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Transit plan offers chance
to redo Oahu for the better

A WOMAN places papers she'd been reviewing in her briefcase, snaps it shut and stands as the rail car pulls into the station. Doors slide open as an electronic voice announces the stop. She steps out, joining the stream of commuters as they head to the street or to another platform to catch a connecting train.

She crosses a bridge to an adjacent commercial building containing a drugstore, where she picks up a prescription, and a grocery, where she grabs a loaf of bread and some papayas. She hops on an elevator to another floor housing an afterschool center, greets her children and herds them down to the street for the three-block walk to their home.

Her commute from downtown office to apartment has taken 30 to 40 minutes and most of that time she was able to do some work, leaving her free to enjoy a leisurely evening with her family. They might stroll to a neighborhood theater to take in a movie. Or go to a park tucked in the center of several mid- and high-rise buildings where redevelopment strategies have allowed businesses to share space with residential units, lessening housing costs, urban sprawl and the need to drive.

Come morning, the kids get on the train with their mother, get off at their school's station and board a special bus that takes them to their classrooms. When the school day ends, the same bus shuttles them to the afterschool facility where they do their homework or play until mom arrives.

On the streets, motorists still jockey with each other for space in the lanes open to private vehicles. Around them, buses and smaller multiple-passenger vans zip riders to and from rail hubs, ferry terminals, parking garages and commercial centers.

A few miles away, cars clog toll-limited lanes of the H-1 freeway, but traffic in the corridors designated for mass transit moves along rapidly as office workers snooze or peck at laptops, teenagers bob their heads to iPod tunes, men check box scores in the early edition of the Star-Bulletin and grandmas weave yarn lei on their way to the senior center.

I don't know if this is what city planners envision in designing a transportation system for Honolulu. At this point, having had just a few months to dust off a decade-old blueprint and review it for current conditions, I'm sure the project is still fluid and sketchy.

So far, officials have concentrated on finding a way to pay for the system, which is, of course, a new tax. A vocal minority opposes adding a half-percent surcharge on the state's excise tax, contending a transit system won't untangle the snarl on Oahu's roads, but most others agree that unless people are lured from their cars and given convenient options, traffic problems will worsen.

The City Council, which at first seemed driven (no pun intended) to approve the increase, got slightly cold feet last week because it is being asked to clear the funding mechanism before knowing what the money will buy.

It is an entirely faith-based decision brought about by pressure from the federal government's desire that the city show it is committed to mass transit.

Though traffic solutions are the heart of the matter, officials ought to use the opportunity as a framework to re-shape Honolulu. Instead of continuing build-out of rural land, extending suburbs that require more roads, more cars and longer commutes, instead of stretching an extremely expensive transit corridor from leeward to Makapuu, reviving the city's urban core and concentrating population makes more sense.

Despite a desire for Oahu to hold on to a bucolic aura, much of the island has been citified. But to keep areas like the North Shore rural, to retain open spaces and coastlines for recreation and agriculture while still allowing growth, developed areas should be refurbished.

The transit project could be just that or it could spark strategies to create a better, more livable city.

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