The plan of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to appoint former state Sen. Robert Bunda as its final voting member is baffling. Previous appointments to HART by Mayor Peter Carlisle and the City Council were politically connected people with zero experience running a commuter rail system. No personal knock on Bunda, who was a [...]
Posted tagged ‘Rail transit’
Bunda a curious choice for transit authority
September 8, 2011Rail car snag will show what HART is made of
August 3, 2011I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation goes into executive session Thursday to discuss the city’s troubled $1.45 billion contract with Ansaldo Honolulu to provide and operate cars for the $5.3 billion rail system. In two disturbing developments last week, the city admitted it made no [...]
HART saves the fight for another day
July 5, 2011Members of the new Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation were smart to sidestep a lawsuit over who sets its budget, but it remains to be seen if the matter is settled or just postponed for a year. The City Council insists it has the right under the City Charter to approve HART’s annual budget, while [...]
Mayor, council heading to court on rail
June 22, 2011Mayor Peter Carlisle and the City Council appear headed to court in a battle over fiscal control of O‘ahu’s $5.3 billion rail project. Carlisle yesterday vetoed the $17.5 budget the council passed for 2012 operations of the new Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit, arguing that the City Charter amendment creating HART gives the semi-autonomous agency [...]
Shakeup could toughen up City Council
June 16, 2011There’s not much to do except shake our heads at the abrupt leadership change at the City Council until what seems best described as a semi-friendly coup fully plays out with the appointment of committee chairs. Council Chairman Nestor Garcia announced he was stepping down after only six months as the council’s leader and handing [...]
Djou makes sense on rail
June 6, 2011Former U.S. Rep. Charles Djou took a break from the federal issues that have been his major focus of late and wrote a thoughtful piece in Hawaii Reporter on one of his pet local issues — Oahu rail transit. Djou notes that the community is as divided as ever on the $1.3 billion project and [...]
Hawai‘i federal judges look like poster kids for rail suit
May 16, 2011There’s more than a little irony in the decision of all of Hawai‘i’s federal judges to recuse themselves from presiding over an environmental lawsuit seeking to stop the $5.3 billion O‘ahu rail project. The judges stepped aside because eight of the nine of them signed a letter in 2008 asking the city to reconsider the [...]
All tracks lead to Don Horner
April 18, 2011I applauded when Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed First Hawaiian Bank chairman and CEO Don Horner to the Board of Education. He seemed just the kind of guy needed to help shake the school system out of its bureaucratic morass and establish a culture of clear goals and accountability. I’m less enthusiastic about Mayor Peter Carlisle’s [...]
New rail lawsuit takes shape
March 24, 2011The city dodged a legal bullet on its $5.5 billion rail plan when a state judge yesterday threw out a lawsuit by Hawaiians trying to delay construction until the city completes a survey of burial sites along the project’s entire 20-mile route. But a bigger legal challenge could be soon at hand with a group [...]
Stakes going up in legal fight over O’ahu rail
March 15, 2011The continuing fight over the $5.5 billion O’ahu rail project may soon be headed to federal court. A group that includes former Gov. Ben Cayetano has retained nationally prominent environmental attorney Nicholas Yost for a possible lawsuit to halt the proposed 20-mile commuter line between Kapolei and Ala Moana. Cayetano didn’t disclose the others in [...]
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