This weekend offered another two-newspaper moment.

The Star-Bulletin offered up an incredibly irritating editorial on rail transit, which regurgitated an earlier column by city transportation director Wayne Yoshioka without the slightest bit of reportorial skepticism about the alleged “facts” being thrown around.

Meanwhile, the Adveriser’s Sean Hao noted that the city is withholding “more than 200 comments” on the rail transit environmental impact study, so the public won’t have access to the information or perspectives until later, perhaps after the city begins construction.

Hao followed with a story yesterday detailing some of the outstanding issues being raised by Kamehameha Schools in their report, cited here several days ago, and another story today noting the substance of concerns over the “fast tracking” through the environmental review.

Here’s the understated conclusion to Hao’s Sunday story:

Separately, Kamehameha Schools also has raised concerns about the visual impact the elevated track system will have on Honolulu’s scenery and about the high costs of building the 20-mile route entirely above ground.

“We’re not saying we’re anti-elevated (train), we’re just asking if there’s a study to see if it can be a mixed system — (an) at grade as well as elevated system,” Botticelli said.

This could be a key, since the city officially said it was going to study the alternative of a street level system running on existing roadways, at least through urban Honolulu, but that alternative was never considered in the EIS. It’s an ommission that could come back to bite the city big time.

So while the Advertiser ran a series of relatively probing rail stories, the Star-Bulletin hunkered down with an editorial that started with an ad hominem attack on City Councilmember Duke Bainum, and followed through with simply parroting the city’s stock phrases without going even a half-step further to actually examine any of the available data on the issues.

There was just so much wrong there. Take this statement from the editorial:

Yoshioka explained that street-level trains take up to three traffic lanes, and that would create havoc in urban areas such as Kalihi, Kakaako, Ala Moana and downtown by contributing to traffic congestion.

Never mind that the “three lanes” argument is based on Jeremy Harris’ bus rapid transit plan, which would have put bus stations and dedicated bus lanes in the middle of Kapiolani and other thoroughfares, and not the current alternative, used in cities across the country, of trains running in the existing single lane along the curb already used primarily by buses.

The editorial says a “five-expert panel chose the technology for the rail system in February 2008”, but that panel selected steel wheel on steel rail, a technology category that includes the street level rail system the AIA proposes for use through downtown and on to Waikiki and Manoa.

Then the editorial writers assert:

Mayor Mufi Hannemann had explained in a letter to the Honolulu chapter of the American Institute of Architects why the proposed street-level rail would be impractical, and why the architects’ estimate of construction costs failed to consider various factors.

Hannemann actually wrote the dismissive letter stating that he wasn’t even going to listen to or entertain the AIA’s analysis of alternatives, even though the formal period for considering alternatives was supposedly continuing for at least another year. Earlier, the city told the architects that their specific concerns were premature. Too early, the city said. Then suddenly, in the mayor’s view at least, it was suddenly too late.

When you’re caught in this kind of Catch-22, you have to begin thinking that the fix is in.

Anyway, all that got me thinking.

The mayor’s planned transit system is being modeled after the SkyTrain in Vancouver, B.C. Sounds good. We’ve visited Vancouver a number of times and have always enjoyed riding SkyTrain.

So yesterday I was trying to remember why I never perceived the elevated concrete guideway the train runs on to be a scar through downtown Vancouver. Then I remembered why. It runs in an underground subway tunnel through downtown, where four stations in the urban core are accessed by going down escalators or stairs from street level.

And it’s interesting to see that Vancouver residents in at least one neighborhood are now fighting against an expansion of the SkyTrain elevated concrete guideways through their neighborhood, and pleading for the low-impact community-friendly technology of trains running quietly on city streets.

Despite attempts by the Star-Bulletin and the mayor to shut down public discussion, I don’t think this one is going away any time soon.