By Cliff Slater

We will now support putting the $2.6 billion Kapolei-to-Iwilei rail transit project into the environmental impact statement (EIS) process.

The Federal Transit Administration EIS process requires that projects seeking federal money compare alternatives based on transit riders' time savings, increases in transit costs and the projected increases in riders for the alternatives.

In return for our support, we would like to have the EIS compare rail transit against a real alternative, such as the two-lane reversible transitway outlined in a March 29 column.

Both the proposed rail transit line and the transitway would run from beyond Waikele to Iwilei. Both would be elevated on single columns for most of their lengths and be built to roughly the same dimensions. The dissimilarity is that one alternative would offer travel by buses and vanpools on the transitway and the other trains on the rail line.

The transitway offers the possibility of seamless travel from home to work for those using buses and vanpools because these vehicles would access the transitway from local roads and keep going non-stop at 50 mph until the exit.

Rail transit, however, would be stopping every three-quarters of a mile, and since distance between stations is the biggest constraint on speed, it means that the trains would average less than 30 mph.

In addition, because travel is seamless for buses and vanpools on the transitway, these riders would avoid the time loss of transferring from bus to train. Rail transit, on the other hand, would be a truncated spine requiring transfer from either a bus or car, or a significant walk, at one or both ends of the line.

With faster average speeds and less time spent transferring, the transitway option would generally offer faster travel door-to-door. Since we all value our time, the much faster ride of bus on transitway would attract more riders than rail transit.

Then we come to costs. The transitway is basically a highway and is built on a simple bidding process and requires no special vehicles. Rail transit on the other hand requires rails, trains, park-and-ride lots, and escalators and elevators at most of the stations.

Allowing for inflation, the 1992 rail-transit proposal projected costs of $2.5 billion for a 15.9-mile system. A transitway of the same length would cost $1.2 billion — roughly half the price. In addition, the transitway has several advantages when financing the capital costs.

First, if we fill the available space on the transitway, not occupied by buses and vanpools, with cars paying an electronically collected toll (variable by time of day), then we accomplish two things: We raise enough money to lower local costs, and we get a large number of cars off the regular freeways. This is the HOT lanes proposal, which is currently being put to use all over the Mainland. Estimates are that we could raise $200 million selling the future income stream from these tolls.

Second, operating costs are quite low for highways. Allowing for inflation, the additional operating costs for the 1992 rail transit system over "doing nothing" would have been $57 million annually. Allowing $10 million for transitway operating costs, the remaining $47 million is an annual amount that would pay off an $850 million highway purchase over 50 years including interest.

Third, there is a limit on federal "new starts" money for rail projects of $500 million, which means we would have to raise $2 billion locally for rail transit plus any cost overruns. Highways, on the other hand, have much higher grant limits and are also eligible for more different types of federal money.

So you can count on us to support rail transit as one alternative in the EIS. But remember the proviso.

Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at www.lava.net/cslater.