The current controversy on rail is not, and should not be, just about traffic, or only about the initial cost of construction of the rail system.
The rail project must be put into the context of: "What kind of community do we want to leave for the future generations living on the island of Oahu?"
Whether we choose rail or bus transit will determine what kind of Honolulu we will have in the 21st century. We recently earned the dubious distinction of having the most congested traffic in the entire U.S. We don’t need to be traffic engineers to know that the system is overloaded to the point of being dysfunctional.
What can we do?
Perhaps we can learn from the experience of other communities. Los Angeles has famously built a city based on the automobile. From the air, it is an impressive sight. If the air is clear, you can see the vast monotony of the LA landscape. San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by the bay and the Pacific Ocean, and is famous for its hills and cable cars. Conceptually, in terms of urban characteristics, we are more like San Francisco than LA. If you were to choose one or the other as your ideal city, which would you choose? We are a small fraction of their sizes, but we could aspire to be a miniature San Francisco or LA.
If we continue to expand our current auto and bus system, even with the proposed bus guideways, urban sprawl will surely continue because of the attribute of buses that allows the use of city streets to collect and distribute passengers from and to their homes and work places.
On the other hand, rail has demonstrated its compatibility with high-density urban development in San Francisco and elsewhere. I believe that cities and their transportation systems develop in a mutually complementary way.
The flexibility of cars and buses has shaped the urban landscape and life style of LA; the development of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) made possible the San Francisco and Bay Area development we find today.
Choosing rail or bus transit now is tantamount to choosing San Francisco or LA as the model for our future growth. BART was a controversial project when it was launched, and did not lack critics in its early years. Can anyone imagine the Bay Area without BART today?
We need to redevelop Honolulu from a 20th-century, automobile-based city to a 21st century mixed-modal city with a combination of rail transit, buses, cars and other transports providing mobility in a pedestrian friendly, mixed-density city. Rail makes that possible. Each station is a potential urban village around which clusters of commercial and high-rise office and residential buildings can be built, with the village center providing educational, cultural and recreational amenities.
These high-density urban villages will benefit not only urban dwellers; they will help preserve rural suburban communities and our agricultural lands that would otherwise become more housing subdivisions. We can keep what is precious and still accommodate growth.
Regardless of our ages and where we live today, we share responsibility for the Hawaii we leave for future generations. "We have what we want, it’s not our problem" is an attitude that is foreign to our ohana culture. What is at stake is not just rail versus bus, but the kind of city and the quality of life we will be bequeathing to future generations. We are all involved in choosing that future.
