Honolulu’s manager of transit oriented development, Terrance Ware, was one of the many people who traveled from Hawaii to Washington for a national rail conference this week. 

We caught up with Ware, who spoke a bit about how important it is for people to have fair and realistic expectations about the Honolulu rail project. 

 “We’ve really got to build a new vision of what the island and society can be like. Some people never believe, some people overly believe or are overoptimistic. Being pragmatic, it may sound cynical, but I keep expectations low and then exceed them.

“Part of the challenge about working in the public sector is that it’s difficult to fail. There’s no latitude — as an elected official, certainly not, but even as a staff person — and that’s why they’re so risk-averse.

“The reality is, in life, we fail. We fail on a personal level, on a professional level. Steve Jobs learned from his failures. That’s what you do. The challenge is getting the public to say, ‘We stumbled, but we’re still moving in the right direction.’”

We’ll have more from our conversation with Ware in Civil Beat‘s ongoing rail coverage.