Senator Jill Tokuda, Chair of Ways and Means explains the reality of rail costs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-xwK_WhMWk

HART Chair Colleen Hanabusa makes HART go over the numbers that they are are so totally incompetent at doing- and where HART rail remains a totally guesswork project of unknown actual costs:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=184zEAnECvM

The Truth is: Rail can be made operational by Tram, Trolley, Buses, BRT and Honolulu will NOT lose the $1.5 Billion. Yet the City, HART, all continuously LIE about the alternatives that FTA said they would accept to save Oahu tax-payers billions of dollars.
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This is the true problem- HART and the City have lied from the beginning and still keep lying now. Most legislators already know this as they were lied to repeatedly at legislative hearings to get additional funding. And they are being lied to again right now to get additional money. And they will be back again when they run out of money
again, because they WILL run out.