The typical Honolulu household has already paid more than $1,000 in taxes toward building the city's new commuter rail system.

That's the first down payment on what will be the most expensive rail line built in the U.S. in at least the past decade.

The $5.3 billion Honolulu line has a per-person cost of about $4,000. The second most costly is the Metrorail in northern Virginia, at $1,300 per person.

The relatively high household and per capita cost estimates are products of the effort to build an entirely elevated track on an isolated island that has expensive land and a relatively small population.

Most of the cost will be borne by Honolulu taxpayers.

The federal government is expected to pay $1.4 billion, or 26 percent, of the Honolulu project. That compares with 80 percent federal funding of rail projects in Salt Lake City, Chicago and Pittsburgh and 21 percent in Seattle.

"The cost may be thousands per person, but the savings in transportation costs, if this thing is effective, would more than make up for that," said Honolulu City Councilman Gary Okino. "It would be shortsighted to try to do something cheaper, which may not turn out to be cheaper" in the long run.

"That's what government is for — big capital projects," added Okino, chairman of the council's Transportation and Planning Committee. "Nobody else can afford it, but somebody has to do it."

Voters approved moving forward with the rail project in November, but that hasn't quieted the debate over the cost of the project.

The city could shave costs by building portions of the train at street level instead of elevated, said City Councilman Charles Djou.

"This is way too much money that the people don't have," Djou said. "I understand, the (November) vote (for rail) is the vote, but if we're going to do this, let's try to be transparent and keep the costs down."

DRAIN ON TAXPAYERS

The American Institute of Architects and Kamehameha Schools have also expressed concerns about high cost and visual impacts of an entirely elevated train system.

The city argues that an elevated train will be faster, more reliable and cheaper to operate.

Others say it's a costly system that comes at a time when taxpayers can least afford it.

Eventually, the project is expected to generate thousands of construction jobs while leading to economic development for outlying communities. But until construction begins, the transit tax is a net drain on city households.

"For most working families here, a thousand dollars is a significant amount," said Leroy Laney, a Hawai'i Pacific University economics professor. "It would take something out of a household budget, if they're paying that much.

"As a public investment project it's probably a good thing, but right now, until we ... actually build the project, we're having money taken out of the economy that is not getting pumped back in to the economy."

From January 2007, when a half-percent excise tax surcharge for rail took effect, through last month, the transit tax generated more than $434 million in revenue, or about $1,000 per O'ahu household once the share paid by tourists is subtracted.

LESS FEDERAL MONEY

Overall, the half-percent transit tax is expected to generate an inflation-adjusted $4 billion or so before it sunsets at the end of 2022. That, combined with the $1.4 billion in federal funds are expected to provide all funding needed to build the 20-mile, 21-station elevated commuter train from East Kapolei to Ala Moana. The city plans to start construction in December and open for full service by 2019.

The 26 percent contribution from the federal government is less than the one-third the feds were planning to kick in for a previous Honolulu transit project that was killed in 1992.

At that time, the city was planning a $1.9 billion fixed-rail system, and the federal government was to contribute $618 million. The project died when the City Council refused in September 1992 to impose a half-percent excise tax increase to pay for the city's share of the system.

The tax burden of building the new rail line is shared islandwide, which has led to higher opposition in communities not served by rail, including Kailua and Kane'ohe.

Proponents say the communities not directly served by rail will benefit from growth policies that steer new developments to central and west O'ahu.

"Rail is going to accommodate that growth," said 'Ewa Beach resident Alicia Maluafiti, who's also a spokeswoman for pro-rail group Go Rail Go. "If we don't have something like rail transit to address those growth areas, we might as well go ahead and allow development in all O'ahu communities. If you've said no to development, then you've said development should occur in west and central O'ahu. That enables the people in these other communities to appreciate their quality of life."