Bus Rapid Transit
Will it bring Honolulu
life in the fast lane or
stop us in our tracks?Transit spending smart | Beware the 'Car Eaters' Everybody hates traffic, yet today more Hawaii commuters drive to work alone than ever before. The Price of Paradise wants to know, is the city's Bus Rapid Transit plan, which would exclude cars from 32 miles of busy thoroughfares, the solution? Or is it another traffic mitigation disaster in the making, designed by idealists who want to take our cars away?
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COURTESY KARL KIM
A artist's rendering of the proposed CitySurfer BRT vehicles traversing a Honolulu street corner.
IT IS TIME to invest in public transit. We need real alternatives to driving. We must do more than accommodate the private automobile. Investing in public
transportation is
smart spendingBy Karl Kim
As an island community, we need to develop a more sensible, balanced system to meet our diverse transportation needs. While Bus Rapid Transit is not the panacea for all of Honolulu's transportation woes, BRT is a big step in the right direction.
In the state with the third-fastest-aging population in the nation, with a much higher cost of living than mainland cities, you would think people in Honolulu would more widely support public transit.
Given our limited land area, population density, dependence on tourism and need to preserve the natural environment, it seems odd that we have not managed to invest more in public transit.
Since 1980, 12 other U.S cities have built new light-rail transit systems using federal funds. Several other cities are busy planning them. Many cities around the world have built BRTs.
Honolulu holds the dubious distinction of being the only major city to reject federally funded transit projects -- not once or twice, but three times.
Traffic and congestion continue to increase. All the symptoms of our auto dependence continue to plague us: sprawl, pollution, productivity losses, road rage, traffic accidents and steady calls for more roads, parking spaces, off-ramps, stop signs and traffic signals.
As if it really matters, we even want more traffic updates. The helicopters, video cameras and radio broadcasts tell us that more people are driving longer distances in bigger vehicles and complaining more about traffic.
Not only do young people own cars and drive at an earlier age, our senior citizens continue to drive more and more.
How can we break the habit?
BRT IS PART of the solution. The city's plan calls for 32 miles of bus-lane improvements, including both a regional system to serve West Oahu and an urban, in-town system.
The in-town BRT will dedicate two traffic lanes for exclusive bus use (with shared use at intersections for turning) on major arterials, such as South King, Pensacola and Keeau-moku streets, Kapiolani and Dillingham boulevards and University Avenue.
Of the 12.8 miles within the urban core, 38 percent of the system would run in exclusive transit lanes located in the median strip, while 29 percent of the system would operate along the curb in semi-exclusive lanes.
An estimated 46,000 passengers a day will ride the BRT. It will serve some 8,613 low-income households living within a half-mile of its 31 planned stops. More than half of Oahu's population and 80 percent of the island's jobs are located along the transit route.
NAYSAYERS neglect the fact that improvements in mobility and accessibility support economic growth and development. Many of the opponents forget that the transit-dependent are among the most vulnerable members of our community.
BRT is much cheaper and more flexible than rail. New technologies -- including fuel cells, electric vehicles, advanced communications and demand-responsive routing systems -- offer opportunities to provide superior transit service.
Buses also can be readily privatized to allow for local ownership and private-sector part- icipation in transit management and operations.
We can build a cleaner, quieter, safer, more attractive bus.
Honolulu's plan recently won the endorsement of the Sierra Club, which examined 49 transportation projects across the nation and described BRT as "a transportation solution for the 21st century."
The Sierra Club noted that as traffic and smog continue to degrade the quality of life, visionary communities like Honolulu are turning to alternative transportation systems like BRT.
Let's hope the vision becomes reality.
