Posted on: Saturday, March 8, 2003

Lingle, Harris discuss transit

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

A rare summit meeting of state and city transportation officials yesterday will help decide the future of public transportation on O'ahu, according to participants who included Gov. Linda Lingle and Mayor Jeremy Harris.

"The main thing is we are talking, moving forward," said City Council Chairman Gary Okino. "That's very encouraging."

More than a dozen top administrators and lawmakers attended the meeting organized by Lingle, who said participants put many ideas on the table and remained open to all of them.

"Nobody said we can't have this or we have to have that," Lingle said. "There was more consensus than you might have believed."

On previous occasions, the city and state have been at odds over how to solve O'ahu's traffic problems. The city is moving ahead with a bus rapid transit project, which will use dedicated as well as semi-exclusive bus lanes to improve service. Some state lawmakers and others favor a more expensive light rail system that could bring large numbers of commuters into town from the suburbs.

Harris said the city will continue building the in-town BRT, while a new working group of state and city officials plans a long-term solution.

"The problem is that it takes so long to develop a transit system," Harris said. "It's impossible to hold together a political consensus long enough to make it work." The new cooperation with the state may allow officials to finally come up with a plan that can be implemented, he said.

Officials acknowledged that any long-term plan is likely to cost billions at a time when the federal government is no longer fully financing mass transit projects.

Sen. Cal Kawamoto, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said there is still a chance the state could receive 90 percent of the money needed for a rail project from the federal government, but Harris suggested it might be better for the state and city to proceed without any federal involvement.

"If the decision is to build light rail, maybe we could do at least the first phase with just local and state funds and get started in four to five years," he said. Federal involvement would add at least six more years to the process, Harris said.

"There's no free lunch. Whatever we do is going to cost us money," he said. "We simply can't be the 12th largest city in the country without a way to provide our residents transportation."

Lingle, Harris and others said after the meeting that the group's primary goal was to decide what kind of mass transit O'ahu wants, how much it will cost, and how it will be paid for.

Among others attending the meeting were state Transportation Director Rod Haraga, city Transportation Services Director Cheryl Soon, and House Transportation Committee chairman Joe Souki.

The group plans to meet eight or nine more times through this summer and to present a mass transit plan to the Legislature before next year's session, Lingle said.

"The important thing is we have to do something," said Kawamoto, D-18th (Waipahu, Crestview, Pearl City). "The public is crying about the traffic."

One thing that apparently did not receive much serious discussion at yesterday's meeting was Lingle's earlier proposal to double-deck H-1 Freeway. "I think that got about 30 seconds worth of mention during the talks," she said.