Honolulu’s rail project, the city nightmare exercise in civic planning, development and transportation, keeps on giving.

Last week’s announcement from the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) officials, including Chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa, offered up new estimates paring back the multibillion-dollar construction deficit, but solving little.

Hanabusa, speaking in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” livestream program, said the $3.5 billion deficit could be lower.

She said new estimates pegged the deficit at between $2 billion and $1.5 billion, down from the estimates of up to $3.5 billion. This does not mean success is in sight; this means the financial disaster confronting Honolulu is still somewhere between horrendous and unimaginable, because those billion-dollar figures are not accounted for in any budget, not the city’s nor HART’s.

During her interview, Hanabusa said the numbers are all just estimates based on existing suppositions.

“It’s all based on assumptions, snapshots in time and what we basically believe the amount of income will be that’s coming in,” Hanabusa said.

Other Star-Advertiser news reports say that the city’s big hope is that the new round of planned tax increases will provide the new money for rail.

The new city money would come from a new 3% tax on hotel rooms and tourist accommodations.

According to a newspaper report, the new bill would “divide up “the 3% TAT with 1.75% of revenue going to the general fund, 1% to rail and 0.25% to natural resources. After two years, the formula would be readjusted to allot 1.25% to the general fund, 1.5% to rail and 0.25% to natural resources.”

According to Star-Advertiser Honolulu Hale reporter Ashley Mizuo, “city Managing Director Mike Formby projected the tax would generate about $86 million annually.”

That’s a nice number but it is nowhere approaching the nearly $2 billion needed, according to the latest projections for the rail deficit.

As a side note, the new federal infrastructure bill that gives billions in new federal money for roads, bridges and other needed construction projects does not include anything for Honolulu’s rail line. Hawaii’s senior U.S. senator, Brian Schatz, has been able to move other federal money toward rail, but it is in the tens of millions of dollars, not the billions needed.

So far the public has heard from HART officials, Hanabusa and HART interim CEO Lori Kahikina. They are both trying to calculate the size of the deficit.

There has been no plan offered by Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.

Back in the days of campaigns, Blangiardi was one of several candidates who vowed that the new administration “would be run like a business.”

Now it turns out that Honolulu as a business is based partially on assumptions, hopes and just guessing. None of that is Blan- giardi’s fault or choice. The public, however, should not expect every business to make money or even be a wise deal.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.