Karl Kim is interim vice chancellor and professor of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Last year he headed a team of Hawaii planners and engineers that won an international design competition for a hydrogen fuel-cell bus known as the CitySurfer. BACK TO TOP
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ASSOCIATED PRESS I'M A HAWAII kid. Born and raised here, I used to go to school on silver HRT (Honolulu Rapid Transit Co.) trolleys. Honolulu drivers
better watch out
for the ‘Car Eaters’By Galen Fox
As an adult, I lived in Washington, D.C. and Hong Kong, both before and after these two "world cities" installed rail transit systems. Both systems are roaring successes. The quality of life in Washington and Hong Kong is higher because rapid, efficient rail transit delivers you exactly when you want to arrive.
I support rail transit. Rail transit is a "carrot," a better way to travel that draws people out of private vehicles because rail avoids traffic and operates on schedule.
As urban specialist Neal Peirce said during his recent Honolulu visit (Star-Bulletin, Aug. 20), light rail is the overwhelming choice of U.S. cities moving to mass transit, picked by 15 cities in recent years to lure people out of their cars.
The rail "carrot" works, Peirce notes, because a fixed line attracts development near stations, which is vital to financing Washington- and Hong Kong-type systems.
Honolulu's Bus Rapid Transit system takes a radically different approach. Nobody talks about it, but the philosophy behind BRT is to make private vehicle travel so miserable that people will be forced to take the bus.BRT, which some say stands for "Bad Road Trip," takes the "stick" approach to car travel. It's aimed at beating you out of your vehicle, even if you don't drive a hated, gas-guzzling SUV.
The key anti-car features of the $1 billion BRT are its "and semi-exclusive bus lanes through urban corridors. To help speed buses along, these lanes restrict private vehicle travel.
Naturally, when private vehicles are denied entire lanes of road, big traffic jams result, especially during rush hour and especially on BRT routes that include King and Keeaumoku streets, Kapiolani, Ala Moana and Dillingham boulevards and University Avenue.
Of the 12.8 miles of urban BRT, road users will be denied use of one or more lanes of traffic (or parking) on 8.6 miles.
This will mean a 50 percent reduction of roadway on Dillingham and on Kapiolani during rush hour and a one-third reduction of roadway on Ala Moana, which is already a parking lot during afternoons or shopping-center weekends.
You already know how traffic builds up when one lane is temporarily out. Try forever, instead of temporarily.
Such anti-car craziness can come only from people who, with religious-like fervor, hate cars. Many planners who talk to each other do hate cars. After all, cars inefficiently use energy and space. Don't you already feel guilty for doing so much travel by yourself in a big car?
Unfortunately, nothing beats a car for getting you from one unusual place or time to another, or with pick-ups of people or goods along the way. For much of our lives, cars really are the best way to go.
I have to hand it to University of Hawaii planning professor Karl Kim. He's honest enough about disliking cars to have quoted Blondie's "Rapture" in one draft pro-BRT article (editors cut the passage):
We live in a democracy, however, so let's listen to the people. We Hawaii folks love our cars. Test the system on one or two roads, before adopting BRT insanity 24/7.
And then you're the man from Mars. You go out at night, eatin' cars.
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns, too,
Mercurys and Subarus,
And ya don't stop,
You keep on eatin' cars.
Remember the popular uprising against the "Talivans?"
City leaders should look before they leap. Instead of implementing BRT, they should use their $1 billion of taxpayer money for a grade-separated rail system that is a "carrot" drawing people from their automobiles, not the awful "stick" of BRT -- the "Bad Road Trip."
Rep. Galen Fox, the House Republican leader, has represented the Waikiki and Ala Wai district since 1996. From 1966 until 1982, he was a U.S. foreign service officer in Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Washington, D.C.
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The Price of Paradise appears each week in the Sunday Insight section. The mission of POP is to contribute lively and informed dialog about public issues, particularly those having to do with our pocketbooks. Reader responses will appear in Thursday's paper. If you have thoughts to share about today's POP articles, please send them, with your name and daytime phone number, to pop@starbulletin.com, or write to Price of Paradise, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana, Honolulu, HI 96813.
John Flanagan
Contributing Editor
