Price of Honolulu's rail project: $12.45 billion

Randal O'Toole on the Honolulu train disaster:

When we last looked at the Honolulu rail project, less than a month ago, the projected cost had risen from $5 billion (when the city decided to build it) to $11.3 billion and the date it was expected to open had been delayed by more than 11 years. It’s gotten even worse since then....

Speaking of costs, they are now projected to be $12.45 billion, an increase of more than a billion in less than a month. That’s also about $3.6 billion more than Honolulu has to spend on the project, meaning they may never be able to complete it.

The saddest thing is that no one in the transit industry seems to be capable of learning from experiences like this. 

Instead, people like the CEOs of Los Angeles and San Jose’s transit agencies, who have overseen new rail construction leading to transit ridership declines, get rewarded for wasting taxpayers’ money by being given cushy jobs in the Biden administration.

See also Honolulu's train fiasco: A cautionary tale.

The goofy train proposal in the SF Weekly.