Roger Morton is happy to show off the 21-acre Oahu Transit Services bus complex near Middle Street, recently expanded to position bus transfers near the planned Dillingham rail station.
Part of the tour almost certainly stops in the bus drivers’ break room, where about a dozen were waiting over the break in their split shift. One or two were on the stairs, playing guitar and serenading passers-by. There’s not much turnover on the job.
"They stay for life," said Morton, 62, born in Toronto but a Honolulu resident since 1967. "I’ll tell you a little factoid you won’t believe: I’m the eighth general manager since 1898," which is when the original company, Honolulu Rapid Transit, first incorporated.
"Talk about stability!" he added. "It’s the nature of the business, to a certain extent. I think it really does require kind of a long-term investment in time, in something like this."
Morton is not promising to stay for life, but said he would love to see how the whole interplay of bus and rail, which he applauds, will play out.
His concerns in the present have been the recent five-year contract settlement with the Teamsters, the union representing the drivers. The pact was satisfactory, he said, in that it recognized that the current budget wouldn’t accommodate raises, which were postponed.
Another issue aired this week was the City Council’s Bill 32, which aims to have the city’s ethics code cover OTS as well. While he said he supports his employees coming under a similar code rather than the one OTS has in place, the difficulty is that technically they are not city employees.
The company is a hybrid created when Honolulu took over public transportation in 1971, as did other cities when the more car-oriented society made buses less profitable. A federal regulation required terms to protect the incumbent unions at the formerly private bus companies, Morton said, and that was the reason OTS is quasi public, not unlike the U.S. Postal Service.
"It is an unusual situation. We’re not a profit-making entity," he said. "I would say there are advantages and disadvantages to this way. I could probably operate more efficiently. I could probably operate more quickly than a city agency could."
QUESTION: You’ve mentioned the investments of time in getting this bus system operating well. What are they?
ANSWER: The complexities are just managing the employees and making sure that things are done on time. There’s a lot of lead time in transit. If you want to buy a bus, you might have to start three years earlier, although the city does that, not us. It’s a specialized field, let’s put it that way. …
Q: What’s your take on the whole aftermath of the bus cuts made last year?
A: It’s always painful to cut bus service. There’s no way you can cut service without impacting at least one person. Even if it’s an underutilized route, you still have people that use it. …
Our changes … were done in the former administration for budgetary reasons, but they included improvements as well as cutbacks. It’s difficult to go back to exactly the way it was. …
You notice that we made a lot of changes in May. We’re always making changes.
Q: Then you have to deal with the passenger adjustments to that, right?
A: Well, I’ve been doing this a long time — it’s a lot easier to add service than it is to take it away. …
Q: Do you think it’s all settled down now, with the adjusting?
A: We still have a couple of major ones that we have. … We’re the operator, right? And by contract, I don’t get involved in policy. Actually, bus routes and where they go, and frequency, those are really directives that I get.
Q: Are you not involved in the discussions about them?
A: We’re involved, absolutely. …
In the budget ordinance, the (City) Council mandated that Route E (from Ewa Beach to Waikiki) be restored. That was one of the last major points of contention with the community. And so it’s probable that we’ll do something in that area. The mandate is new, so we don’t have a plan for that yet. … On the 26th of August, we will be restoring frequency back to Route 13. …
In the course of realigning these bus routes, some of the things that were done were actually improvements in service. And one of them was extending the Route 2 to KCC (Kapiolani Community College); it’s been very successful. Another one was extending the Route 13 to Waikiki along Kapahulu to the UH (University of Hawaii). Another was improving the frequency of buses to Central Oahu, to as far as Haleiwa now. …
Q: So, you wouldn’t really want to restore routes to what they were before? Because some changes did make sense?
A: Right. And that’s why when you crack the egg and you begin to scramble, it’s hard to unscramble it. That’s the situation we were in with the people who said, "I want it back exactly the way it was." Well, there’s been some improvements, and I think it would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire to undo a whole set of improvements.
