The city’s decision to reduce and reorganize bus service amid a hard-fought, three-way mayoral election may elevate Honolulu’s humble transit passengers into political players.
Unhappy bus riders have circulated petitions asking that reduced service be restored in areas such as Manoa, Diamond Head and St. Louis Heights, and two of the three major candidates for Honolulu mayor are now promising to reverse the unpopular bus service cuts if they are elected.
Instead of quietly listening to music on their smartphones, some transit users are now griping to their drivers about this summer’s route changes, including service cuts that require riders to wait longer at bus stops or make additional transfers to get to work.
Carolyne Tortora, a legal secretary who commutes from Heeia to downtown Honolulu via TheBus, said she hears her fellow passengers complaining about getting home later and "how they’re stressed out."
"You know, waiting for the bus is a pain," Tortora said. With the new schedule, some buses pick up downtown passengers only once an hour, and "that’s too far apart, especially for rush hour," she said. "We’re the working class. We need the bus. We rely on the bus."
In Manoa, Donald Au circulated a petition asking the city to reverse its decision to reduce the frequency of the Route 5 bus that runs in a loop from Ala Moana Center into Manoa and back.
"A lot of people are complaining. They complain to each other, but, you know, it’s not doing any good. They’re not complaining to the right person," he said. "I thought our petition was going to help because we had over 600 signatures, but they still went ahead and made the change."
Au, 74, said the city reduced service on Route 5 without ever replying to his petition "so it was very discouraging."
The bus cuts are taking effect at the height of the political campaign season, and quickly emerged as an election-year issue in the Honolulu mayoral campaign. The 25 busiest Oahu bus routes have about 200,000 boardings on a typical weekday, which translates into a sizable pool of potential voters.
Former Gov. Ben Cayetano and former City Managing Director Kirk Caldwell, who each hope to unseat Mayor Peter Carlisle, say they will reverse the recent bus cuts if they are elected.
The City Council last month unanimously approved a resolution urging the Carlisle administration to re-evaluate its plans and maintain the frequency of service on the Oahu bus routes that serve "students, workers and the elderly."
Last week City Councilman Tom Berg co-introduced another resolution with Council Chairman Ernie Martin calling on Carlisle to find money to restore rural bus routes, and to cancel additional route changes and service cuts scheduled to take effect next month.
Carlisle said in a written statement that the bus changes "are not written in stone," adding, "We’ve adjusted certain routes and are actively addressing feedback from riders."
"We have a responsibility to run our award-winning buses as efficiently as possible while maintaining quality service," Carlisle said. "The city transportation team will continue to listen to the public, work hard to find additional revenue savings and address specific concerns."
The city is imposing the unpopular bus changes to try to curb the growth in operating costs, including the cost of labor and diesel fuel. The first batch of changes went into effect June 3.
Some of the adjustments affect how often buses travel along their routes, while others modify routes so they operate on different streets or end at different locations. The changes are designed to run fewer buses with more passengers on board each run.
Twenty-one routes are being reconfigured to make the system more efficient, providing more service in busier areas and less service in some areas with less passenger traffic, city officials said. Two routes were canceled.
The changes are expected to save $6 million to $7 million a year. Even with those savings, the city expects that fuel costs for bus service will increase by about $3 million in the year ahead.
The bus issue might continue to stir the political pot in the weeks ahead. One concern among riders is that students may cause new and uncomfortable crowding on routes when public school classes resume July 30.
If there is additional crowding, that could trigger a new round of rider complaints less than two weeks before the Aug. 11 mayoral primary.
"When school comes back, we have a fear that some of our routes may get overwhelmed," acknowledged Wayne Yoshioka, director of the city’s Department of Transportation Services. Yoshioka said the city will continue to monitor routes and make adjustments as needed.
But that won’t be the end of the bus fallout. The city will impose another round of bus cutbacks and changes on Aug. 19, and those planned changes have already stirred resistance in communities such as Palolo and Diamond Head.
One particularly prickly issue has been the decision to reconfigure Route 14 so that it will no longer serve portions of Kahala, Diamond Head and Kapahulu.
Bus rider Barbra Armentrout, a St. Louis Heights resident, has collected more than 500 signatures in her own petition drive asking the city to cancel the planned Route 14 changes.
The signatures on that petition include those of state House Speaker Calvin Say and City Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi.
Armentrout contends that reducing or canceling transit routes because the buses aren’t full is like a garbage man who refuses to pick up the trash because the garbage cans aren’t full.
TheBus service "is a service for the people, and it shouldn’t be cut," she said. When city officials didn’t respond to her petition, Armentrout said she took a copy to Cayetano.
The planned Route 14 changes have particularly alarmed officials at The Arc in Hawaii’s Honolulu Center Day Program on Diamond Head Road, which relies on those buses to pick up Arc’s disabled clients for shopping and other excursions.
The Arc program teaches clients with intellectual and developmental disabilities to become more self-sufficient. Becky Tyksinski, director of development, said teaching clients to navigate the bus system is an important part of the training.
Route 14 covers destinations that the Arc clients need to go without requiring transfers, including Kahala Mall, shopping areas along Kapahulu, the local libraries and Waikiki Beach, she said. The buses normally aren’t crowded, which means they can accommodate two wheelchairs and a group of Arc clients.
Yoshioka said the city hopes to resolve the disagreement over the Arc and Route 14 "with a positive discussion." He said city officials are providing replacement service for the route that they believe will be just as effective as the old Route 14.
Tyksinski said those city proposals aren’t workable because they would require clients to use stops that are more than a half-mile from the center. Many of the clients are in wheelchairs or walkers, or have vision problems.
"You have to really look at it from the health and safety point of view as well," she said. "We’re taking away the access."
With bus operation costs on the rise, Yoshioka said the city had to either make the system more efficient or increase fares. And he said the city would have to raise the adult fare from the current $2.50 to $3.25 to equal the savings the city will realize from the route changes.
Bus riders say they don’t want a fare increase, which means the city has to cut expenses, Yoshioka said.
City policy requires that fares paid by riders cover between 27 percent and 33 percent of the cost of operating TheBus, with city taxpayers subsidizing the system by paying most of the rest of the cost. That taxpayer subsidy for TheBus operations will be about $135 million in fiscal year 2013.
