Train Spotting

Hawaii used to have several functional rail systems, the most extensive of which was on Oahu. For those that don't know, Oahu is the island where the capital, Honolulu, is situated and it is the most densely populated of all the islands. Something like 2/3 of our population live on Oahu. The rails were mainly used in territorial days as a means of transporting agricultural products, mainly sugar cane. As alternate modes of transportation became available the rail began to be phased out. The and the rails have largely disappeared from the islands. There are a couple places where the trains run on a short span of tracks, mostly for the entertainment of tourists. On Oahu, the Hawaiian Railway Society is an organization that is committed to preserving what is left of Oahu's railway history. They refurbish old engines and cars and they run trains once a week, I think. I haven't ridden on a train here, but I've been to the yard several times to poke around in the old cars. I've posted 5 of my pictures here, the full set can be viewed on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fightingforward/sets/72157625954560463/with/5455923684/  They do not charge admission to the yard and it's worth going to check out if you're ever in the neighborhood. The ramshackle old cars are really something to see and have a lot of history. There's also the Waianae Mountains in the background for scenery. Also, the surrounding area of Barber's Point and Ewa are FULL of weird abandoned military sites (beware, some have been refurbished for civilian use and there is an active Coast Guard post in the area).

For awhile now there has been an ongoing debate about building a new light rail system on Oahu. We have some pretty ridiculous traffic over here. Basically, there are a lot of jobs in Town (aka Honolulu) and not so many jobs in other parts of the island so a whole lot of people commute. In the morning all the traffic is heading toward town and in the evening it's all headed out. Our freeway infrastructure is pretty lousy and has some major bottlenecks that create huge traffic jams. Other arteries and surface streets are much as you would expect in any other major metropolitan area during rush-hour: slow and treacherous. The freeway, however, is more like a parking lot. So, there has been a lot of talk about how to alleviate that traffic congestion and a rail system is one of the possibilities. There is always a lot of argument both for and against and it always gets shot down. Well, until recently. Now it's supposed to be built, but the nae sayers are still fighting it. Chief reasons of dissent are typically cites as cost inefficiency and system ineffectiveness (i.e. rail would not alleviate congestion). Of course, there are many ways that a train system could be a great success or an even greater failure and it's tough to know what would really happen. There are so many special interests involved (and probably a lot of corruption as well), so who knows how this thing would work out. Another big debate is where to put it. Space is very limited which is part of the reason for congestion. There isn't much space to expand infrastructure and there is more or less only one route to get anywhere due to the giant, jagged, impassible mountains that make up the center of the island.
I have included two articles in this post. One was a recent entry in an issue of AAA Hawaii about the history of the railway in Hawaii entitled, "Iron Giants." Unfortunately, there were a lot of cool vintage pictures and various diagrams in the magazine that were not published online. The second article is an editorial piece from the latest issue of the Honolulu Weekly  written by a professor of Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Hawaii. It's the best argument that I've seen to date that is anti-rail and actually seems to have been based off actual scientific data. I've always been a proponent of the rail, but I know how government can muck things up and I'm afraid they'll do a half assed job. If it isn't built right it will be worthless. We'll see what happens. Change (usually) occurs very slowly in Hawaii...