Oil Replaces Weather as Top ‘Elevator Talk’ Topic

The weather isn’t much of a conversation starter in Hawaii anyway, but if it were, it couldn’t keep up with the topic on everybody’s lips these days.

The price of oil – going up, down, sideways, how far, how long, Libya, Suez Canal, hedge funds, Saudi Arabia? Enter it into the Google news site and you can lose yourself in thousands of news sources. Here’s one attention-grabber:

Hedge funds bet oil prices to rise past $150

People want answers on why oil’s price has topped $100 for the first time in three years, and sources are happy to provide them. This one says it’s the speculators and oil companies’ fault, not the Middle East’s.

The future’s all about uncertainty, but there’s probably more certainty about the price of oil going up over the long haul than anything else. That’s why we’ll predict that Honolulu transit riders will save much more decades ahead than the $11,000 annually they save now, as posted here on Sunday.

Anti-railers are absolutely convinced Oahu residents won’t ride rail, but if there’s one issue that might get through, it’s the cost of owning and driving a second car that will become just too much for tens of thousands of residents a decade or more from now.

Today’s $11K in annual savings by riding TheBus undoubtedly will be surpassed in the 2020s when Honolulu rail is fully operational. And here's something we're pretty certain about:  We’ll be riding the train along with some of the more fervent anti-railers when that day comes. We promise not to rub it in.