Posted on: Tuesday, August 10, 2004

DRIVE TIME
No transit plan for urban village in Kaka'ako not such a smart idea

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

Victoria Ward Centers' announcement last week that it was planning to spend $100 million to create an urban village in Kaka'ako sounded like a blueprint for all that "smart growth" people are talking about.

Except for one thing — where was the mass transit?

The plans call for building hundreds of rental apartments along with street-level retail businesses that will allow people to live, work and entertain themselves in the same place.

That kind of density is one of the foundations of smart growth, the emerging planning philosophy designed to make cities more livable. In a land-short island like O'ahu, it's not only smart, it's a necessity.

One of the tenets of smart growth and higher density is that it makes the development of mass transit easier. Cars are less necessary; buses, trams, bikes are more logical.

Still, when Victoria Ward unveiled its plans for converting what's now a shopping complex across from Ward Center into that kind of urban enclave, there was no word of transit.

Quite the opposite. News stories about the plans bragged that the new complex would be surrounded by a seven-story, 1,100-stall parking structure. Rather than fewer vehicles, it seems like the project is inviting more.

That's the way it has been in Hawai'i for decades. Transit is the 1,000-pound sleeping gorilla that no one wants to disturb. We tiptoe around it as our traffic problems keep getting worse.

Anybody who has tried to go to a movie or out to eat on a Friday night in the emerging Ward Center area lately knows that there are too many cars and not enough parking spaces. There are plenty of pedestrians, but all of them are moving warily as they cross streets crowded with cars and sometimes frustrated drivers.

If Victoria Ward really wants to get the urban village idea done right, it might consider doing away with cars running down the main street altogether. Put the big parking structures on the fringes of the complex and move people about some other way — buses, trolleys, even a monorail.

That's just what developer Ken Hughes is proposing — no, demanding — to do a mile or so down the road.

Hughes has been negotiating a $360 million plan that would include offices, low-rise residential units and commercial development stretching from Pier 2 to 5 along Honolulu Harbor.

A key component of Hughes' plan is building a streetcar system that would run from downtown Honolulu to a huge parking area at Pier 2. He knows that getting people from the densely urban downtown area to visit the restaurants and shops in his complex must be a matter of great ease, which won't be found in driving or trying to walk across busy Nimitz Highway.

Mass transit is so central to Hughes' project that he has thre-atened to pull out if the streetcar idea can't be made a reality.

Victoria Ward would do well to consider something similar along its Auahi Street corridor running parallel to Ala Moana Boulevard. The city is moving to route its new Bus Rapid Transit system through the area, and that's a start. But it would be even better if the street could be cleared of all private vehicles.

That would be the really smart approach to the new growth.

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