Watching the Honolulu City Council debate and vote on the proposed $6 billion rail project recently was interesting, but what caught my attention was the continual use by some testifiers and council members of the well worn cliché, we need the rail because “we have to get people out of their cars.”
My question is who is “we?” Second I want to know who are the “people" they are referring to?
After watching several hours of this hearing, I realized the true meaning of this cliche is: “We need to get everyone else out of their car. That way there will be fewer commuters on the highway and I can have the highway all to myself.”
Yes, there are people who say they will ride the proposed rail, if it is actually built. Most of these people already ride TheBus, so what is the difference? Even if they do ride it, at most it will only service about 8 percent of the island’s population (typical percentage figures throughout the world for rail with a few exceptions for huge cities like New York) and then only those who live along the 28-mile route from West Oahu to Honolulu.
This begs the question, why everyone else should have to pay to service such a small portion of the population? If the people in the Ewa Plain and Kapolei don’t like the commute to downtown Honolulu then let them move to a location that isn’t so far from where they work. Why do their desires take precedence over mine so that they can impose taxes upon me to facilitate their lifestyle?
This last is the real point and goes back to these testifiers attempting to get us out of our cars. This is the typical collectivist attitude, control everyone else so we have the outcome that “I” want. And in this case, saying "I’ve decided that cars are bad so you need to get out of yours." As has been pointed out repeatedly in articles criitical of former Vice President Al Gore, it is not like he has given up commuting by jumbo jet even though he's been critical that everyone else is causing "global warming." He’s too important for that, but we aren’t.
Finally, getting us out of our car doesn’t mean a quicker commute. The Rocky Mountain News recently reported most commuters are finding their trip to and from work is longer on the recently constructed rail than either autos or buses. The fact is most rails are very slow, and they are not used because most people value their time.
Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, Hawaii's first and only free market public policy institute focused on individual freedom and liberty, can be reached at: mailto:don@grassrootinstitute.org
