Train wreck: Taxpayers on the hook for Honolulu transit boondoggle
By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. |April 27th, 2021|E
Over the next few months, Congress and the White House will haggle over the gory details of what is commonly referred to as the Biden “infrastructure” plan. It’s actually the Green New Deal in disguise and will contain all sorts of goodies for the well-connected.
Don’t be surprised if some of that money ends up being tossed into the bottomless pit that is the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART). This is a train that would connect downtown Honolulu with residential neighborhoods on the city’s outskirts, with the initial section running around Pearl Harbor. The 20-mile-long stretch of railway has been under construction for well over a decade, with no end in sight. Completion dates are any body’s guess. Some estimates say 2025, others say 2026, and still another pegs the completion data for 2031. For the record, the project was supposed to be completed in 2020.
City and state officials are looking to Washington for a bailout, and their prospects appear to be good. The Washington Times (April 15) reported that $70 million for the train was tucked into the massive, $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that passed Congress earlier this year. What does Hawaii’s train to nowhere have to do with COVID? Absolutely nothing. And if Honolulu’s boondoggle can get loot from a COVID bill, just think what it could get from Biden’s green infrastructure proposal.
https://www.cfact.org/2021/04/27/train-wreck-taxpayers-on-the-hook-for-honolulu-transit-boondoggle/
