Advertising on city buses a slippery slope

"Hawaii is unique for having a long history of banning billboards. Let’s keep it that way. The City Council’s decision to not allow advertising on the outside of city buses was a vote in support of Honolulu’s and Hawaii’s cutting-edge laws banning billboards from our state."

So began a commentary published in The Honolulu Advertiser on Oct. 3, 2003, that rightly commended the Council for rejecting a bill the author went on to assert "would have threatened the constitutionality of Hono-lulu’s billboard ordinance. For those of us who enjoy an uncluttered view of Hawaii’s world-class scenery every working day, it was a risk too big to take."

Who wrote it? Kirk Caldwell, then a member of the state House representing Manoa. But now, as Honolulu mayor trying to deal with a budget shortfall, Caldwell proposes selling ads on the outside of city buses. We believe he got it right the first time.

The City Council will hear his Bill 69 in first reading this week; it proposes selling fixed-size ads on the exterior sides and tail end of city buses and paratransit vehicles to generate revenues for TheBus and TheHandi-Van.

The bill has galvanized the same opposition from The Outdoor Circle and others as the similar measure did a decade ago. Caldwell knows he will have some explaining to do, given his earlier, very public opposition.

The mayor insists that he remains as committed as ever to the statewide billboard ban, but says he realized in the intervening years that he overestimated the extent to which allowing exterior bus ads would undermine that ban.

He cites as evidence the growing number of commercial trucks and tourist industry buses that use their own vehicles to advertise their businesses, while the broad-er billboard ban stands. He estimates that the city could raise from $2.5 million to $8 million selling the ads, money that is needed to operate a highly utilized public transit system that is increasingly expensive to operate. Overall costs rose from $135 million in 2003 to $230 million today, while the portion subsidized by taxpayers has doubled from $75 million to $150 million. Caldwell considers raising fares a "last resort" for 220,000 daily riders, many of whom suffered through route cuts during the previous city administration and are clamoring for expanded service.

Still, Hawaii is one of only three states free of the visual blight caused by the huge, free-standing outdoor advertisements, a billboard ban largely due to pioneering efforts of the nonprofit Outdoor Circle, which was founded in 1912 in part to rid the islands of billboards that were proliferating everywhere from Diamond Head to downtown Honolulu. Its director, Marti Townsend, contends that exterior bus ads remain the slippery slope Caldwell once recognized, and if anything the incline is steeper and slicker.

We agree. City buses covered with exterior ads would themselves be unsightly, with the city’s 520-vehicle fleet having a far greater impact than the commercial vehicles now advertising their own companies as they transport people or goods, which is legal.

While the city mentions trolleys carrying advertising for other firms as evidence that the city is missing out on a revenue stream, Townsend contends that some of those vehicles are actually breaking the law, but violators go unpunished because the law lacks an enforcing entity.

There’s also skepticism that the city would be able to regulate potentially offensive ads as easily as it claims. A 2006 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, found that the city could ban aerial advertising so long as it applied the ban equally; that decision stemmed from a lawsuit against anti-abortion banners towed by a small plane off Waikiki. Ads might start on buses but proliferate to city benches and bus shelters.

Caldwell wants to engage in a full discussion of the bill, and is open to amendments. We understand why his point of view has evolved, given that he now is responsible for the city budget. But he was correct in 2003, when he wrote that if the City Council had passed the bill allowing advertising on city bus exteriors, "it would have eroded what is now a bright line regarding our efforts to improve and protect the aesthetics of Honolulu."

We need that bright line now more than ever.