How Will Honolulu Pay To Run Rail Once It's Built? The City Still Doesn't Know

[MichMan]

1. How did they think it would be paid for? Pixie Dust ?

Let's see, build an expensive mass transit system with no plan to pay the annual operating costs to, you know, enable it to operate ??


" Honolulu’s City Council leaders are struggling with how to cover millions of dollars in new rail construction costs so they can appease the Federal Transit Administration. They’ve proposed squeezing that money into next year’s city operations budget, which is already stretched thin.

But that challenge raises a bigger question — one that locals have asked for years. How does the city intend to pay for rail once the trains start running?

The city’s leaders still don’t know the answer.

“We have to face the fact that these costs are going to be there,” Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi said Wednesday at a Budget Committee meeting. “We’ve got to be realistic. We’ve got to face what’s out there, and we have to take the responsibility and prepare for it.”

Passenger fares will only cover a fraction of the cost, so the city will have to make up an annual shortfall of about $100 million once the full 20-mile, 21-station system opens."