Posted on: Friday, March 28, 2003
City goes it alone on traffic control
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
The city is moving ahead with plans to expand its traffic management operations, linking its command center electronically with other emergency communications centers, officials said yesterday.
The decision apparently blocks, for now, attempts to build a $15 million joint state and city facility that would have housed all the operations under one roof.
"We're going to look at our existing traffic control center and expand its capabilities," said Cheryl Soon, the city's transportation services director. "It's the common sense solution."
The city wants to use new technology to link its traffic center with other communications facilities, including police, fire, emergency medical services, civil defense and the state's freeway operations. An expanded operations center would be operational around the clock, seven days a week, Soon said.
The decision, though, angered the head of the Senate Transportation Committee, who said it means throwing away millions of dollars available for an even better facility.
"We're going to regret this down the line," said Sen. Cal Kawamoto, D-18th, (Waipahu-Crestview-Pearl City). "We had the opportunity to bring everybody together and create a state-of-the-art center and we're blowing it."
The O'ahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, which coordinates city and state transportation projects involving federal money, deferred action yesterday on money for a study of the joint facility, a move that means the new center will not be built in the immediate future, executive director Gordon Lum said.
The deferral means that Hawai'i will lose a window of opportunity to obtain at least 90 percent federal financing for a new traffic management center, Kawamoto said.
State transportation officials supported the plan to build the new facility rather than link the existing ones electronically.
State Transportation Director Rod Haraga yesterday said the city's plans for an expanded center may still prove inadequate. "If that's what a city study shows, then we can still talk about building a new facility," he said.
No matter what shape it takes, the traffic management center is a crucial component in solving O'ahu's traffic congestion, officials said. Similar centers across the country can speed response to traffic accidents and other problems, a key element in minimizing delays on crowded roadways, officials say.
"These things really work," said Kawamoto, who was one of several state officials who toured similar centers on the Mainland last year. "They've got state-of-the-art communications that would make your eyes water."
Officials at the city's existing management center monitor traffic cameras at more than 200 locations, control and synchronize traffic signals, notify police, and use radio traffic reporters to quickly spread the word about trouble spots to drivers. The state runs a similar center for O'ahu's freeways from a command center in the H-3 tunnels.
"With all the modern communication, there's no reason that they have to be physically together," Soon said. "We feel we can make things better using what we have."
The decision yesterday by OMPO's policy committee to not include money for a traffic center study in its 2003 work program, doesn't preclude it from being built in the future, Lum said.
"There's always next year," he said.
That wasn't much consolation for Kawamoto, a committee member.
"We've been stuck in this traffic for 15 years now and it just keeps getting worse," he said. "And we're not doing anything to alleviate the problem."
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
