Cliff Slater

I knew nothing about transit economics until I was 50 when Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi proposed building a heavy rail line not much different than the one being built now. As a businessman used to reading financial statements, I looked into their projections and concluded that the politicians were not aware of what they were getting into. But, early on, I found that whatever they knew, political considerations overrode everything. And so, over the next few years; my wife and I led a citizen’s opposition group against it. In September 1992 we defeated this rail effort in the City Council.

But it became quickly obvious that the political establishment would gear up for another stab at rail. I decided I needed to know a lot more about transit if we were to prevail at the next attempt. With the help of sympathetic people in the transit industry, the assistance of librarians at the Library of Congress, the U-C Berkeley Transportation Library, the University of Hawaii, and the City’s Municipal Library and, in time, that Godsend, the Internet, over the subsequent 30 years I obtained a thorough understanding of what transit was all about.