City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes

Both the Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin and the Hon­olulu Adver­tiser ran sto­ries this morn­ing about the pro­posed mass tran­sit plan for Oahu. The envi­ron­men­tal impact study will con­sider three routes, accord­ing to this scop­ing plan posted by the Adver­tiser. This map from the Adver­tiser lays out the route alternatives:

1. (in solid red) the City Council’s plan, which diverted the line through Salt Lake to get coun­cil­man Romy Cachola’s swing vote;
2. (in dashed red) the council’s plan with a loop through Hon­olulu Inter­na­tional Air­port; and
3. (in dashed blue) the plan that some city coun­cil mem­bers really wanted, going through the air­port and bypass­ing Salt Lake.

Coun­cil chair Ann Kobayashi is still angry that the mayor is focus­ing on rail. How­ever, the scop­ing study indi­cated that sev­eral modes will be eval­u­ated, includ­ing “light rail, rapid rail, rubber-tired guided vehi­cles, and mag­netic lev­i­ta­tion and mono­rail systems”.

Nei­ther news­pa­per men­tioned that Kobayashi, along with Dono­van Delz Cruz, Todd Apo, and Cachola, had announced in March that they would visit Ams­ter­dam and Paris to visit high-speed bus lines built by Phileas Advanced Pub­lic Trans­port Sys­tem of France. Their trip would be paid for by Phileas, and the plans were announced on the City Council’s web site and men­tioned in the Hon­olulu Weekly.

UH-Manoa pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus Tom Dinell wrote a good com­men­tary about the rubber-tire bus alter­na­tive in the Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin on Feb­ru­ary 4. Bus routes would be eas­ier to recon­fig­ure than a train, and the high-speed buses could also go into areas like Waianae and Mililani. Of course, these buses would need ded­i­cated lanes in town, and the city must ban other vehi­cles from these lanes in order for the sys­tem to work well. The fixed guide­way bus sys­tem should not become an “emer­gency lane” for city vehicles.

As much as I like the idea of trains, high-speed buses may be eas­ier to install, use and main­tain on this island. As Dinell pointed out, it’s much eas­ier to replace a bus than a train when the tech­nol­ogy improves.

Dkoso­pe­dia has an excel­lent sum­mary of the Hon­olulu tran­sit strug­gle in the 21st cen­tury, for read­ers who want to learn more.

Tagged as: amsterdam, commute, Hawaii, Honolulu, manoa, mass-transit, Oahu, paris, travel, USA