Honolulu traffic congestion among the worst

Another dagger in the heart of the anti-rail half truthers.

How can this be? Once the 1.55 billion dollars was appropriated traffic disappeared immediately. ....there is no traffic....there is not traffic....there is no traffic....

Overall, we should understand that our constraints of being on an island is the problem. You can drive for 24 hours straight and still be on the same island as when you started to drove in the first 15 minutes. With the best beaches in the world why would you want to be in your cars? No worry be happy you live Hawaii.

Someday commuters will read the Parsons rail studies that were paid for with their tax dollars. When they do read these studies, they will see that rail will not help traffic along our crowded East West corridor. When rail is finished, Parsons tells us the traffic will go from bad to worse. Travel time will get longer. The commuters have been lied to by many people. The media and the city council have failed to read these reports and react.

Let's build the rail today...we will pay for it tomorrow! "You have to vote for the Bill first before you can find out what's in it". This is an island with over a million occupants....Great weather, Democratically controled to the max! Come one, come all, Hawaii will take care of all your needs!

Put blame where it belongs - All the stupid people who just have to drive all alone in their cars during the busiest times of the day. Take the buses, vanpool, and carpool and we would not have such congestion. Don't work/live too far from the home/workplace. Tell your kids to take the bus to school instead of driving them to school or letting them drive to school. Adjust work schedules. There are a multitude of things you can do to make the commute better. But NO! You all think the RAIL is the solution! Well, we won't have RAIL for several more years and it is not expected to make traffic and better.

Let's face it. People like to ride by themselves, not crowded like sardines with often smelly obnoxious people. Traffic congestion and high gas prices will not deter most. Selfish? I don't think so. Convenience to go where and when is important.

Oh well! Gotta take the kid to preschool, shop for groceries and cruise. But, I think I will wait til after 8.

Went to Vegas this last November and I've seen the modifications they've made to their freeways over the past 10 years. Amazing. Honolulu.........nothing. THERE'S the problem.

Remember back to the story in this paper how Los Angeles, formerly #1 in traffic congestion, had come up with computer apps to be installed at intersections. These apps monitored traffic and made on the spot adjustments to ensure the best flow. No one had to control them, they did the work by themselves, very efficient. Now go to the Nei were we still have 50s technology timer and weight sensor controlled traffic lights, cycling regardless of traffic. How many times have you been stuck at a stop light with no other cars in sight? See how backwards HDOT is? They just sit at the Dysfunctional Traffic Management Center and laugh at all of us stuck in traffic. Los Angeles offers the technology to any city for a very small fee, yet we do nothing. Heaven forbid we have to admit we had to get outside help to solve our traffic problems. We do not have people at HDOT who have a clue how to reduce traffic congestion. This is what they do, nothing.

DUH. There have been NO NEW ROADS or FREEWAYS built BUT they have built tens of thousands of new homes and are still building with NO NEW ROADS OR FREEWAYS PLANNED.

Its common sense, but I guess that does NOT WORK IN HAWAII.

They should have a bridge or freeway over pearl harbor and double decker nimitz, expand middle st., etc. etc. etc.....

They must not have measured traffic in NYC.

"Honolulu traffic congestion among the worst"

Well, good thing our developer and construction overlords have successfully redirected billions of tax dollars into a train from D R Horton's Ho'opili to the upscale mall. Problem. Solved.

"The index compares travel times during congested periods, to times of day when traffic is flowing freely."

I gotta say, that's unlike any other description of traffic congestion that I've ever heard.

Honestly, that sounds like a rush hour problem and the sort that could be solved with staggered work hours, an "actual" second city instead of giant suburb, and by not using taxes to encourage and subsidize city and state workers to drive and park in the city.

Even HART demanded to be in the center of Honolulu with reserved parking instead of out in Kapolei. No train is ever going to fix that sort of thinking.

The real truth is we developed the West side and created new communities but FAILED at strengthening these communities for families to live, work, and play. This is the reason the traffic is bad from the west side. And, until we become smarter in our voices to demand answers other than rail, the traffic will never improve. Rail is an expensive and ugly band aid. Improving the public school system, expanding the UH-West campus, and giving breaks to businesses to move to the West side so families can stay in their community is the real and neglected problem.

Let's see--I think Vancouver has the monorail, Seattle has a light rail system, San Francisco has BART, LA was built with cars in mind. Three out of the five worst traffic congested cities in North America have a rail system. This doesn't bode much for a rail system as a panacea for traffic congestion. And along comes Hawaii following their footstep, using taxpayers money on a project that will give us the least bang for the buck. Except for unions, lobbyists, and groups like PRP. Yep, government at work as usual.

