What particularly troubles me about the rail project are the various conflicts of interest among all the parties involved.

However well meaning the mayor might be in pushing for rail transit, his ambition to be elected governor in 2010 has impeded his judgment and made him a little less objective about its value than he might be otherwise.

I weigh in at this time because I am very concerned about the mayor's personal attacks on those who oppose the rail transit project. At the mayor's direction, the city — as well as his campaign organization — has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars demeaning the opposition. This is unfortunate as there is a significant and legitimate case to be made against rail transit that the public should hear on its merits.

When I first became chairman of the House Transportation Committee (1974-78), I was much in favor of rail transit. However, in that position it was incumbent on me to perform a thorough investigation of its merits in cities across the country.

To that end, I conferred with the leading rail proponents and their critics in universities around the nation and, by 1976, I concluded that rail transit was not appropriate for Honolulu. It would have been too much money for too little result — nothing I have learned since then has led me to change my mind.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the mayor to cast aspersions on the reputations of opponents of the rail system. Whatever the conflicts of interests of rail opponents, they pale when compared to the inherent and financially juicy conflicts of the city's rail consultants who are doing the rail project's planning, design, alternative analysis and environmental impact studies.

Only a blind man would not recognize that the city's consultants, Parsons Brinckerhoff, which has already been paid $10 million in consultant fees, can be relied upon to do the mayor's bidding. In its August 2000, draft EIS report, Parsons Brinckerhoff concluded: "The light rail transit alternative was dropped because subsequent analyses revealed that bus/rapid transit using electric-powered vehicles could accomplish virtually all of the objectives of light-rail transit at substantially less cost."

Jeremy Harris was mayor then and Parsons Brinckerhoff's opinion was what he needed to dismiss light rail and justify his proposed BRT bus system. But now that we have a new mayor who wants rail, Parsons Brinckerhoff has dumped its past judgment and now proclaims that rail transit is the answer.

I am also somewhat troubled that InfraConsult, the company that has been hired as the project manager for the rail proposal, consists almost entirely of former Parsons Brinckerhoff employees — and it is especially troubling that the city's director of transportation services was recently hired from Parsons Brinckerhoff. It might be useful for the news media to do a little spadework for the public and ask some simple questions. For example, why did he leave Parsons Brinckerhoff? Are the financial rewards greater with the city than it was with Parsons Brinckerhoff?

Now there is nothing illegal about all of this but when all the assistance the city is getting in this project is coming from individuals and consultant companies who stand to make millions in fees, we should be concerned about their objectivity. Whether the project would finish up at $4 billion, $5 billion, $6 billion, or $7 billion — the consulting fees alone would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars — is there anyone who believes that the various consultants would not want to see that the rail project be built?

We have already seen the first $107 million being awarded to Parsons Brinckerhoff and InfraConsult, and it is disturbing that so much of the funds are going for high-powered public relations efforts. If the project is going to be explained to us objectively, rather than just simply sold to us, then such expenditures should not be necessary.

Ben Cayetano was governor of Hawai'i from 1994-2002. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.