Posted on: Sunday, January 19, 2003
EDITORIAL
Time to agree on O'ahu mass transit
A sudden spate of diverging visions for O'ahu mass transit from leading political figures may seem at first blush to represent disastrous and costly disagreement. But we think it offers an important opportunity.
In recent days, we've heard that the new City Council is less than enthusiastic about Honolulu's proposed Bus Rapid Transit project; that it's opposed at least in part by Gov. Linda Lingle, who has suggested building elevated toll lanes for H-1; that Senate President Robert Bunda thinks "it's time we dusted off" plans for a light-rail transit system; and that Senate Minority Leader Fred Hemmings wants a public-private solution.
From the perspective of Cheryl Soon, the city's director of transportation services, this lack of consensus is a potential disaster. Federal officials are ready to commit many millions of dollars to a Honolulu project — but not until they receive unambiguous signs of agreement and commitment from state and local officials.
You can't blame the feds. "Twice before," recounts Advertiser transportation writer Mike Leidemann, "the city has advanced at least this far with ambitious federally financed mass-transit plans only to get cold feet."
In 1982, the Fasi administration's Honolulu Area Rapid Transit rail plan was canceled after Eileen Anderson took over City Hall. In 1992, a light-rail plan with more than $600 million in federal subsidies was scuttled when the City Council, with former councilwoman Rene Mansho as swing vote, refused to raise taxes to pay the city's share of the project. Now the city wants to proceed with Bus Rapid Transit.
"Please don't go back all over this again," Soon pleaded with new council members Monday. "It doesn't make sense to start all over again."
We appreciate Soon's commitment to BRT, but starting all over again doesn't necessarily mean dumping the research, engineering and community outreach completely, because the city has closely examined a range of transit schemes.
Our sense is that BRT faces a deeply skeptical community, and that's not because people don't understand it. There's little point in embarking on the difficult and expensive road to mass transit until people get genuinely excited about it.
The biggest problem with BRT, perhaps, is that it proceeded from a logical but limiting assumption by the city that citizens of Honolulu would not pay more in the form of a tax increase for mass transit, and therefore it must seek a low-end solution.
Actually, the community was ready to back the light-rail plan in the early '90s, until last-minute changes began to run it off the rails: The equipment finally selected was anything but light, and engineering and budget considerations kept moving the tracks farther away from workplace concentrations — from underground Hotel Street in downtown to Nimitz Highway.
This newspaper had backed light-rail enthusiastically, but by the time its final version crystallized, our feet were getting pretty cold, too.
Honolulu must keep searching. We must demand more than transit on the cheap; we deserve a state-of-the-art system that people will want — and use — enough to pay more for it.
The confluence of a council skeptical of BRT and renewed interest by state officials suggests that it's time for a serious transit summit meeting — not for re-examining old, long-rejected plans, but for finding consensus on a project that we can move ahead on.
