By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Even some of Hawai'i's top transit thinkers are astounded that traffic hasn't been worse during O'ahu's four-week-old bus strike.

"I was very surprised that we weren't in the gridlock mode the first few days," state Transportation Director Rod Haraga said the other day.

Like a lot of people, Haraga (who himself commutes from Mililani every day) felt the start of the strike would fill O'ahu's roadway to the bursting point. "I thought it might take some people two hours getting in and getting home," he said.

Why that didn't happen is something that might end up being studied for a long time.

Some of the roads, such as Moanalua Freeway during morning rush hour, already are beyond their intended carrying capacity. So you would think that adding all those people who normally ride the bus would bring traffic to a standstill, and maybe even push some drivers to California-style road rage.

Instead, there has been a modest increase in rush-hour traffic and commuting times and some remarkable drops in driving times in some areas as drivers find it easier to maneuver through town without all those buses in the right-hand lanes. Instead of road rage, we've got some people saying they're actually enjoying driving more now.

So what happened? Or, what didn't happen?

The answer is a credit to city and state officials and to drivers themselves. First, the officials did a good job of communicating the scope of the potential problem to Honolulu's commuters and then did what they could to alleviate what seemed sure to be a big mess.

Car-pool promotions. Shuttle vans. Extended contra-flow lane hours. Relaxed rules on who could use the zipper and high-occupancy-vehicle lanes. Newly opened parking spaces. All of them did their part.

More important, though, were the commuters. Drivers apparently took the worries and warnings about impending gridlock to heart, and actually did something about it. They doubled up in cars with friends. They left earlier. They left later. They tried alternate routes. State statistics show that use of the freeway zipper lanes jumped sharply, and the morning H-1 rush hour started earlier — and lasted longer — than usual in the first week of the strike.

"People made sacrifices and adjustments to accommodate the bus strike," Haraga said. "They started getting up at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning to beat the jam. I know people who came to work at 6 a.m. just to help."

Another view is that there really wasn't that much to worry about in the first place.

Cliff Slater, a frequent critic of the city's bus spending plans, said he wasn't surprised at all by the lack of a traffic jam. By his reckoning, the number of cars on the roads has increased about 4 percent during the strike, not nearly enough to create the chaos that some people feared.

Slater reasons it this way: U.S. Census figures show that only about 8 percent of O'ahu residents commute by bus. Probably only about half of them ended up putting new cars on the road, while the rest traveled with existing drivers or found other ways to get to work.

"That's made the really crowded places more crowded, but on places where the buses take up a lot of space, it hasn't had much impact," he said.

As the strike has dragged on, however, some drivers are slipping into their old habits. There's only so long that commuters will continue to get up at 4 a.m. to avoid the traffic; state traffic statistics show that rush-hour times are gradually moving back to pre-strike hours. Now, a month into the strike, drivers are occasionally finding themselves in the long stop-and-go traffic messes that many feared from the get-go.

And some are going to expect officials to do more for them, even when the strike ends. People are already asking why we shouldn't continue to use smaller vans on some old bus routes in town. They want to know why the lessened restrictions on HOV and zipper lanes shouldn't remain in place when the buses return.

Those are things we'll find out only when the strike is over.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.