Desperation Sets In: Rail’s Chief Opponent Uses Bizarre Diversion To Confuse Public on the Project

Today’s Yes2Rail post was as good as written, but then I clicked on Cliff Slater’s website.

Mr. Slater, the man more responsible than anyone else for the absence of a traffic-free way to travel through Honolulu’s east-west corridor, has posted another irrelevant opinion that’s too good to pass up.

For years I’ve publicized the web-based writings of Mr. Slater and other rail opponents on the assumption that the more Oahu residents know about what the opponents think, the less credible they’ll appear. (Here's a link to a post we particularly liked about Panos Prevedouros.)

Today is no exception. Here’s what tops Mr. Slater’s site this morning:

“If every child, woman and man on earth gave $1…it would be just enough to build the Honolulu rail project if the cost overruns were within reason. The world’s population is currently 7.1 billion. That’s about what we think (emphasis added) it will cost with overruns.”

What Mr. Slater thinks about rail doesn't reflect rail's reality, since what he thinks is driven by a car-first, mass-transit-last philosophy that can’t possibly be in Oahu’s best long-term interests.

The $7 billion figure comes, of course, from anti-rail ex-governor Linda Lingle’s “study” on rail’s finances that she commissioned at a cost of 300,000 taxpayer dollars in the final months of her term. It was a delaying tactic that pushed the whole project back several months; Governor Neal Abercrombie officially approved and accepted rail’s Final Environmental Impact Statement 10 days after he took office.

Mr. Slater’s Overrun Theory also is dependent on other jurisdictions’ rail experiences, none of which are relevant to Honolulu.  Just because a project in Puerto Rico or Jacksonville or anywhere else had an overrun is no reason to automatically conclude it will happen here, but that's what Mr. Slater thinks.

Unraveling the Web

Cliff Slater's entire anti-rail campaign is a web of specious thought threads strung together to seem plausible to the casual listener who has 2 seconds to give it. It’s after 3 seconds that his rhetoric starts to unravel.

Take his #1 pitch: “Traffic congestion with rail in the future will be worse than it is today….. That kinda sums up the whole argument.”

Mr. Slater got an enthusiastic reaction from a room full of Rotarians last year when he used that “whole argument,” but in looking around the room, I saw others in the audience who were already into their third second of thought about that statement.

Three seconds should be enough to conclude that traffic congestion of course will increase in the future, with or without rail, because the population will continue to grow. 

The City’s Wayne Yoshioka took apart that argument before the City Council and even got Mr. Slater to admit that “…rail will have an effect on reducing traffic congestion from what it might be if we did nothing at all….” 

Yet the Two Second Types invariably fall for this thin anti-rail argument, just as they’re undoubtedly lapping up what Mr. Slater thinks about a cost overrun on Honolulu rail. Just remember that the project already has hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted for unanticipated contingency expenses during construction.

Say It Again

Repetition is a good marketing technique, of course, and that’s why Yes2Rail has written about Mr. Slater’s “whole argument” more times than we can count. And that’s why Mr. Slater is so insistent that “the rail project is now in its death throes.” That’s also at the top of his website this morning. It’s what he thinks, and he wants you to think it, too.

His string of “ifs” that he thinks threaten the project includes the outcome of the mayoral race, the outcome of the Gang of Four’s anti-rail federal lawsuit, the outcome of congressional legislation to fund transportation projects and so on.

ABC Cliff – Always By Car – Slater’s legacy is still intact as the man who killed rail two decades ago, but his place in Honolulu history as a spoiler will be reduced to a footnote once the current project overcomes all obstacles and is built.

It's personal with Mr. Slater. No wonder he’s looking desperate.

This post has been added to Yes2Rail's "aggregation site" under the Mr. Cliff Slater and Friends heading.