Posted on: Tuesday, February 15, 2005
ISLAND VOICES
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By Marilyn Lee
One of our major goals for the 2005 legislative session is to find a way to address traffic congestion.
House Bill 1309, a key bill of the majority package, would give the counties the authority to levy a surcharge on the state general excise tax. Each county would have the flexibility to determine the amount of the surcharge, up to one percentage point. The proceeds could be used only for transportation improvements in the county in which the GET was raised.
Why is raising the GET necessary?
The short answer is that the transportation system, in all counties, is overloaded. The state Department of Transportation plans to begin using smart traffic technologies such as ramp metering to reduce congestion, but while these will help, they will not address the fundamental problem: There are too many people trying to move from point A to point B. We need more capacity, and the cheapest way to do this on O'ahu is to build a rail system.
The longer answer has to do with O'ahu's history with rail projects. Twice in the last 30 years, our congressional delegation secured federal funding for a rail project on O'ahu. Both times a local source of funding could not be agreed upon. To give our congressional delegation the leverage it needs to obtain federal funding (again), a local funding source is absolutely essential.
Advertiser library photo Furthermore, with the federal government running huge deficits, only the most meritorious projects will even be considered. Honolulu meets all the technical requirements for rail — i.e., appropriate density, favorable geography — but if we do not have a local funding source, other cities (which have raised taxes to fund rail) will get the money instead. A GET increase is the only realistic way of providing this local funding source.
How exactly will raising the GET in order to pay for transit benefit Hawai'i families? For the average family, a GET increase will be more than offset by the savings of having a rail-based integrated transit system in place. Here is why:
Driving a car is very expensive. According to the American Automobile Association, if you drive a mid-size car 10,000 fewer miles per year, you will save $2,165 each year. Savings from not having to park downtown and lower insurance rates from driving less add to the cost savings of using public transit rather than driving. If a rail system allows you to sell one of your cars, the savings are even greater. AAA figures indicate that you would then save about $5,300 per year.
The impact of the one-percentage-point GET increase added to the cost of taking the train to work would enable individuals who take advantage of public transit and drive their cars less to realize considerable net savings.
The least expensive, most efficient way to increase our transportation system's capacity on O'ahu is to build a rail system. Rail will be an important part of an integrated system that includes freeways, buses and ferries.
Building rail will be expensive, but building equivalent road capacity would require 10 new lanes of freeway and would not address the street-level congestion that only rail or ferries can avoid.
The sooner we get started, the sooner we will have an alternative to sitting in traffic.
Rep. Marilyn Lee is the vice chair of the House Transportation Committee.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation know this history and are not going to help us until we have a local funding source in place. They do not want to waste their time again.
O'ahu needs a rail system to address its traffic congestion.
