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Traffic adds to wait
for bus on Route 62

Question: Why was service reduced for bus line 62, which stops at Kamehameha Highway and Ka Uka Boulevard? It is the only bus line serving the Waipio Gentry business area, which has well more than 1,000 employees. We're lucky if a bus comes every 45 minutes. On top of that, buses don't run on time, so sometimes we have to wait an hour. Instead of serving the growing number of people who work here, the city has cut back service.

Answer: The Route 62 schedule was changed in June "to better fit current traffic conditions."

Oahu Transit Services said on-time service has generally improved since then, but acknowledged that buses have been "unacceptably late" at times. It is monitoring the route and says additional "adjustments" might be made.

Michelle Kennedy, manager of customer communications, explained that to deal with the heavier traffic congestion, bus schedules are adjusted periodically to allow more running time, which would then allow scheduled service to be more reliable.

"The tradeoff is that a bus trip takes longer and operating expenses increase," she said.

The number of "service hours" on Route 62 is approximately the same, she said, but each bus trip has had between three and eight minutes of extra running time added, depending on the time of day.

That's resulted in 1.5 fewer round trips each day.

Currently, buses are scheduled to run about every 20 minutes during the early morning commute and every 35 minutes during midday and afternoon peak traffic periods.

Operating costs are largely based on service hours.

"Heavy traffic congestion at all hours of the day makes bus service slower and more costly to provide," Kennedy said. "We are still analyzing the late afternoon travel time on the Route 62 and may have to make an additional adjustment."

Since the change, on-time performance on Route 62 "has generally improved," although buses "can still be unacceptably late in the late afternoon" because of heavy afternoon traffic to Central Oahu, she said.

Overall ridership for Route 62 also has increased since the change, she said. That was attributed to improved on-time service.

Kennedy said OTS will continue to monitor the route now that school has started to see if additional changes are required.

You can let OTS know about recurring problems by e-mailing it through the feedback page at www.thebus.org or by calling 848-4500. Give specific times and days.

Mahalo

To Punahou School and HPD. The Upper Campus entrance on Punahou Street has always been a major bottleneck in the mornings, but this year, Punahou has hired a police officer to direct traffic. Going in and out of Manoa is much easier. Now, if Maryknoll School could also do something, Punahou Street would move a lot faster in the mornings. -- Manoa Motorist

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