fer­ence after the nine-hour coun­cil meet­ing, Mayor Mufi Han­ne­mann announced his decision:

“It’s clear that the City Coun­cil is in a state of chaos and con­fu­sion… I’ve directed my direc­tor of trans­porta­tion ser­vices to begin insert­ing steel-on-steel as the tech­nol­ogy in the draft envi­ron­men­tal impact statement.”

The deal that cre­ated the spe­cial advi­sory panel stip­u­lated that if the coun­cil did not select a spe­cific tech­nol­ogy, the panel’s sec­tion would pre­vail. The panel rec­om­mended steel-on-steel rail by a 4–1 vote.

Too lit­tle, too late?

As both news­pa­pers pointed out this morn­ing, the Council’s vote next week is their last oppor­tu­nity for input on the system’s cost, mode and noise. Bar­bara Mar­shall avoided direct blame for the rail vs. bus ques­tion by skip­ping the meeting.

Coun­cil mem­ber Romy Cachola con­tin­ues to com­plain about poten­tial noise and prop­erty value issues in his dis­trict. How­ever, he is the coun­cil mem­ber who insisted the pro­posed route be shifted to his dis­trict and away from Pearl Har­bor and Hon­olulu Inter­na­tional Air­port. The route can be shifted back, of course. THe Depart­ment of Defense and the air­port would wel­come an alter­na­tive to crowded park­ing lots and auto­mo­bile gridlock.

Mean­while, dis­si­dent coun­cil mem­ber Charles Djou is out­raged that the city is buy­ing pub­lic rela­tions firms as part of the pro­posal. See this Star-Bulletin arti­cle for more details. One of these firms is led by for­mer US Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Nor­man Mineta. He favors rail:

“There’s noth­ing like depend­abil­ity,” Mineta said, voic­ing his sup­port for rail. “There’s no rea­son to rein­vent the wheel.”

Related posts on billso.com

• 15 April 2008: Coun­cil mem­bers dis­cuss mass tran­sit research
• 2 April 2008: Still on track?
• 20 March 2008: Like a fifth wheel
• 21 Feb­ru­ary 2008: Delhi catches mono­rail fever: Is Hon­olulu next?
• 6 Feb­ru­ary 2008: Hawaii has high­est car own­er­ship costs in the USA
• 21 June 2007: Mayor: state could pay for air­port mass tran­sit line
• 19 June 2007: City coun­cil, plan­ners still argu­ing over mass tran­sit routes, modes

Tagged as: government, Hawaii, Honolulu, marketing, mass-transit, Oahu, public-relations, rail, USA