ISLAND VOICES
It's not about cars but about solutions

By Doug Carlson
Honolulu public relations specialist

Let's make one thing perfectly clear about Cliff Slater, the transportation "expert":

It's always about the car with Slater and it's never about transit. Once you understand that, it's not surprising that his last column, the column he'll write next week and the column he'll write a year from now will have a pro-car bias.

Slater's recent columns have advocated an extraordinary solution to traffic gridlock — extraordinary because it is so out of touch with the times and with our island environment. He thinks O'ahu needs more roads — toll roads at that.

It's unsettling that influential opinion leaders like Slater advocate paving even more of our paradise to put up more parking lots (highways). More alarming is the possibility that some officials in the new state administration may agree with him.

If so, they're caught in the same time warp as Slater, advocating 1950s solutions to our 21st-century transportation problems.

Slater says he's simply reflecting the increasing statistical preference of Americans to drive their own vehicles.

Well, of course we prefer to drive our own car. It's axiomatic, but that is not a logical reason to dismiss Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as a preferred and viable way to move significant numbers of commuters to and from their jobs.

Slater cites statistics showing a decline in transit ridership in Honolulu and "virtually every city in the U.S.," but then draws a faulty conclusion that this decline signals the public's rejection of mass transit.

What he ignores is the impact suburbia has had on society and the habits of the population. The farther people live from work, schools, churches and the rest, the more they rely on their own cars to get where they're going.

In other words, Slater has his facts right but his conclusions wrong.

O'ahu's transportation problems won't be solved by building more roads in our limited space.

Common sense and the experience of other world-class cities can help Honolulu address these problems.

BRT is workable in Honolulu and deserves the thoughtful support of O'ahu's long-suffering commuters.

A final correction for the record: Contrary to Slater's assertion in his Jan. 27 column, I do not now and never have favored a monorail for Honolulu.