City's express routes offer bus riders a glimpse of the future
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
Kapolei High School ninth-grader Lindsey Spry loves the city's CountryExpress! bus.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
"It's bigger, less crowded and faster," she says. "I never take the old bus to town any more."
CountryExpress! buses offer riders a glimpse of the city's Bus Rapid Transit plan, which calls for dedicated lanes that will enable buses to bypass traffic congestion.
Spry is one of more than 500,000 monthly riders who have discovered the 3-year-old Express! routes, which give riders the option of covering longer distances with fewer stops. The lines are designed to be a precursor to what city officials hope will be the long-term solution to O'ahu's transportation problem, the Bus Rapid Transit system now under design.
While the BRT is still at least three years away, Express! service gives people a hint of what's to come, said Cheryl Soon, city Transportation Services director.
"If you like the ... express routes, you're going to love BRT," she said.
So far the express services have proven popular. Daily ridership on the first route, started in March 1999 between the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and Kalihi, quickly jumped from 2,200 to 3,500 and then to more than 6,000 when the run was extended to Pearlridge Shopping Center and Waipahu. Two more routes, one going all the way to Makaha, have been added with equal success, Soon said.
"I love it," said Howard Willing one day last week as he rushed between the express service at Kapolei and a connecting bus toward his home in 'Ewa. "It's cut my commuting time in half."
That's the point, said Jennie Anderson, who drives the old No. 52 Circle Island bus route for O'ahu Transit Service.
"People are just starting to figure it out," said Anderson, who has been driving city buses for 14 years. "They're realizing that they don't have to be on the old, crowded lines stopping everywhere all the time. Now they can make the trip in a straight shot, and use the extra 15 or 20 minutes to do something else before or after work. And if they're happy, I'm happy."
The buses have a number of features designed to please riders.
For many of the express routes, officials use 60-foot articulated buses, with low floors, different styles of seating and automated voices announcing upcoming stops.
Still, the express services are limited by one big problem — traffic. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, it took the CityExpress! A route more than 30 minutes to get from Manoa to Alapa'i Street, where it ran into another traffic backup caused by a construction project. In all, it took 1 hour and 40 minutes for the full run to Waipahu.
The run was alternately packed to standing room with noisy high school students calling each other on cell phones or half-full with youngsters sleeping on swiveling seats and new-found friends sharing tips about back-to-school shopping successes at Pearlridge.
At times, the bus raced past local stops, giving riders a true Express! feeling; at other times it remained stalled amid cars and trucks, leaving passengers looking forlornly at their watches.
"That's where the Bus Rapid Transit system will help," said Paul Steffens, the city's public transit division chief.
For much of their routes, the BRT buses will use dedicated lanes, which will be limited to the buses and turning cars. Giving the buses their own lane should take them out of the regular traffic mix, and speed them from stop to stop, Steffens said.
City officials said BRT buses could be running in the special lanes every two to four minutes in urban Honolulu and rarely be caught up in the auto congestion, which is expected to worsen as the available lanes for cars are reduced.
Opponents worried about the BRT's effect on traffic and the nearly $1 billion expense of the project over the next 10 years have so far been unable to derail the project, which has the financial and philosophical support of the federal government. The city is preparing a final Environmental Impact Statement for the project, but the project's foes say they are pinning their hopes of at least slowing it down on the election of a new City Council, which could withhold future local financing for the project.
The city this year plans to spend more than $30 million on designs for BRT routes, bus stops, pull-out spaces and other preliminary plans, Soon said. The first construction of BRT facilities is not expected until next summer and the first routes probably won't be operational until 2005, she said.
Until then, the Express! routes will be used to test many of the theoretical and technological changes that the BRT will bring.
Among the BRT-style improvements already showing up:
• Hub-and-spoke transit centers. The entire city bus service is being converted from a arterial design to a hub-and-spoke system in which community circulator routes meet in one location and provide well-timed connections to express services.
Already starting to take shape in some areas such as Waipahu, Kapolei and Wai'anae, the transit centers are in the final design stage and will act as community gathering centers, Soon said. They will include comfortable Polynesian-style waiting areas, transfer points and food vendors. Many will be individually named like Mainland or European subway stops to give them a special identity.
• Electronic Information Systems. The city has developed an Internet-based system that tracks the location of each bus and keeps riders informed on an individual bus' progress through visual displays at selected stops. The system is being tested on the CityExpress! Route B and will be more fully deployed after the installation of a new bus radio system this year.
• Signal prioritization. Operators of all limited-stop buses will have the capability of extending the green light time of a traffic signal as they approach major intersections along the routes. The system, however, will not allow bus drivers to change the signal from red to green.
• All-door boarding. The city is planning to use a smart-card technology to allow riders to board the bus through all doors at any stop, decreasing stop time at pick-up points. Riders would be able to purchase the card for a certain amount in advance then simply swipe it through an electronic reader every time they use the bus. Money to buy the system is included in the 2003 capital improvement budget.
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
