For some reason, they think they know more than all the Japan Railways engineers who have been building steel-on-rail trains for a century now.
The consideration that trumps all others: If people in Japan drove instead of riding trains, there would have been 250,000 more dead people over the last 25 years. Every year we go without good public transportation on Oahu, the more dead people we have due to traffic accidents. If you want to argue about this, leave your number and I will call you.
Of course everything depends on execution...
http://www.stoprailnow.com/
But why do they assert that there will be more traffic congestion? I just rode home on a steel-on-rail train with 1,000 other people. I read the newspaper and listened to my iPod. We did not try to drive 1,000 cars down a highway.
Bus rapid transit toll lanes may be cheaper, but each bus requires a driver, and the cost of that is enormous. The train I rode on had two drivers, one in the front and one in the back, for 1,000 people.
Energy use with new Japan Railways regenerative braking trains is 1/20th the energy use of a car per passenger, so the assertion that trains use more energy is just plain wrong. This section also asserts that trains are noisy and ugly. What does that have to do with the assertion about the energy inefficiency of trains? This is so confused that I don't know what to say. Kobayashi asserts that trains are noisy. Yes, the Oedo Line is noisy. I hate it. None of the other lines I ride make a lot of noise, and the newest lines, such as the airport line in Beijing and the Fukutoshin Line are nearly silent... They certainly make less noise than a thousand cars going by. Do they think the freeway is silent? Have they ever stood next to the freeway? The light rail would be ugly? Did they think it would be invisible? Have they looked at the freeways, or many of the unbelievably ugly buildings in Honolulu for that matter? Do they think they are invisible? And looks matter more than people's lives?
The budget. Who knows if we can get the funding during the current economic implosion. We could have constructed this a decade ago when the economy was booming, but nooooo...
Money? How much do you think people in the state spend on cars and roads now? Six billion dollars for the train is about 6,000 dollars for each person in the State one time. AAA says it costs more than 8,000 dollars to own and operate a car every year, year after year, and that is not including the costs of the roads. Whether the funding can be arranged properly I have no idea... I bet the Stop Rail Now people have no idea either. I would be glad to spend, oh, say 50 hours discussing this with them. Please leave your number.
The cheap oil is gone. We might be saved by photovoltaics and electric cars, but that does not solve the problem of automobile injuries and fatalities.
Finally, the laundry list of all the reasons rail fails everywhere and will fail in Honolulu. Maybe it will. Execution matters. But why has rail worked in Japan, and not only in the high density parts of Japan, for the last century? What would happen when we have another oil crisis? At least the rail would run on electricity, hopefully by that time partly supplied by wind and photovoltaics. If a train line were built, feeder lines and urban planning would change. In Japan, train stations are ringed by stores, so you walk by one on the way home. To expect the train and urban planning to work the instant the train is built is just plain silly. We would be building the train for a century, not for next year.
Clearly, they did not want to get this on the ballot so that everyone could vote on it. They wanted this on the ballot so that it might be stopped. Hint: see their name.
This kind of behavior is simply not helpful in making rational decisions. The age of cheap oil, when we can do whatever we like, came to an end 30 years ago, but we have been in denial. The train would be built for a century (the one near my apartment is about to celebrate its centennial). Does everyone really think that we will not have an energy crisis at any time in the next hundred years?
If most transit is not by public transportation, there will be many more dead people on Oahu over the next century. That is a fact. Choose. If we make the wrong choice, take responsibility for that and try to improve the system in the future. The alternative is chaos the likes of which this paradise of spoiled children has never seen.
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