After wasting billions of taxpayer dollars, transit agencies love to give their transit lines cute names like Link, MAX, BART, and DART. Following this tradition, the Honolulu Authority for Ridiculous Transit (HART) agency has decided to name its new rail line the Skyline. This is a rather lame name, however, so it seems like we should think up a better one.
The name Skyline immediately brings to mind the fact that the elevated rail line is going to spoil views wherever it goes, so my first thought was a name like Viewblocker. But names like these have nothing to do with Hawaii, and it seems like any name for a Hawaiian rail line should be evocative of its location. The name should also hint at the insanely high cost of building the line, the incompetence behind its planning and construction, and the fact that it is likely to become a white elephant with few riders.
A popular and inexpensive restaurant dish in Hawaii is the loco moco, which derives its name from the Spanish word for crazy while moco is a made-up word that rhymes with loco. I thought about something like porco loco, which in some languages could mean crazy pig, referring both to the incompetence and the pork barrel aspects of the rail line. But Hawaiian isn’t one of those languages.
In Hawaiian, crazy pig would be pua’a pupule. While it is alliterative, its six syllables don’t roll off the tongue as easily as Skyline. Pua’a lolo, which could also mean crazy pig, and Pua’a ‘ino, meaning ugly pig, each save a syllable but lose the alliteration.
Another alternative is pua’a pipi’i, meaning expensive pig, but again is six syllables long. However, this can be shortened to pu pi, which in Hawaiian means bee, as in stung by, and in English is a childish term for waste.
So calling it the pu pi line is my best idea so far. Let me know if you have any better suggestions.
elevated rail line is going to spoil views wherever it goes”
Name one elevated Freeway that ever beautified the city.
Marcida Conatus
Latin for “wasted Effort “
Megacities in Japan, Sao Paulo, else where are resorting to monorail, namely because they know digging in cities is a nightmare…. Japan’s shonan Monorail is completely suspended hanging monorail. Was built in the late 60’s, opened by 1971 so it’s construction time was a mere couple of years, NOT DECADES. At a distance of 4 miles; 8 stations and run time 14 minutes at 45 mph. The number of passengers was 11 million a year in 2018 or 30,000 people a day.
The columns and beams can be stylized to any architectural style you want, be it classical, minimalist, art deco, The Tokyo-Haneda Monorail has been operating since 1964. This eight-mile dual-beam system is privately owned and TURNS A PROFIT each year.
Monorail transcends geographic constraints, digging a hole in the ground and inserting a concrete pylon is not rocket science, on a straight level, course and because it uses rubber tires and not steel wheels
Honolulu’s HART rail system is 12.6 billion dollars and 22 miles long, 570 million per mile. Las Vegas’ MGM-Bally’s Monorail cost 25 million per mile in 1995, or 46 todays money. Las Vegas Monorail cost 114 million per mile in todays money, still 5x cheaper than HART.
Course another aspect Oahu could search as transportation… A boardwalk. Ocean City Marylands 2.5 mile boardwalk cost 10 million to replace. A 30 mile section would connect Honolulu, Waikiki, and orbiting coastal perimeter, said “Walk” would connect all major cities, bypass auto traffic with bridges and right of way and be accessable via Walking, Biking and boardwalk shuttles.
We have taken away our streets from our children by turning them into killing zones. The result is children have now been coddled especially since pandemic to remain inside. Thanks to subdivision isolation and deadly streets, kids fester indoors playing on technology.
12-15 hours a day parked in front of technology. We’re not going after cars were repairing neighborhoods and communities.
I asked ChatGPT to come up with 10 suggestions:
1- The Aloha Overbudget Express
2- Luau Line to Nowhere
3- The Hula High-Cost Choo Choo
4- Lei-Over Priced Conveyor
5- The Palm-Emptying Paradox
6- The Surfer’s Sorrow Skyride
7- The Fiscal Fiasco Flyway
8- The Puka (Hole) in Pocket Passage
9- The Waikiki Wallet Wrecker
10- The Big Kahuna Cash Crunch
Fun fact. Bermuda, a relatively thin and bendy island surrounded by a lot of water, happened to have a railway stretch between Somerset, through Mt. Pleasant and the town of Bermuda, and ended at St. George. I wouldn’t have guessed an island with so many shorelines would have had a railway over docks for goods and passengers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Railway
How do you say in Hawaiian “We spent over $10 billion on public transit but couldn’t find money for public bathrooms”
Awww, come on, give them a break. They only had five years to come up with an original, non-lame name for the rail fiasco. Maybe another five years along with a generous budget for more focus groups would do the trick.
“The city said the naming process took about five years. There was a lot of brainstorming and getting reactions from focus groups. At the time there weren’t a lot of positive things to say about the project.
‘The resounding sentiment there was if you’re going to spend billions of dollars, you cannot call it the train do better,’ said Jon Nouchi, Department of Transportation Services deputy director.
Nouchi said Hawaiian names were also considered like Hoku and Ilima. But in the end, after city officials rode the train, Skyline was the most fitting.
‘Hopefully it also will take away this connotation, negative connotation,’ said Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.” khon2 6/16/2023