SECOND OPINION
Bring back bus competition

By Cliff Slater

Think about this: TheBus loses $100 million annually, yet we forbid anyone to compete with it.

Let me repeat that: TheBus loses (or is subsidized by, or we invest in, or whatever euphemism for "loss" you prefer) $500 for each Honolulu family of four annually, and yet we prevent anyone from trying to reduce that amount.

Think: If we have to forbid people from competing, it means there are willing providers out there who believe they can make a profit out of a service that we taxpayers are losing our rear ends on. Get the picture? This has to end for two reasons:

• Taxpayers should not be paying any more for services than is necessary.
• Denying competitors an opportunity to provide service denies commuters potential new choices in getting to work that would entice many more of them out of their cars.

For example, to take the proposed Bus/Rapid Transit to work in Waikiki, you first have to walk from home to TheBus, take it to a Transit Center, change to BRT, travel into town, then most probably either change from BRT to another bus or face a lengthy walk to your destination (BRT stops are widely spaced). For this you will get out of your car?

But consider this alternative: A bus or van (van pool or private operators) picks you up in the morning at your front door and takes you (guaranteed seat) into town by way of the new uncongested busway and drops you off at work.

Which of these two alternatives might attract you out of your car?

Next problem: You say you need your car, not to get to town but to move around town once you are there. Here's one solution: Along Atlantic City's Pacific Avenue during the day, jitney buses run at 40-second intervals; you step onto the sidewalk and here's the jitney bus coming to take you where you want to go. These 13-passenger, air-conditioned vehicles could provide a valuable service between, say, downtown and Waikiki out along King Street and back on Beretania.

You think that would not work here? Check your history: We had smartly uniformed jitney drivers doing precisely that until 1940, when the courts enforced the Honolulu Rapid Transit Co.'s (then the city bus operator) government-granted monopoly and forced the jitney buses out of business.

Or why not do what our elected officials do in Washington, D.C.? They use shared-ride taxis, which greatly increases the capacity of taxis and makes for fewer vehicles on the road. They are illegal here but legal in our nation's capital. Go figure.

The problem is that Honolulu's elected officials never spend time analyzing our traffic and transportation problems. Instead they get "visions" of the wishful thinking, ribbon-cutting variety. Then the "solution" drives everything else. To paraphrase the old saying, they put the train before the passenger.

What is needed is a review of what has worked elsewhere in the nation and the world in improving mobility, ameliorating traffic congestion and reducing costs.

When we start thinking in marketing terms of what will entice people out of their cars, and when we stop thinking about what people should do and instead consider what they actually will do, then, and only then, will we start resolving out traffic problems.

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