Is the Sky the Limit for the Skyline Budget?!?

Our friends, Dave and Diane proposed a trip on Hawaii's sort-of-new light rail system called the Skyline.

According to Wikipedia: 

"The final cost has grown from preliminary projections of $4 billion in 2006 to as much as $12.4 billion by 2021."

I did see another early projection cost of $5.1 billion.  Ahh well... what's a billion here and there? 😕 In 2025, it's still projected to be over $12 billion.

In 2025 the Star Advertiser called it:

"The world's priciest light-rail project per capita..."

Much of the problem now is that because the rail is so costly, it may not be able to go as far as proposed initially. They've also cut out most of the parking lots at the stations and uuummm...  NO bathrooms. 😬 

OK, going back to Dave and Diane. They suggested driving to Kapolei to the start of the Skyline and riding it to the end in Kalihi. Then we could ride it back to Kapolei and grab lunch there.

They've been on the rail once before. We've never been on the Skyline, so it would be an adventure. Our daughter laughed when I told her about it since we used the subway system while living in Chicago for 35 years and have also been on the Shinkansen bullet train many times in Japan.

But this is Hawaii!

We went to one of the few Park and Ride stations in Kapolei. We'd purchased a HOLO card several years ago in anticipation of riding the rail and never used it. Holo is Hawaiian for to go or to ride.

You'll notice Diane and Art climbing up those stairs? 😆 I followed them on the escalator.

We were there around 9:00 in the morning and didn't see many people riding at all.

It was fun to see a bird's eye view of the landscape. 

We passed through Waipahu where I grew up on a sugar plantation camp. 

The smoke stack was part of the sugar mill. When I was growing up, there used to be 2 smoke stacks. The sugar mill is gone now.

We could see battleships that were out of commission and the Arizona Memorial as well.

That big pink building on the hill is the Tripler Army Medical Center where Art and I go for our health care.

After about a half hour we arrived at the Kalihi Transit Center.

We got off the train but then realized we should have just stayed on since it was going to go right back to Kapolei where we got on.

It didn't matter. The next train came in 10 minutes and we got on.

Dave (the professional photographer) suggested that we go to the front (back?) of the train so we could have the big window to look out of.

This was loads of fun!

One of the things we wanted to check on was how far the station was from the International Airport.

We could see that if you weren't loaded down with too many suitcases, it's about a 15 minute walk from the station to the entrance of the airport.

This would be promising in an emergency.

At this point, it looks like they have funds to get to the Ka'akaukukui Civic Center stop. Their original plan was to build the rail to Ala Moana. This would allow tourists to board the train at the airport, ride to the Ala Moana Center and then take a bus into Waikiki. 

We'll see if that ever happens and if the cost goes up to $15 billion. 😮

Once we got back to Kapolei, Dave and Diane drove us to the Island Vintage restaurant.

That was also loads of fun and I especially enjoyed their Pure Mango Smoothie. 

It had been a wonderful expedition and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

When Dave and Diane dropped us off, Dave called out, "What do you think about trying the zipline 😲 next?" 

Hmmm....