honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Friday, February 28, 2003

City, state continue transportation rivalry

Senseless competition between City Hall and and the state Capitol over O'ahu transportation has been a fact of life for so long we might be fooled into supposing it's normal.

The heyday of the rivalry dates to the 1970s, when Gov. George Ariyoshi sought to stop the city's light-rail transit system, while Mayor Frank Fasi for a time ridiculed the state's efforts to build H-3.

Today, these two parallel universes endure, albeit with the rhetorical antagonism much diminished.

Yes, there are state-county committees designed to get everyone involved in transportation planning looking, as it were, "at the same page."

Still, these are modest improvements.

Rather than direct and obligatory cooperation on major transportation projects, what we get is closer to meetings where everyone puts their ideas on the table and allows the others to cooperate, if they wish.

In this context, state lawmakers are looking at giving new life to a light-rail system, which may overlap, and perhaps directly compete with, the city's Bus Rapid Transit system.

That's fine as far as it goes. But there is a very real danger that a descent into the planning, fact-finding and financing decisions that go before the dream of a "global" light-rail transit solution might cause government to go slow on less dramatic but more immediate improvements.

And in the latest bit of silliness, the state proposes building a $15 million traffic management center on O'ahu, despite the city's contention that it would duplicate the efforts of its traffic management center.

It makes no sense to spend big money simply to replace or duplicate facilities that already exist. Certainly traffic is bad enough on O'ahu that the money could be used far more constructively.

It would make sense for the state to put money into improving the city's traffic management center so that it could include state operations, such as the H-3 tunnel control center, as well as police, fire, EMS and bus dispatchers; and also help coordinate roadwork by private companies as well as public service agencies.

The competition between state and city transportation efforts has fed a lot of egos over the years, but has done little to ease traffic congestion.