TheBus stops here

To people like Nico Langley, 17, the revamping of Oahu’s bus service had real consequences.

The anecdotes have rolled in from all over the island for weeks, in the wake of the city’s move to curb bus frequency and change routing. Elderly commuters having to walk farther to bus stops. Commute times lengthening in order to mesh a thinner bus timetable with work or other daily routines.

Langley lives in Ahuimanu but attends Kahuku High School, heading in the opposite direction from most morning commuters. Revisions in the timetable for the Windward Coast bus routes 55 and 65 — he must ride to the Windward Mall and then transfer to the northbound bus there — added 1 1⁄2 hours to his commute, already an hour long.

It’ll be even worse when he gets up for school, less than 24 hours from now.

"I’ll probably be waking up at 4:30 and leaving at 5:30," he said.

The outcry following the June 3 rollout of the changes punctuate the challenge of tinkering with a public transportation system. The routes are interconnected, so changing them one by one at a more gradual pace is difficult. And rising costs, both in fuel prices and labor, meant something had to be done, said Wayne Yoshioka, director of the city Department of Transportation Services.

"The mayor has set the tone for his administration, of fiscal responsibility," he said. "And in doing that, there’s a desire to control the growth of spending. … to keep the operational budget as flat as possible, and not let it grow out of control.

"It was obvious that we had to do something in our budget, because our budget was projected to increase by about $10.5 million," Yoshioka said. "All of my divisions managed to achieve a flat budget, in terms of no increase, except for the public transit division."

Yoshioka said the agency tried to minimize potential service cuts by trimming about $1 million in administrative costs of the bus-system contractor, Oahu Transit Services Inc. But it wasn’t enough, so the process of reworking the service to make it more efficient began.

City officials, after taking a lot of fire from the bus-riding community, have ramped up their outreach before releasing a second set of changes on Aug. 19 (see Page F4 for a summary). A special email account (TheBusStop@honolulu.gov) is being promoted to enable feedback, and detailed maps are viewable online (www1.honolulu.gov/dts).

In addition, Yoshioka said, the more recent abatement in fuel costs have squeezed out enough short-term savings to enable DTS to offer aid to another government agency with transportation problems: the state Department of Education, which has cut back on school bus service. Federal law bars the city from actually competing with the private sector by providing exclusive student bus service, he said, but city bus capacity has been boosted in Leeward Oahu areas that have the greatest student transportation need: Routes 41, 44, 53 and 73.

That assist is in place for the start of school, he said, but it’s uncertain how long DTS can afford to help, given the volatility in fuel prices.

Meeting the municipal bus needs remains the primary concern, however, and DTS has been meeting with neighborhood boards. Perhaps the most outspoken critics have been the members of the Kahaluu Neighborhood Board, which has formed a committee to work out a solution with the city administration. Already the reduction in buses running the 55 route has been partly reversed, said Ken LeVasseur, the board’s transportation chairman who is spearheading this discussion.

The panel also has proposed an alternative that would route buses along a shorter loop off Kahekili Highway. This would make connections between the 55 and 65 buses easier and provide much better service to a half-mile gap area, between the Hygienic Store and Ahuimanu Road, LeVasseur said.

While that idea is still under consideration, Yoshioka said, other accommodations can be made more quickly to manage the passenger loads. Example: The 60-foot articulated buses — those with accordioned sections allowing the bus to bend in the middle — will be deployed to these routes as well as those connecting the North Shore with Honolulu through Central Oahu.

Some residents have their doubts about this. Winding country roads aren’t built for such ultra-long vehicles, said K.C. Connors of Punaluu. They’re oversized for the bus stops, and impatient drivers are sure to try to overtake them, with a collision almost inevitable.

Thrillseekers might be the only ones served by this: "Who needs to take a shark tour?" Connors said. "You can just take the bus."

Yoshioka disputed that whole notion. The articulated buses manage just fine on the occasionally winding routes they now take through Ewa, on the narrower sections of Farrington Highway, he said.

"The 60-footers are able to have the same acceleration and braking capacity as the smaller buses," he said. Yoshioka added that commercial tour buses heading to and from the North Shore are, at 50-55 feet, almost as long and maneuver through Kamehameha Highway without incident.

Protest over the bus routes last week fueled a vote by the City Council budget committee. The measure the Council passed cited the lapsing of up to $5 million during previous fiscal years, asking the administration to tap some of this to restore bus services.

Yoshioka’s response to that is that these lapsed funds already have been deployed in the city’s current budget and now would have to be carved out of some other municipal service. There is a fuel provisional account, topping $2 million, to help with unbudgeted overruns, he said, that could be considered. However, in the past fuel expenditures have drawn down the fund, Yoshioka said.

"This is a discussion that’s going to happen," he said. "But if we do elect to use it, there’s a risk with that."

Ann Kobayashi, who chairs that committee, said she is asking the city to explore other ways of increasing revenue, such as by beefing up its on-board advertising.

The city plans to study ridership once the back-to-school tumult settles down and the August changes are in place, he said. Interest groups such as Blue Planet Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks a reduction in fossil fuel usage, will be watching that carefully.

"It will increase driving, add to traffic and increase the fossil fuels we use," said David Aquino, a project specialist with the organization. "I’ve talked with some people and they’re starting to see their family friends and co-workers jump in their car again."

David Henkin chairs the Kahaluu Neighborhood Board but his paying job is as an attorney for the environmental advocacy organization Earthjustice. As such, he shares Aquino’s concern about disrupting mass-transportation habits, noting that he has found the idea of a bus commute less appealing since the changes.

"I’m a true believer, and if you can’t get me on a bus, you can’t get the average person on a bus," Henkin said. "Everyone who gets on a bus is doing the rest of us a favor, and we’ve got to show they appreciate that."

He acknowledged the city’s willingness to work with communities, although he said it came belatedly.

"Having upset the applecart, they are trying to find some of the apples," Henkin said. "They are putting time into the community they should have put in at the beginning."

His colleague on the board, and Nico Langley’s father, is Greg Geboski, who agreed that the collaboration between the Kahaluu board and the city has been successful. But he added that community education efforts fell short, early on. The routing amendments were already in place for days when, at the public library, distribution of the new bus schedules was just beginning. Some riders found out their regular bus would no longer serve a section of Kahekili Highway when they arrived at the stop and found a laminated notice posted there, he said.

"I think they seriously thought they would get through it without anyone noticing it," Geboski said.