I’m digging into the history of numerous other rail projects around the country for a story Civil Beat is putting together about the wisdom of starting construction without federal funding.

More on that soon — I promise — but the reason I bring it up now is that a few hours of Googling in search of financial plans, correspondence with the FTA and general updates for projects in places like Portland, Orlando and Sacramento has made me realize something. HART‘s website, HonoluluTransit.org, is pretty good, despite complaints about rail transparency.

Sure, there’s definitely an element of PR to the site. The main item today is something about “setting the record straight” on the use of taxpayer funds for public outreach and children’s coloring books.

But it’s really easy to find everything from technical reports to the full Environmental Impact Statement to multiple versions of the project’s financial plan. The archive of press releases dating back to 2008 would make it easy for a novice to put together a timeline.

That’s not to say HART’s perfect. There are still some questions we’ve asked that have gone unanswered, public documents that have come back heavily redacted and other types of obfuscation. Opponents complain they had to wait months to get the full administrative record for the lawsuit and have had to file numerous FOIA requests to get their hands on other things.

Still, credit where credit’s due. Compared to some other rail transit websites I’m perusing today, HART seems pretty sharp.