City losing
transportation director
Mayor Harris praises Cheryl
Soon, who is leaving for a new
job in the private sector
Cheryl Soon -- the sometimes blunt city transportation director who helped navigate Oahu commuters through a crippling bus strike last year -- is leaving her post for a private-sector job.
Mayor Jeremy Harris said Soon, who will become a senior vice president with the Marathon Group, will leave a mark on Oahu transportation for years to come.
"During her tenure, she had a major impact on Oahu's mass transit system, to include providing leadership that earned TheBus as the best bus system in North America," Harris said. "Because of Cheryl, there are now transit centers at Kapolei and Waipahu and hundreds of new bus shelters across our island."
Soon will be succeeded by transportation deputy George "Keoki" Miyamoto, a civil engineer with 28 years of government experience, including working on the H-3 tunnel.
Harris has also hired former city Managing Director Bob Fishman to be deputy transportation director until the mayor leaves office in January.
Soon was the point person in the administration's push for Bus Rapid Transit, a beefed-up bus system with hybrid gas and electric buses. She countered critics' objections to the controversial project with figures, reports and sometimes pointed repartee.
During last year's bus strike, Soon helped devise transportation alternatives for stranded commuters to get around.
The Marathon Group includes agricultural and chemical distributor BEI Hawaii, BES (BEI Environmental Services), truck dealer HT&T Hawaii and project and construction management firm BTS (BEI Technical Services).
Soon said yesterday that she will begin her new job tomorrow.
Soon, a planner by training, has been with the city since January 1995, first as a chief planning officer and then as director of the Department of Transportation Services.
"She looked at transportation with a planner's eye," said City Council Transportation Chairman Nestor Garcia. "It was really trying to connect the suburbs with the urban core."
Garcia credited Soon and the mayor with approaching transportation problems with different solutions.
Soon said she is most proud of the staff she oversaw.
"The staff is now working as one towards transportation solutions. They're looking at it much more systematically," Soon said. "It's done in the context working with the community ... fashioning solutions for the community."
She said she is disappointed that she won't be around to see projects such as the BRT completed. "They will happen with other hands; the groundwork has been laid."
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