Posted on: Thursday, May 23, 2002
ISLAND VOICES
Bus Rapid Transit plan must go forward
By Wes and Linda Frysztacki
Bus/Rapid Transit is a necessary transit investment. Why? Because too many buses are at capacity. Buses are passing by riders who have been patiently waiting because the bus is too full to load any more people. BRT is designed to address this critical problem.
BRT is necessary to improve productivity. Bus hours of service are lost due to increasing traffic delays. Every one mile per hour increase in system operating speed saves the city over $7 million annually. BRT will create such savings.
BRT is cost-effective. If O'ahu's BRT project were included in the national rankings for 2001, it would have been the sixth most cost-effective project in the nation out of 29 projects. Honolulu's BRT would add more new riders per dollar invested than projects in 17 Mainland cities.
BRT arose out of an award-winning public process. Mayor Jeremy Harris was just awarded the American Planning Association's 2002 National award for distinguished leadership. The APA citation states, "A comprehensive grassroots transportation planning program has led to new solutions, including Bus/Rapid Transit."
BRT is the right choice. The arguments seeking more planning feed a thirst for debate that will never be quenched.
Among those who seem more interested in debate than progress is Cliff Slater. He has spoken and written for many years about why he thinks planners are inept. In a July 30, 1998, commentary, Slater suggested BRT himself: "A two-lane busway from Leeward area to downtown would be a tremendous traffic reliever. Yet, despite the proven ability of busways to reduce traffic congestion elsewhere — for example, Houston, Texas — we have made absolutely no attempt to adopt them."
He must now heed his own advice.
Last year the City Council adopted BRT and it is asked to fund the first increment.
We were compelled to write this article after reading Slater's most recent Second Opinion column of April 23. He is now arguing against his prior statement. Now, according to him, planners are joined by inept elected officials.
Nonetheless, Slater wants to "build more roads." All available future federal highway money has been allocated to projects in the "Transportation for O'ahu TOP 2025," adopted by the OMPO Policy Committee on April 6, 2001. This plan includes all highway projects we can build with federal highway funds between now and the year 2025. Those committed projects are included in the Primary Corridor Transportation Project SDEIS Cliff Slater wants to kill.
Slater should know the SDEIS is not about choosing between funding for transit or roads; yet he argues, " ... new road space is eligible for 80 percent federal funding, which is a far greater percentage than what is proposed for the BRT." He makes it seem as though we have a choice. We don't. He makes it seem as though there are additional federal highway dollars available for more roads. There aren't.
The percentage of federal formula highway money Hawai'i receives as a minimum allocation state under federal law is totally different from a percentage of discretionary transit money Hawai'i will receive for an eligible project. Our congressional delegation has ably positioned Honolulu to receive these discretionary federal transit funds.
Our Hawai'i federal tax dollars, allocated for what is referred to as "new start" projects at the federal level, have been funneled for years to other states. Not one penny has come to Hawai'i because people like Cliff Slater have been successful in killing candidate projects. Don't let it happen again.
Give our planners and elected officials the tremendous credit they deserve. They are not inept. They have listened to the public, they have weighed the tradeoffs, they have examined the alternative, they have abided by a federally mandated process.
Wes and Linda Frysztacki are consultants who have assisted the Department of Transportation Services develop the Hub and Spoke bus routes as a complement to BRT.
