DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Busy road to work The percentage of Hawaii residents who choose to drive alone to work in their own cars -- rather than car-pooling or using public transportation -- is growing, according to new details from the 2000 census.
usually taken alone
Hawaii commuters prefer
to drive themselvesBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
In 2000, 63.9 percent of workers in the islands said they drive to work alone, an increase from 60.5 percent who said they did so in 1990.
The percentage of solo commuters grew despite the expansion and modernization of the public bus system on Oahu, where the vast majority of Hawaii residents live and work. But the numbers don't surprise Cheryl Soon, director of the city Department of Transportation Services.
Nationally, according to a new analysis of the census, the decision to drive alone to and from work comes in part from people buying new homes and moving out of the urban cores where they work.
That is just as true on Oahu, according to Soon.
The decade in which the island's automobile commuter percentage grew also happened to be the period in which the city was developing its "second city" at Kapolei, she said.
"At least through the first 10 years of it, it has been more of a commuting community than it has been people living and working in that area," Soon said.
The city hopes that will change over time and that the economics of running a car will persuade people either to work closer to home or use TheBus, she said.
"It's relatively unsustainable forever," she said. "What happened to people who had two jobs and now have one? The amount of money they can devote to a car is problematical."
The city's answer is to "keep going forward with improvements to the bus system," she said, getting people to realize "that's not the same old bus I used to know."
Americans' love of going it alone, by car, still dominates commuting and is growing.
Census figures show that in 2000, 75.7 percent of workers in the nation went to work solo in their own vehicles.
That was up from 73.2 percent in 1990. Nationally, only 5 percent of workers said they commute by public transportation, roughly the same number in 2000 as in 1990.
The Census shows that 19 percent of Hawaii carpooled in 2000, down from 20.5 percent in 1990. Only 6.3 percent used public transportation in 2000, down from 7.4 percent in 1990. No matter how they traveled, it took longer to gert to work, an average of 26.1 minutes in 2000 compared to 23.8 minutes a decade earlier
"People want drive their own cars, decide when they want to go, where they want to go," said Michael Marsden, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who teaches a course in the automobile's role in society.
"In some ways, the only time people are in charge are when they are in their cars, not at home or at work. It's a very psychologically satisfying thing," he said.
Small metropolitan areas in the Midwest and South had the highest rates of solo drivers. Saginaw, Mich., and two Ohio cities -- Youngstown and Canton -- had solo driving rates around 86 percent.
Limited public transit options in those areas force more people to drive alone, said Alan Pisarski, a former deputy director of planning for the U.S. Department of Transportation who researches commuter habits.
Pisarski said that as more people own homes they face longer drives to work.
