Because it was a press conference held in his office, inside a government building with government workers assisting him, Peter Carlisle wasn’t about to get into campaign mode and talk stink about his opponents in the mayor’s race.

But that doesn’t mean he went easy on rail opponents — among them Ben Cayetano, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the rail project and an announced candidate for the city’s top job.

“Don’t let anybody tell you that the four people who are opposed to rail are going to give you an alternative, because none of them have stated an alternative,” Carlisle told reporters at the press conference. That’s a clear reference to Cayetano, Walter Heen, Randy Roth and Cliff Slater.

“You can’t take these funds that were dedicated to rail and start pawning them off to somewhere else. They’re only dedicated to rail,” he said. “By the time we’re through dealing with the legal problems that would occur with that, it would cost us just as much as does to create the rail, but we wouldn’t have a train.”

Carlisle said he anticipates that he’ll work with both the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and the Honolulu City Council on ways to shore up what he referred to as the “contingency plan” that the Federal Transit Administration wants to see strengthened. He said he doesn’t intend to go to the Hawaii Legislature to ask for an extension on the General Excise Tax surcharge.

He referred specific questions about the timeline and next steps to HART Finance Committee Chair Don Horner.