By David Shapiro

Copyright staradvertiser

The Oahu rail project has been above all else an egregious exercise in throwing good money after bad.

We’ve endured costly mistakes virtually every step of the way, some bad enough to suggest this runaway train should have been stopped.

But political leaders and lobbyists always howled, “We’ve spent so much already, we can’t stop now.”

So here we are. The commuter line from Kapolei to Ala Moana Center, originally promised to be finished six years ago at a cost of $5.2 billion, is still six years away from completion at cost of $12 billion and growing — and it won’t even make it to Ala Moana, as funding shortfalls forced a truncated terminus in a South Street lot.

Rail was supposed to be fully paid for upon its completion years ago and the .5% rail excise tax ended, but the tax has been extended twice and leaders have called for making it a forever levy, worrying about unanticipated costs in the hellish final construction phase through the city center and massive operating costs.

Bathrooms and escalators have been dropped at stations, making a system that needs to be convenient to succeed less so.

Ridership on the first leg from Kapolei to Aloha Stadium has been disappointing, even from the modest expectations of city transit officials. They’re praying it picks up when the second leg to Middle Street opens next month.

High ridership predictions for the finished system are in question as more people work from home and downtown office buildings to which passengers were to be delivered convert to apartments.

Why do I recap this sorry history now? Because the City Council has come up with yet another way to potentially throw more good money after bad on this broken project.

Bill 60, passed on first reading by the Council at its last meeting, authorized the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to begin preliminary planning and engineering for extending the rail line to the University of Hawaii.

It looks like the start of a play to keep HART and the .5% rail excise tax alive beyond their statutory sunset dates in 2031.

The bill received strong support from Pacific Resource Partnership, the politically powerful lobbying arm of the Carpenters Union and unionized contractors that’s spent millions electing rail-supporting candidates.

The big problem is the measure seeks to plow ahead with business as usual instead of finally reflecting on what went wrong with this misbegotten project and how management of future extensions could be improved.

The first question is whether HART deserves continued existence after its failures at nearly every step.

HART was established as a semi-independent agency intended to keep politics out of rail. What a joke that’s been. HART is currently chaired by Colleen Hanabusa, a former congresswoman and state legislator who can fairly be described as one of Hawaii’s master politicians of this century.

Honolulu’s mayor has a little authority over HART, but must be its face when it runs out of money and do the arm-wrestling with the Legislature and Federal Transit Administration to get relief.

As so often has been the case with rail, the Council is talking about the wrong thing.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.