The operations and maintenance costs of rail are often disregarded by HART and omitted in news coverage.  But as this article states, these will be significant and necessary to rider safety.  

The case in point for this is the Washington Metro.  In the 90s the Metro was hailed as the best public transportation system in the country.  In the last twenty years, however, the Metro has deteriorated significantly.  A simple google news search of "Washington Metro" will show you news story after news story with titles such as "Fire, Smoke at Metro Center Station; Service Back to Normal" or "Cracked rail caused morning of single-tracking on Red Line" or "Some Metro employees still denying federal inspectors access".  Those are stories only from this week. They had to close down the entire system for emergency work a couple months ago.

Now think about the state of our infrastructure in Hawaii & our pothole filed roads.  Do you really believe that we won't face a future similar to the Metro?