Rail or Bus?: A FAST bus system, including a Nimitz flyover, makes fiscal sense

The goal of our $1.5 billion transportation plan is to provide a Flexible, Affordable, Smart, Transportation system that will not jeopardize the city’s financial future.

We know rail’s $5.2 billion construction portion will balloon in cost. Already, almost all of rail’s contingency funds have been allocated. This is nothing new. Large cost overruns have plagued the handful of elevated-rail systems constructed in this country over the past 30 years.

This is only the beginning of financial disaster. As the Star-Advertiser’s Oct. 5 headline stated: "Transit’s tax take to be 19% of city’s collection." This means transit’s share of the general fund will increase from 10 to 19 percent. This translates into an additional $200 million cost rise and represents nearly twice the Fire Department’s 2011 budget of $101.6 million.

Can we afford a rail plan that consumes one-fifth of city revenues when we’re presently struggling to find billions to fund roads, sewers, water systems, parks and services for the poor?

By comparison, FAST accomplishes more than rail at a fraction of the cost.

FAST’s cornerstone is Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), an urban mass transit system that uses upgraded high-capacity buses on priority lanes to move people efficiently. It’s a proven technology. A Sept. 27 Wall Street Journal story, "The Commute of the Future," chronicles the explosive growth of BRT in cities around the world.

FAST will add, not take away, lanes, and it will not further congest traffic. Our plan is to add two new lanes on North King Street and three reversible lanes on the Nimitz flyover.

FAST will double express bus service with express buses on eight routes serving areas in Leeward and Central Oahu not directly served by rail. By using the morning Zipper lane, and the (soon to be state-created) afternoon Zipper lane on H-1, FAST leverages added capacity on the H-1 for express buses.

The BRT College Express will provide bus service for University of Hawaii-Manoa, Hawaii Pacific University and Honolulu Community College, and places in between. Similarly, Aloha Express will convey motorists from Aloha Stadium’s huge parking lots to downtown within 16 minutes with bus-on-shoulder BRT service.

During commute hours, FAST will move traffic rapidly via contraflow lanes on Dillingham and North King streets, as we’re already doing on Kapiolani, Kalanianaole and Ward. FAST lane additions and contraflows will increase traffic capacity up to 60 percent during the commute hours.

To ease traffic congestion at key Honolulu intersections, FAST includes short underpasses for cars only. Traffic analyses show that the five two-lane underpasses at critically congested intersections would offer continuous traffic flow and provide more congestion relief than rail.

FAST will also employ common-sense fixes such as staggered work hours, traffic signal optimization, van pools and telework to reduce traffic snarls. Several FAST components can operate in just six months.

We’ll fund the $1.5 billion FAST projects with city, state and federal monies (see table). The good news is that a new federal law (MAP-21) classifies BRT as a "fixed guideway," which permits using the rail surcharge funds to build BRT and provides up to 80 percent federal funding for BRT systems.

The biggest item on the budget is the $600 million Nimitz flyover. This is a state project which I will try to expedite by offering to share the costs of construction with the state. This should not be a big problem. After all, the city received state permission to run rail on Farrington, Kamehameha and Nimitz highways.

I anticipate the same level of cooperation from the state for our FAST program.

No American municipality comparable to Honolulu in population has built or is planning to build the type of elevated, heavy rail system proposed by the city. The new reality is that most cities are building BRT systems because they are a fraction of rail’s price tag, will achieve similar or better ridership and have the flexibility to adjust to change not provided by rigid, inflexible rail systems.

I will restore fiscal sanity to our city and deploy FAST to get traffic moving and to upgrade — not dismantle — TheBus.

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Ben Cayetano, a former two-term governor of Hawaii, is a candidate for mayor of Honolulu.