Q: Then you’d have a whole new set of unhappy people?
A: Right. And they were done because of unrecognized demand that we weren’t meeting, at places where people do ride buses a lot — UH and KCC and Central.
Q: Anything to update on the Handi-Van situation?
A: Handi-Van is probably the most difficult part of our operation. It’s a highly personal service; it provides door-to-door service. It’s one where the operators know very well, they know intimately, the customers. It’s a very costly service.
We’ve had setbacks because we haven’t replaced our vans as quickly as we would have liked. But just thinking that we take about 3,400, 3,500 people per day — and that’s a new schedule every day, because it’s demand-responsive.
Q: It’s like a cab, almost?
A: Yeah, it’s a shared service. I don’t want to say it’s like a cab, though we use cabs a lot in the service. It’s just logistically challenging to put together a schedule starting at say 6 at night and having it ready to go out at 3 in the morning.
Q: Is the delay in van replacement due to budget cutbacks?
A: No, it’s because of a series of protests by different manufacturers over the last three years. They’re bid out publicly by the city, and there have been a variety of protests, challenges by one company or another company.
Q: So, is that more in the hands of city procurement?
A: We don’t procure the vans, so it’s out of our hands. We’re hopeful now that there has been a recent bid for 99 vans. … There was a protest even on that one, but it looks like that has been resolved, and the order will go through.
Q: Would the fleet expand in size?
A: Most of those are replacement. In Handi-Van, our growth over the last few years, we have contracted out most of our growth to several private providers, including taxicabs and other lift vans.
Q: With the aging of the population, is it projected that you’ll need more?
A: Yeah. I mean, the wakeup call for the county was something called the Porter Report, which was done as part of the rail financial plan, … to see whether the community can afford all of the service, projecting into the future. When you run the demographic numbers and you project forward 10, 15, 20 years, when you or I are looking for that Handi-Van service, it is a challenge to figure out how we’re going to do that in the long term. …
Q: On the ultimate plans for the rail-bus connection: Do you think the two elements will ever come under a single umbrella agency?
A: I think in the long term — by the time rail starts operating — I think it makes good sense to have one umbrella organization in charge of planning all transit service, whether that be HART (Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation) or that be DTS (the Department of Transportation Services). Some public agency that would have a single focus of providing transportation.
Right now, HART is not an operating entity — they’re a planning and construction agency, and the talents for planning and construction are going to be a little different than what they will be when they’re operating. And when they do operate, they’re going to have Ansaldo (Honolulu) operate the trains for the authority. So Ansaldo in some sense will look somewhat like us.
Rail and bus will still be separate, but there’s a need for coordination … and there may be opportunities to save money, by not duplicating some administrative services, by sharing in some things like fare collection. …
It’s a little different because here in Hawaii we (bus and rail) are all creatures of the City and County of Hono-lulu, unlike many mainland places like the San Francisco Bay Area, where you have five counties and multiple municipalities. Here it should be a lot easier, because we just have a single level of government. …
Q: So, it is possible to create a kind of hybrid agency?
A: Well, the mayor has set up a working group to study those issues. We met a couple of times. I think the vision is to identify what the opportunities are. …
Q: Has the "M" word ever come up? Merger?
A: Well, a merger would be complicated because we have unions involved. … The more complicated areas get to be finance and procurement, and all of those administrative functions. … It’s possible there could be synergies there. It’s not easy to take two corporate cultures and merge them together. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
The culture of this company goes back more than 100 years, and merging that with a brand-new company … there’s risk involved in everything.
Q: Do you ever sneak on a bus to check out the service?
A: I can’t sneak, but I like to get on buses so the driver can see. … For example, if I’m in Waikiki, rather than try to find a parking spot there, I’ll park on Kapahulu, further down where our buses are, and I’ll take the bus to Waikiki, or from here to downtown.
Q: You don’t go in disguise?
A: After 35 years of working for this company, I’ve pretty much greeted all of them at their training, when they start.
