From the moment decades ago when then-Mayor Frank Fasi began talking up a heavy-rail mass transit system for Honolulu — then known as HART, or Honolulu Area Rapid Transit — the topic has been known more for its flops, flips, reversals and failures than anything else.

But politics, cost and (some argue) the competing imperative of the state's billion-dollar highway project, H-3, meant HART was not to be.

When Fasi was out of office temporarily, his successor, Eileen Anderson, proposed a light-rail "trolley" system similar to that used in San Diego. Again, lack of political will and questions about whether the system would be worth the effort killed the plan.

Fasi returned, and with it another incarnation of rail transit, this time promising a lighter, more modern system. The stars appeared to be in line this time. Gov. John Waihee, an urban planner by instinct, was on board and he even managed to convince the Legislature to authorize a special transit tax to help pay for the system.

But again, political will faltered. The City Council, by a 5-4 vote, rejected the tax hike, thus killing the project.

Fasi was replaced by Mayor Jeremy Harris, who pushed for one form of transit and then another. Toward the end of his term, Harris backed away from the big-ticket rail idea and instead promoted a bus transit system. A few small parts of that system were launched, but in the end it was nothing but a pale shadow of the grand ideas of decades earlier.

Today, Mayor Mufi Hannemann has moved the idea about as close to reality as anyone over the past 30 years. But now Hannemann faces a council with increasingly icy feet and a new citizen petition movement that aims to stop any kind of rail or train system.

Two points here:

The first is that as the years have gone by, the possibility that Uncle Sam will pay for most of the system has already evaporated. Fasi was looking at as much as 90 percent federal funding. Now, Hannemann cannot build it without a special transit tax, "earmarked" federal dollars and innovative financial mining of development rights around transit stops and routes. That's tricky.

The second is that the new petition drive need not succeed, either in getting on the ballot or in winning approval by the voters, to do damage. If federal funders see the drive as a sign that Honolulu is losing its will again (particularly if the council refuses to cooperate with Hannemann's plans), the project could face the same end as its predecessors: oblivion.

Jerry Burris' column appears Wednesdays in this space. See his blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com/akamaipolitics. Reach him at jrryburris@yahoo.com.