AFTER DEADLINE
Transportation is big news for all who move
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Columnist
I'd be lying if I said that being The Advertiser's transportation writer is the most fun I've had in 30 years in the newspaper business.
Nobody ever went to journalism school dreaming of covering a highway opening. Nobody got into the business to write day after 39 days about a bus strike. Nobody fantasizes about nailing the next big story on advances in the asphalt industry.
You study journalism to write about big disasters, not big potholes. You learn your craft so that you can unearth the secrets of presidents, not taxi drivers. You want to tell stories about interesting people and places, not what it's like to be locked in a humdrum traffic jam each morning.
Then, somewhere along the line, you learn the reality: It's the little things that matter most to people. And in transportation, everything starts small.
Walking to the grocery store. Driving to work. Taking the bus. Riding a bike. Catching a plane, or a boat, to Moloka'i. It's all transportation. Even telecommuting from home qualifies, I suppose.
One way or another, you and I transport ourselves every day, and there's always something to complain about. People drive too fast. Or too slow. They get squished together on a city bus. Or they damage the environment by traveling in the solitary confinement of their SUVs. The traffic lights stay red too long if you are a driver and too short if you are a pedestrian. You think the bus costs too much if you need to ride it and is too heavily subsidized if you don't.
And please don't even mention traffic cameras.
There's a great big hulking bureaucracy set up to deal with all these transportation issues in Hawai'i. The federal government dispenses millions of dollars for projects every year. The state Transportation Department is the only one in the country that simultaneously has to deal with highways, harbors and airports. The Honolulu Transportation Services Department spends more than $100 million a year on its bus service alone. There's even a federally mandated organization set up to coordinate the efforts of all the other transportation departments.
The challenge for a transportation writer is to take the operations of those bureaucrats and make them relevant to people on the go.
You can spend hours in a City Council Transportation Committee hearing and never know that what really worries some people is air conditioning on city buses. You can write a long story on plans to enlarge Honolulu Harbor and forget that more than 90 percent of our everyday goods, from Tylenol to toilet paper, arrive there.
About 230,000 people ride the bus each day, and every one of them has a story to tell. There are even more frustrated drivers who'd like to tell you their problems and want to know what the government is doing about them.
Then again, how many different ways can you say that traffic is bad on Fort Weaver Road? How many stories can you write about the rising cost and dwindling availability of Neighbor Island air service? How many times can you ask people what they think about paying $2.05 — quick, make that $2.10 — for each gallon of gas?
Those are the kinds of questions I struggle with every day, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make those stories interesting and relevant. It may not be much fun, but when you come right down to it — down to the people on planes, buses and cars — transportation is probably as important as those big stories I dreamed about doing years ago in journalism school.
Mike Leidemann covers transportation for The Advertiser. Reach him at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
• • •
Community Board members tell editors about concerns
Education, healthcare, the environment and the needs of the military, both at home and overseas, were among the topics on the minds of our most recent group of Advertiser Community Board members.
Participants in the latest group were:
• P. Pasha Baker, a small-business owner and an active civilian supporter of our local military.
• Catherine M. Sajna, a teacher at Hawai'i Pacific University.
• Jessica Asai, a prospective law student who is now working on community and government affairs for the Hawai'i Medical Services Association.
• Maj. Chris W. Hughes, director of public affairs for Marine Corps Base Hawai'i, who will soon transfer to a Mainland assignment.
• The Rev. Elizabeth Zivanov, rector of St. Clement's Episcopal Church in Makiki.
Correction: P. Pasha Baker's name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.
