The chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation last Friday committed to aiding Hawaii in getting $900 million in federal aid for its light rail plan and called the $3.7 billion plan "one of the most exciting projects in the whole country."



U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar’s Washington office confirmed that the Minnesota Democrat has told Honolulu that its plan for $900 million in federal money to build a light rail connection "stands well ahead" of other plans before his committee including the Washington connection to Dulles International Airport.



The Hawaii plan has also had major backing in the U.S. Senate where Hawaii’s senior senator, Daniel Inouye, is chairman of the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation. He helped secure $15.2 million in federal funding last year for engineering on the project.



Honolulu papers quote Oberstar as saying the Honolulu project "just has to happen," after flying over the planned right-of-way that he said was too narrow to "squeeze more lanes in the roadway." Oberstar said Honolulu authorities "have got less than one mile of space between the mountains on one hand and the ocean on the other" and a rail system is necessary.



Oberstar said the Honolulu mass transit system’s plan, a $3.7 billion project to build a rail line from Kapolei to Leeward Community College, is the most efficient light rail project in the country.



Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who attended the Oberstar news conference, said he was surprised and pleased to hear Oberstar placed Honolulu’s project as a higher priority over the Washington D.C. metro line to Dulles International Airport.



Hannemann’s plan to break ground by late 2009 was "doable," Oberstar said.



The Hawaii plan differs in several key elements from the Virginia Dulles plan. Hawaii’s mass transit agency will build and operate the rail system and local leaders have shown a strong financial commitment by collecting a state tax to finance the project.



The Hawaii plan underscores complaints the FTA has made of the Virginia plan.



In his four-page, single spaced letter to Gov. Tim Kaine, last Jan. 24, FTA administrator James Simpson criticized the decision to have the airport authority build Dulles Rail charging that the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority that has "limited experience with transit projects and with exceptionally large design build contracts."



It concerned Simpson that the Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the agency that would seem to be the one to manage a $5 billion complex transit project, had such "uncertainties … in its ability to finance its ongoing capital needs system wide" that it might not be able to "maintain service levels" and keep the line in "a state of good repair."



On this first week of April, the cherry blossoms opened pink and beautiful; the first pitch of baseball was thrown in the new Nationals Stadium and children could count the days to summer vacation. But there was no Dulles Corridor Rail, no contracts, no ceremonies, and no construction teams fanning out.



There has hung over Northern Virginia a strange silence on this subject. Kaine has said nothing in weeks. The federal Department of Transportation and Federal Transit Administration have been silent and the members of Congress have only been able reiterate their commitment to this vital transportation plan.



Scott Monet, chairman of the TysonsTunnel.org, withdrew the group’s lawsuit against the FTA that asks for reconsideration of an underground tunnel plan claiming that the FTA was clearly going over the whole plan again in detail.