The Honolulu Advertiser: "Honolulu hiring for rail transit division"
The sub-head for the April 6, 2009, The Honolulu Advertiser story is, "Proposed jobs will be some of highest-paying posts at Honolulu Hale."
The story goes on to say, "The proposed new rail jobs come with an average salary of nearly $85,000 plus benefits. The 44 jobs include one full-time executive assistant position that pays $148,764 a year and five additional executive assistant positions that have an average annual salary of $129,636, according to Mayor Mufi Hannemann's budget request."
"The rail jobs will be some of the highest-paying posts at Honolulu Hale, where the mayor earns $136,428 a year, City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle makes $129,312 a year and city department heads make $118,344 year."
OUR COMMENT: These are the administrative jobs that often are not included in operating costs. The question to ask here is whether all these jobs are included in the current City estimates of operating losses for TheTrain — or is it going to be another add-on like the Transit Police, which every rail line has but which does not seem to be discussed for this one.
Historical note: "Mayor ends rail transit"
"Mayor Anderson said that predictions indicating that the rail system would be heavily used might have been in error."
Read the full story in the New York Times.
The EPA Comments on the City & County of Honolulu’s Rail Draft EIS:
We have obtained the Environmental Protection Agency’s eight pages of comments to the FTA on the City’s rail transit Draft EIS. The EPA rated the Draft EIS as EC-2, Environmental Concerns, Insufficient Information. EPA is concerned about the lack of information on many aspects of the proposed rail line, but we were particularly struck by this one,
“While we believe that most of the alternatives eliminated prior to the DEIS are documented sufficiently, we have remaining questions about why light rail or bus rapid transit in an exclusive right-of-way were not considered as reasonable alternatives in the DEIS … Include additional information in the FEIS explaining why light rail or bus rapid transit in an exclusive right-of-way were not considered to be reasonable alternatives and were therefore not reviewed in the DEIS. If these technologies may have resulted in fewer environmental impacts, further justification is warranted to substantiate why those less damaging alternatives were not carried through for consideration.”
For the full 8 pages of text, log onto http://www.honolulutraffic.com
