New car, no gas, nowhere to go

 The simple cartoon above by John Pritchett reminded me of the blistering battle between Stop Rail Now proponents and Mayor Hanneman over the construction of a light rail system. Pritchett created this cartoon in March 2004 for the Honolulu Weekly, that's over four years ago. Now let's doodle in 109,615 vehicles to the cartoon and…ta-da…we have the 2008 version.

In a blog post today on Daily Kos, the author argues that Hawaii is in grave need of mass transit and emphasizes the fact that the number of cars on the road (1,167,240) is almost equivalent to our population (1,283,388). He also sums up the contentious controversy and outlines its past and current developments. It's a great post to read if you've been out of the loop and somehow missed the dozen of commercials for and against light rail, and the almost daily newspaper headlines, op-eds and news broadcasts.

The transit debate has bombarded the media, political blogs and even the Legislature, with some House and Senate lawmakers signing the petition or not signing the petition to allow voters to decide whether light rail should be constructed in Hawaii. Lingle also signed the anti-rail petition.