Today’s the first full Honolulu City Council meeting of the year. It starts at 10 a.m. We’ll be there. Here’s the agenda.

One thing to keep an eye on: the request for $400,000 more to spend fighting the rail lawsuit, bringing the total bill to $1 million. It already passed out of committee and is likely to survive the full Council. But you can expect some fireworks from rail opponents and Tom Berg.

Berg was excited Tuesday about news from China that low-cost urban Magnetic Levitation train technology is now a reality. Rail proponents have previously said MagLev is proprietary and couldn’t be built in Honolulu.

Berg says the city didn’t adequately consider alternate technologies before settling on steel-on-steel rail. He believes that rail opponents will prevail in their lawsuit and that HART should just produce a supplemental environmental impact statement now rather than spend more taxpayer money fighting the inevitable.

(Photo by Xinhua)