Posted on: Sunday, October 26, 2003

EDITORIAL
Stopping first phase of BRT makes no sense

In transportation planning, the Holy Grail is to have all the players — including representatives of the city and the state — all in agreement on what is needed and how it should be accomplished.

That, in effect, is the mission of the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, a city-state consortium that is supposed to come up with consensus plans to submit for federal funding.

But unanimous agreement is hard to come by. We came close several years ago when the Legislature bought into city plans for a fixed-rail transit system and authorized a new city excise tax to help pay for it. The plan died when the council, by a narrow one-vote margin, got cold feet about the tax and the cost of the project.

There are signs of emerging agreement again today, with a group of city and state lawmakers calling for a fresh look at a fixed light-rail system to bring commuters into urban Honolulu. And the council Transportation Committee has already endorsed a resolution asking for city-state cooperation on the project.

That's good as far as it goes. But the same group of legislators is pressing the Harris administration to cancel all work on its planned bus rapid transit system (BRT).

That would be a mistake. For starters, it would replace a reality (a modest one, to be sure) with the dream of a futuristic rail system that almost certainly would be years away from reality.

It would also threaten some $20 million in federal money already in place for the first phase of the BRT system. That first phase would essentially be an upgraded express bus service from Iwilei through Kaka'ako and into Waikiki.

We share the concerns of many who say future phases of the BRT in urban Honolulu could cause as many problems as it solves. There would be a need to take existing lanes of traffic to serve as dedicated bus lanes, it would put bus service on Kalakaua (which should have less traffic, not more) and transit times gained by bus riders would be offset by losses for those who remain in cars.

There may come a day when Honolulu decides the benefits of in-town BRT outweigh such inconveniencs.

But that's a decision that requires far more public discussion and policy analysis than has been allowed thus far. This is not just a matter of engineering.

The first phase of the BRT, however, is simply an effort to get commuters into town and into work a little more quickly, a little more comfortably in modern buses.

It is completely compatible with a modern fixed-rail system that would whisk commuters in from outlying neighborhoods. In fact, an efficient in-town transit system is a must if people one day give up their cars to commute to town on a rail system.

So stopping this first phase of BRT now, on the hope and promise of a much more ambitious fixed-rail system somewhere down the road, makes no sense.