Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle is expressing some optimism over Oahu's proposed $5 billion rail transit.
He's just returned from Washington D.C. where he lobbied for the project.
Two days after his inauguration last week, Mayor Carlisle flew to the nation's capital and met with the administrator of the Federal Transit Agency. The mayor says the federal government is still ready to back the project with financial support.
"President Obama's 2011 budget includes $55 million and there's no reason to believe that this will be changed, which means we're good to go," said Carlisle.
More than $1.5 billion of federal money could be going to the rail project if all goes well. But the mayor says Hawaii's political leaders have to continue to show a strong commitment to pushing mass transit through.
"We have this unfortunate history of getting started with the transit, then stopping and we don't want that to happen again because that will put us completely at the end of the line for heaven knows how long," said Carlisle
The project has been delayed. Right now the governor is still waiting for a third party opinion on the finances of the city project. It's an issue that brought U.S. Senator Dan Inouye to do some public begging two months ago.
"I am begging the governor if everything is in line. Please for the sake of hawaii, sign the paper, I am on my knees, I am really," said Inouye.
Mayor Carlisle says as soon as the city can break ground on the project and actually start spending the money raised from the general excise tax, then federal authorities will be more convinced.
"That's gonna impress them and say hey look, we are now so committed to it that we're spending the money that we've got, and by the end of this fiscal year, we'll already have raised $400 million," said Carlisle.
When that happens, the mayor says more jobs will be created.
