Our final motion in support of summary judgment is filed in federal court:

From HonoluluTraffic.com

Our attorneys on Friday filed our final motion. Each of the Federal, City and Intervenor Defendants gets to file another brief to be filed by July 13. After that, the parties will prepare for oral argument before Judge A. Wallace Tashima on August 21.

Our attorneys told us, "We responded to every single one of the arguments in their 300-some pages of briefing. As we explained to the court, the Defendants' position just doesn't hang together. Examples: They claim that their statement of purpose and need for the Project satisfies NEPA because it was broad enough to permit consideration of numerous alternatives; but those same alternatives were eliminated from consideration for (alleged) inconsistency with the purpose and need for the Project. They claim that the Managed Lanes Alternative was appropriately eliminated from consideration because it would not provide an alternative to private automobiles; but they also concede that the Managed Lanes Alternative would be designed to accommodate a system of express buses very similar to the BRT they themselves endorsed as a solution to the region's transportation problems. They claim that a downtown tunnel would be too expensive; but they refused to do an estimate for the tunnel work that would have saved more than $500 million."

"After spending the first 9 months of the case arguing that Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act requires more detail than the Plaintiffs have provided, the Defendants have now switched course and are asking the court to accept broad, generalized, and unsupported statements about legal compliance. But those post hoc justifications cannot substitute for the detailed, empirically-verifiable findings required by Section 4(f)."

FULL TEXT: Final Motion for Summary Judgment