Once again the fate of rail transportation in Honolulu lies in the hands of our City Council members.

We should all remember that it was former Councilmember Rene Mansho who single-handedly killed rail transit in the early '90s. The rail plan of the '90s included federal funds of nearly $1 billion and an excise tax increase to pay for that system. If the City Council of the early '90s had followed through with that rail plan, we would already have an operational system, which would certainly be an absolutely vital part of our overall transportation system today.

Of course, it would have cost a lot less money to have built a rail system then rather than now.

Unfortunately, many of the same short-sighted and special-interest individuals are once again out to discredit or altogether kill rail transit.

Those who continue to question whether rail transit will actually reduce traffic congestion still completely and utterly miss the entire point of a rail transportation system on O'ahu.

Simply put, we need a rail system to offer an alternative to the automobile! To actually believe that automobile traffic will ever get better on O'ahu is to be completely delusional. We could build as many roads, tollways, freeways, ferry systems and rail systems as can possibly fit onto our tiny island, yet still the fact remains: There are simply too many cars, buses and people, with lots more of these on the way in the future.

There are certainly many valid questions and concerns to be addressed regarding the design and construction of a rail system here. Traffic delays, construction delays, land use and zoning issues, and other unforeseen problems can almost be expected during such a monumental project in a crowded urban area.

However, we need to ask ourselves if it will be us who endure these hardships, or will we simply pass the burden on to our children, or to their children? Personally, I would gladly suffer the cost and inconvenience of construction now to give my children an alternative to wasting their valuable time sitting in automobile traffic gridlock. If we do not build a rail system now, and do not build it properly, it is our children and their children who will pay the price, not just in dollars but in quality of life.

So, the real issue that should be at the forefront of our transportation discussion is not when, or if, we should build a rail system, but rather how to build a rail system properly.

Any rail system built on O'ahu simply must be serviced directly by a standardized fleet of taxi cabs and buses. We need to model and operate our system the way that rail systems operate all over Japan. Every station must have a taxi queue and a bus terminal. These stations would serve as transportation hubs to neighborhoods all across O'ahu. This system works for millions of people worldwide, and it will work for us if done properly.

All it takes is a little imagination, a lot of money — and the will to change. Let's do this for our children.

Michael J. Lauck, a Honolulu resident, is formerly of the O'ahu Transit Group, hired by the city in the early 1990s to design, build and operate the rail transit system. He works at a local engineering company. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.