Cliff Slater has been fighting rail in Honolulu for a long, long time. He’s squared off on the biggest policy question of the past half-century with a triumvirate of Honolulu mayors–Frank Fasi, Jeremy Harris and now Mufi Hannemann–and so far, he’s outlasted every one of them. And just because O’ahu voters have spoken in favor of the mayor’s rail plans doesn’t mean Slater is ready to throw in the towel. Honolulu Weekly spoke with him last weekend about his plans to carry the anti-rail fight forward.

What happened?

They just threw everything at us. The city had spent a lot of money before we even started Stop Rail Now in April, but in April, they really geared up. Taxpayer money was used to promote rail–$2.6 million just through June, and then there were four more months after that. We don’t know the total number, but it would not surprise me if it was another million or so. They stopped two weeks short of election day. They kept protesting that the money was used for voter education, because it’s illegal for them to spend money influencing the vote.

On top of that, there’s the mayor’s campaign funds, which served the same cause. And the other guys [Go Rail Go, Support Rail Transit, the Hawai'i Carpenters Union] all together, in the 30 days ending October 20, they spent another $700 thousand. So it was just too much money on the other side. And then of course very important was the entrance of [Sen.] Dan Inouye.

You think that made a big difference?

Oh, yeah. When he gets up there and says, “Believe me,”…oh, shit [laughs]. One of the principal issues is the fact that everyone in the know fully understands that traffic congestion, even with rail, is going to be far worse than it is today. We got the city to admit to that this past Monday during a radio debate on KHVH. Unfortunately it happened during the podcast hour, but we have that available on our website ([honolulutraffic.com]). None of the people who are promoting rail will admit that in public normally, so I was astounded they fessed up. They’ll twist and turn and do everything they can to not acknowledge that congestion will be higher with rail than it is now. The critical moment in the campaign was when Panos [Prevedouros, the former mayoral candidate and engineering professor] said to the mayor, “Yes or no, doesn’t the city forecast that congestion will be far worse?” The mayor said, basically, “There you go again, twisting the language of the study.” He would not answer the question, and he never did, so it’s no wonder that in the Advertiser poll, 73 percent said rail would reduce congestion and shorten commutes. There seems to us to be a direct correlation between those two things: If you believe rail will shorten your commute, you’re for it. If you don’t think it will, you’re against it. So when Inouye gets up and says it’ll reduce traffic…it’s tough. When the respected fathers of the state get up there and lie about it, it’s tough.

So it was the money and the heavy-hitters.

We didn’t have the money, we didn’t have the firepower.

Well, the measure passed. What now?

We’re changing the name to Stop Rail Later. [laughs]

How much later? What can we expect from your side in the coming weeks and months?

The draft EIS [Environmental Impact Statement], all we’ve got is the front section. The crucial stuff is buried in the backup documents. The critical one is cash flow. We need that to tell whether they can do this or not. They’ve changed the claim of how much it would reduce traffic. But there’s no backup to those claims. They haven’t changed ridership number. The city claims ridership will increase from 6 to 7 percent, but that will reduce congestion by 20 percent, which doesn’t make sense. The next thing is to examine the flaws, legal and logical, in the city’s plan, and that’s our next task. Last time around, in the early 1990s, we didn’t start our work until after the EIS was out.

So can we expect that you are headed to court?

Not necessarily. It depends where events take us on this.

Look, the folks on the ‘Ewa plain are looking for a reduction in congestion. If you complete the whole thing [as currently planned], you’re talking about $7.5 billion. To do that and have no reduction in congestion, I think, is crazy. I don’t see the logic. There are opportunities to do that, to reduce traffic congestion, a zillion of them, but the politicians won’t do them.

Like what?

Like getting rid of uninsured motorists, who make up 15 percent of the cars on the road.

How do you do that?

Once a month, you have insurance companies provide license plates of all insured automobiles. Then that’s matched up against registered vehicles. You send them a notice. They have 14 days to show proof of insurance. But it’s a voting block.

I didn’t hear the sprawl issue raised often in all of this.

Developers are putting too much money in this game. Two-thirds of the Support Rail Transit money came from Campbell Estate. Developers and builders are huge contributors to the rail effort.

Any personal plans to run for office?

I’ve had no interest in [elective] politics. As a politician, you can only really do what your constituents will let you do. It seems to me that the more important thing is to educate constituents.

We’ve got to go with where the events go. There may be some serious flaws in the city’s plans and we have to find those and bring them out.

So it isn’t over.

No, no, nothing like that.

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