By Roger Morton, president and general manager of O'ahu Transit Services Inc.
More buses are not the best solution to our island's growing traffic congestion. A modern steel fixed-guideway rail system is.
Don't get me wrong. We have a great bus system in Honolulu. Currently, TheBus accommodates about 230,000 daily boarding trips, and ridership is growing as gas prices increase. According to Federal Transit Administration data, the per-capita transit-riding rate on O'ahu is about 100 trips per person per year, making Honolulu the fourth-highest ranked transit city in America. This makes Hono-lulu a transit town.
As president of O'ahu Transit Services (TheBus and TheHandi-Van) and a career transit professional, I am proud of TheBus and the great job our dedicated employees are doing. But I am also a strong supporter of a high-capacity rail system that will form the backbone of a well-integrated bus/rail transit system.
Despite what some are saying, adding substantially more buses to Downtown streets is not a good idea. During peak times, we operate a bus every 30 seconds at the King-Liliha junction and about every 45 seconds along Kuhio Avenue. In Central Hono-lulu we have few through roads, and our Downtown and Waikiki streets are already at capacity and cannot accommodate increased numbers of buses.
Increasing our fleet by 50 percent, as some have suggested, would result in a nonstop ribbon of buses along our major streets and further slow traffic.
Buses are also not without impact. An accelerating bus is louder than a modern rail system, emits greenhouse gases, and uses increasingly costly and scarce petroleum products.
Operating a larger bus fleet would also be more costly than operating an integrated bus/rail system. Across the country, the cost per passenger mile for rail is about half the cost of buses. The difference is even greater in cities with a high utilization of buses.
The fact is that our Honolulu bus system has a higher utilization per vehicle than any other major bus fleet in cities across the U.S. And as traffic congestion increases, our trip times get longer and our costs go up. Today, our service runs 10 percent slower than it did 20 years ago.
Increased traffic also makes it hard for TheBus to offer reliable service. We work hard to keep our buses on time despite unpredictable traffic. Many times we must turn buses back short or divert bus trips just to cope with existing traffic congestion. Turning a bus back short or adjusting a trip inconveniences some passengers. But we must if we want our buses to run on-time for the majority.
Even with all this effort, we have a severe problem with on-time reliability. We will lose customers unless we can offer reliable service. A backbone rail system will result in greater reliability for riders and will lead to greater ridership.
As gas prices increase, our bus system is approaching realistic capacity at peak hours when most customers want to ride. Today, we average about 25 to 35 times per day when drivers report that they are leaving passengers behind because the bus is completely full. Often times, it's an articulated bus with a higher seating capacity. Our system needs the higher capacity that a rail system can offer.
Buses will always play an important role in any transit system. But rubber-tired vehicles, whether guided or not, must use the same Downtown streets as buses.
Such a system is not a high-capacity solution for our future. A modern grade-separated steel-wheeled system promises the best performance and the lowest risk of the available technologies. The best way for us to improve our bus system is to develop an integrated bus-rail system that works for commuters, students, our elderly, our disabled citizens and our visitors. It's the best and the most cost-effective alternative.
That's why I support a high-capacity rail system.
Originally published in The Honolulu Advertiser.