SECOND OPINION
Traffic congestion is curable

By Cliff Slater

Honolulu's terrible traffic congestion is curable, but not with any conventional inside-the-box thinking such as the city's current Bus/Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal.

This is the first in a series of three proposals that could radically transform traffic congestion, especially in the Leeward corridor. The three are more road space, better door-to-door public transportation and managed highways.

First, building more road space.

Hawai'i has less urban road mileage per resident than that of any other state. I'll repeat that: If we divide each state's urban population by its urban highway mileage, we find that Hawai'i has less mileage per resident than any other state. We are bottom of the list and half the national average.

We have an obvious need to build more roads.

But we don't have the room, say conventional thinkers. Well, we did not have room in 1959, either, but our leaders decided that we needed a freeway through town and they bulldozed a corridor through the center of the city to make H-1. If you do not think that was a good idea, then contemplate how crosstown traffic would be today without Hi1.

And do not say that we cannot afford more roads. We just wasted $1.5 billion on H-3, "The Highway to Nowhere." And now we are proposing to spend $1 billion over the next 10 years on the BRT system, which would make traffic congestion even worse by reducing existing road space to convert it to BRT's exclusive use.

Besides, new road space is eligible for 80 percent federal funding, which is a far greater percentage than what is proposed for the BRT. This is because any expansion of buses requires massive operating and maintenance costs. In comparison, per-trip highway and maintenance costs are relatively minor.

What kind of road space? For example, we could build a two-lane HOV highway from, say, Waikele to the 'A'ala Park area in the right-of-way originally proposed for the rail transit proposal of 10 years ago. It could operate one-way going into town in the morning and one-way out in the afternoon. The required occupancy could be varied to keep the highway congestion-free.

The advantages are that many high-occupancy vehicles, such as express buses, vanpools and taxis, would attract far more riders than they do presently because they would offer a congestion-free commute. Many commuters would leave their cars at home if the alternative were a door-to-door commute with a saving of a half-hour each way in travel time.

Or, if you do not like this highway's construction costs, we could even get that extra road space for free. Private investors have recently built a successful tollway in China. They would, I believe, be willing to build this highway and recoup their investment over time by charging tolls.

The tolls would vary to keep traffic flowing freely at all times. Those unwilling to pay a toll would also benefit from the greatly reduced traffic on existing highways. In short, cost is no excuse.

I have great news for elected officials: Roads work. People use them more and more. Whereas, Honolulu's conventional public transportation is being used less and less — even when Hawai'i taxpayers subsidize 75 percent of its costs.

I have a question for these elected officials who tell us either there is no space for roads, or we cannot afford new roads, or we shouldn't have a tollway: What on Earth were you doing authorizing all the new housing on the Leeward side if you were not willing to build the necessary new roads to service them? Answer your constituents on that one.

Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at www.lava.net/cslater.