The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is proud to announce the release of the seventh research paper in our “In Pursuit” series of policy analysis. The Honolulu Rail project was rushed through on the series of half-truths and unfulfillable promises that tend to characterize most attempts to extract large amounts of money from the public before they realize what’s going on.  As the Grassroot Institute has been a long-time opponent of the...

by Panos Prevedouros Back in 2009, UHERO provided some rail jobs estimates that said employment will start with 300 jobs, and at the peak of construction, there may be 2,000 jobs, but at that time UHERO did not know that a $1.4 billion contract to build the rail cars would go to Ansaldo Breda in Italy.* However HART testified at City Council that the rail will create 4,000 to 17,000 jobs. These estimates are flat out wrong if people believe...

by Panos Prevedouros Randal O’Toole, economist and author of several books on transportation and urban planning was in Honolulu last week where he spoke on two distinguished panels in Kapolei and in Honolulu. He summarized his opinion about Honolulu’s rail in this eye-opening Designed to Fail article. A few highlights: Honolulu rail … will have the high costs of heavy rail and the capacity limits of light rail. Honolulu rail...