At best, all roads will lead to chaos
| • | O'ahu roads in 2025: What to expect |
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
In 2025, O'ahu residents and visitors each day will take more than 4.1 million trips on the roads and log more than 17 million miles over 688,000 hours. The roads will be so clogged that drivers will spend 284,565 hours of each day stuck in traffic delays, a 53 percent increase over today's rate.
And that's the best-case scenario.
To just keep pace with the coming traffic increases, local, state and federal governments are planning to spend about $3.6 billion to build new roads, bridges and tunnels, widen existing ones and develop alternative means of transit.
If government money doesn't materialize as planned, the congestion will be even worse. Without the new money, for instance, the total number of hours drivers spend in traffic delays would climb to 367,000 hours a day.
"Traffic is bad now, it's getting worse, and it's going to be really terrible by 2025," said City Council Transportation Chairman Duke Bainum, who also headed the O'ahu Metropolitan Planning Organization when it approved the group's "TOP 2025" report last year.
The organization is responsible for mapping the future of Honolulu's transportation. The "TOP 2025" plan identifies Honolulu's major traffic problems in coming years and lays out a blueprint to meet the coming transportation crunch within expected resources. Among the projects planned between now and 2025, according to the report:
- A billion-dollar Bus Rapid Transit system using existing roadways.
- A $300 million tunnel linking Sand Island and Fort Armstrong.
- A $200 million tunnel replacing the Sand Island bridge.
- More than $500 million worth of work to widen the H-1 Freeway in different areas.
- Nearly $300 million to improve existing stretches of Kamehameha and Nimitz highways.
The report was mandated by the federal government, which will provide most of the money for the projects, but it has a long-lasting impact on every bicyclist, bus rider and driver in O'ahu, especially those in the Island's most congested areas.
"It's a best-guess look at what the situation is going to be 25 years down the line," said Gordon Lum, executive director of OMPO. "It's a long-range plan, but nothing in it is hard and fast." The report has to be updated every five years to reflect changing conditions and expectations, Lum said.
The report is meant to put competing local governments on the same page when it comes to using federal money for transportation, but it also provides a startling statistical picture of just how congested O'ahu's roads are going to be.
"Our growth is already ahead of our transportation. These are just some of the things we need to do to turn things around," Bainum said. "We're building 1,000 new homes out in Central and Leeward O'ahu every year, which means we're adding 2,000 new cars there every year. You just have to drive out there any morning to know that the roads are already inadequate."
O'ahu residents who participated in the planning process seem to recognize how bad the road situation could get, said Harrison Rue, former director of the Citizens Planning Institute in Hawai'i.
Asked to rate transportation priorities, Hawai'i "people wanted projects that help them get around quickly and safely," said Rue, a consultant to OMPO.
By 2025, O'ahu's population is projected to increase 18 percent to more than 1 million people. Housing units will grow at an even faster rate, increasing 26 percent. Hotel rooms will grow by 37 percent. The biggest growth areas are 'Ewa, Waipahu and Kaka'ako, already among the most congested.
In 2000, people on O'ahu took an estimated 3.2 million trips every day. That's going up to 4.1 million in the next 25 years.
Despite spending on mass transit and alternative transportation, the majority of trips will still be taken by car. The figure is expected to be 81 percent, just a drop below what it is now. The rest of the daily travel will be made by bus riders, pedestrians and bicyclists.
The "TOP 2025" planners see the greatest coming problem in arterial streets like Farrington Highway or Pali Highway, which take drivers between neighborhoods. Traffic is expected to nearly double on those roads by 2025.
To deal with that growth, planners estimate that O'ahu needs to spend $7 billion on new transportation projects, about twice of what's realistically expected.
"When we added up all the money sources, our best estimate is about $3.6 billion, or half of what we need," Lum said.
That was before the Bush administration announced last month that it intends to slash federal highway money by 27 percent next year, a move that could affect financing levels through the end of this decade.
To deal with the big shortfall, the planners drawing up the "TOP 2025" report were charged with making tough decisions about what will get built, and what won't. In the end, 61 projects got the go-ahead from the group, which is made of state, local and federal officials and has both citizen and technical advisory panels for public input.
Some of the projects have a recurring, long-talked-about ring to them, like the tunnel connecting Fort Armstrong and Sand Island, or the improvements along Nimitz Highway, which may or may not someday include a double-decking option. Others, like the $110 million authorized for "intelligent transportation systems" which utilize high-tech science to keep traffic flowing, have a slightly futuristic ring to them.
The large majority of approved projects, however, are everyday roadway improvements to ensure efficient and safe movement of people and goods: $20 million to keep rockfalls off the road at Makapu'u; $8.4 million to widen the H-1 freeway Waipahu off-ramp; $35 million to realign Farrington Highway around Makaha Beach Park.
The 2025 plan focuses heavily on Leeward and Central O'ahu, where congestion and growth is most focused. "We're just not going to pour a lot of money into East Honolulu or Windward side," Bainum said.
Some projects didn't make the financing cut. Among the projects that OMPO believes should be built if more money becomes available in the next 20 years are a second access road to Wai'anae ($515 million), building a Marina Road and Scenic Parkway along Sand Island ($315 million), widening Kunia Road from Royal Kunia to Schofield Barracks ($93.8 million) and widening Farrington Highway from Kalaeloa Boulevard to Hakimo Road ($72 million).
Don't look for any of those projects any time soon — or even in the next 25 years.
"We just don't have enough money to do everything," Lum said.
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Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
