Honolulu’s slow-moving rail project is sliding into another “what, me worry?” moment with deadlines approaching and little acknowledgement of the project’s dropping support.

The best example of just how critical things are getting for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) board is a stinging and largely ignored letter from John Henry Felix, businessman, former Honolulu Council member and HART board member.

“The credibility of rail transit on Oahu has virtually disappeared,” Felix wrote in a June letter to HART.

Felix wants a detailed or forensic audit of the rail project and perhaps more significantly, “an honest appraisal of the numerous alternative projects.”

While there have been repeated calls to HART and the City Council, which is in charge of guiding HART, the agency has not wanted to change direction.

But, Washington sources report that the Federal Transit Administration, which is paying for a portion of the rail line, has given HART until Sept. 15 to provide a financial plan for the project now expected to cost more than $10 billion, with interest charges figured in. Existing funding will only build to Middle Street and the city’s estimated shortfall is more than $1 billion.

Today HART has no new financial plan to show the feds. The last attempt at a plan consisted of HART, the Council and Mayor Kirk Caldwell repeatedly begging for more money from Oahu taxpayers via the increase in general excise taxes.

The Legislature could not agree back in May and is slated to come back in a special session during the week of Aug. 28 through Sept. 1.

“We have secured the extra $350 million to get it to Middle Street, but now it is time to take a timeout and look at this,” Felix said in an interview last week.

Pointing to rail’s narrow 2008 voter approval, Felix said he doubts that today’s voters would give the project, way behind schedule and way over budget, a green light.

“Rail transit is on a path to financial and political ruin and the taxpayers are and will be the losers,” Felix said in his letter to HART calling for an audit.

The Legislature is still divided between taxing Oahu folks by keeping the general excise tax high, or maybe making it a bit higher, or taxing the tourists by raising the hotel room tax.

The problem with the GET approach is that it is a mean tax that proportionality takes more money from the poor than the wealthy. The politically good part of the GET tax is that most people don’t even notice that the tax on Oahu is 12 percent more and if tourists buy something they also pay the tax. The good thing about the hotel room tax is that local voters don’t pay it unless they are trying a stay-cation on the neighbor islands.

While running for re-election in 2016, Caldwell’s plan for rail was to build to Middle Street and then somehow come up with more money.

“I am confident that by the time we need to fund the remaining 4.3-mile rail line, we will have the funds necessary to do so,” Caldwell said.

The details of the Caldwell 2016 plan were to “impose greater oversight of financial operations, cost containment and risk control, and improve transparency.”

What he meant to say was, “What’s in your wallet? The real plan is to keep on taxing Oahu taxpayers.”

The bottom line is that rail has already run out of money and on the verge of running out of time.