Ditto other posts about building new homes and high rises. We KNOW there is a traffic problem. And there are infrastructure problems too; check out your water/sewer bill which goes up each year to pay for upgrades. So WHY do 'we' keep building??? Typical government. The people suffer. Ugh.

The study only CONFIRMS that rail plays NO part in addressing traffic problems as measured by this study. Traffic gridlocked LA, Vancouver and SF ALL have rail transit systems. How about actually showing an unbiased analysis of Oahu's traffic problems which will only confirm what Oahu residents already know and that it is the West Oahu to Honolulu (& back) school commuting crowd that creates weekday traffic gridlock and how solutions like addressing known Oahu road/highway chokepoints will improve commuting times for EVERYONE from the school commuter, work commuter and visitors travelling via rental car or private bus.

It's been over 11 years since this island crossed the threshold of the 21st Century.

By this time, Traffic Congestion, should have been dramatically relieved.

By this time, the persistent and on-going stop and go traffic jams should have been relieved, or even eliminated by making the H1 Smart. One need only look at how the very same type of stop and go traffic jams that have been practically eliminated on a similar highway - H26 in Portland, Oregon.

Erika, I think this is very old news. Very old.

Not sure what other's have written, but I wouldn't put too much weight on this report. It doesn't say anything about the number of users of the Tom.Tom navigation device, and my guess is that there's a disproportionate number of users in Honolulu versus other cities. I mean, how many of you know people in Honolulu who have this device? Furthermore, if the information is simply gathered from signals provided by the device to the satellites, you have to consider many "out-of-area" drivers given consideration in the other cities. You won't find that in Honolulu. Nevertheless, I would agree Honolulu traffic is very heavy, and likely does rank highly in the country. But the data used in this report has a couple of obvious flaws, so I'd say the #4 ranking is quite misguided.

Rail will bring traffic relief to the pocketbooks of the few and the proud and i am not talking about the marines. My dad was in the construction industry, so i am virtually going against my dad when i say that the $2 billion can be spent in Hawaii rather than giving it to a near Third World Country such as Italy. Please take a look at some of the innovative means of traffic congestion solutions and some will open your eyes, instead of building a monolithic structure such as the rail that will benefit just the few. For example, even though i bank primarily with American Savings Bank, a subsidiary of Hawaiian Electric, i think it was not kosher of Constance Lau to promote TheTrain knowing that her company would benefit from the increased Electricity usage by the Rail. Secondly, we need to look at Kirk Caldwell's victory as a mediocre one, because he did not win like maybe 75% to 25% over Cayetano. So 45% of Oahu thinks that the Rail is a bad idea. Why not compromise and try to get a better solution rather than saying that oh we won The BCS Championship Game, so crown us lol. By the way, one of the ones i seen on You Tube was the modernization of North King Street from Middle Street to Downtown. Please see North King Street - a potential traffic solution.mov on You Tube and my comment on it this morning, which is the only comment that the video has. Anyways, so Hawaii is the fourth most congested highways system. Well what are we going to do about it? The solutions to that needed to have been done 20 years ago, not now into the future with DaTrain, which is the inappropriate solution which will not solve the congestion. What will solve it? Get Grandpas and Grandmas off the streets, and have Ohana take care of their parents instead of letting them roam the highways, like the 82 year old man who got run over just because he wanted some Papaya. Also, we have the poorest road conditions here, so that people cannot take advantage of the roads and driving safely. Another factor: i hear that one out of seven vehicles are not insured, which means the drivers of those vehicles say to themselves Ainokea. Enough OldDiver, or u like me talk some more??!!

Could someone tell which page Honolulu is mentioned on the "TomTom North American Congestion Index Q2-2012" pdf report?

but apparently some people thinks that the solution to this problem is to squeeze more buses into traffic because people loves to take a bus because its much faster than regular vehicles and rail.

I downloaded the 2012 congestion index from TomTom and I see Seattle at #4. In fact, Honolulu isn't even shown on the top 26 most congested cities. Am I missing something? Is there another 2012 traffic congestion index that I can't find that has the data discussed in the article?

Some cities in Asia and Europe have significantly reduced traffic congestion by comprehensively embracing motor scooters and motorcycles. They dedicate whole highway lanes to 2 wheel motor traffic. They create convenient dedicated city parking for motorcycles and motor scooters. They amend traffic laws to penalize drivers of cars and trucks who are involved in accidents with motorcycles and motor scooters with mandatory jail sentences, seizure of their property, and drivers license revocation. This may sound draconian and crazy but it works really well in the cities where they have made these changes.

Seriously, did anyone else actually download from the link and check the data? I might be missing something, here, but this article's source data does not reflect anything they say. Honolulu doesn't even make the list. Interestingly, the top city with increasing congestion last year was Seattle, and they just finished their rail project, right? Can someone find the data that corresponds to the article?