The future of rail in hawaii

One thing is for sure, rail will have a vast impact on the Hawai`i landscape and future-scape when it happens. Along the path of any rail project new slums and shanties will inevitably colonize; so will shops and businesses, streets and crossroads of all kinds. Traffic may not be substantially eliminated, only redirected; diffused throughout the integrated grid. Rattling through the sky humanoids in packets of iron and steel hurtle through the great routers, switches and portals of electronic delivery. Wider corridors will deepen urban encroachment. Five hundred years from now what rail we install now will be a skeletal feature of the island skyline; but in it's pirated and twisted mode, not as nostalgic an emblem as the asphalt remnants of the old Pali road of the previous generation, that slips conspicuously into the green fern of the Windward mountains. From the stars you will see the beautiful design, so precise, yet organic in its logic, on the face of the aina. And at the root, in the shadow and muck, clusters of homeless and low income communities will cling like opihi to the iron pylons of the system, fighting for space and the scraps of endless detritus.