Anti-Rail Effort Is Selling Tickets to a Sideshow

After reading hundreds of letters to the editor and comments in the newspapers about rail, it seems to me they fall into one of two groups – the Big Tent or the Sideshow.

The Big Tent’s center ring features the primary reason to build this system, which is traffic avoidance. Commuters who can’t tolerate the lost time and immense frustration caused by traffic congestion or for whom reliance on their own car is too costly are attracted by this reason to ride the train. They want back their mobility, which they’ve lost. That’s the reason to build this system.

The anti-rail crowd pretty much avoids the Big Tent altogether. For whatever reason, they can’t or won’t even look at the traffic-avoidance issue and instead hang out in the Sideshow where everything but the main issue is on stage.

The Sideshow’s leading “barkers” are well known, and some have been shouting about what’s behind their tents’ curtains since the last time this circus was in town. You’ve heard it all – how HOT Lanes will be the cheap and easy solution to traffic; why a vote on this issue would be the democratic way, etc.

Behind the Green Door

As just about everybody who’s paid 5 bucks to go behind the curtain knows, rarely does reality match the barker’s hype. You soon realize HOT Lanes eventually would dump a bus or car right back into traffic they allegedly would help you avoid.

Once inside the Democracy tent you’re immediately pushed toward the exit and given a handout with all the pro-rail votes taken by duly elected representatives of the people. Next door are the fire-breathers who specialize in flaming people going to and from the Big Tent. Try writing comments or blogs without a pseudonym and you soon are introduced to the flamers -- up close and personal.

And so it goes – Big Tent or Sideshow. You decide where to hang out.

Editorial Blasts Lingle

The Honolulu Advertiser pulled no punches in its only editorial today, calling Governor Lingle’s apparent intention to sign the Stop Rail Now petition “an irresponsible lack of leadership, plain and simple.”

The paper details the several key moments in the past five years when the Governor could have signaled her ambivalence or opposition to the project, but didn’t. It concludes:

"But jumping into the petition fracas now, after so much has been invested, merely adds to the upheaval. Better now that she make her exit from the ballot issue – gracefully, or otherwise.”

Elsewhere, the paper features the over-the-top success of the Charlotte, NC light rail project, which survived an attempt to kill it last year.