There are better ways to develop rail transit

I’ve been an ardent supporter of rail in Honolulu. I’ve studied transit, worked as a planning consultant, and have written about how urban rail could contribute to our quality of life. Yet this project has so many flaws and miscalculations that it is difficult to swallow. Perhaps over time, some of these problems can be fixed. It may be too late for the big fixes, but much of the devil is in the details of planning, design, engineering and operations of the largest, most expensive capital project ever to be built in Hawaii.

Here’s my list of top 10 fixes:

» Reverse the regressive financing of rail. The system was paid for largely by a regressive excise tax; we should remember who paid for it and the burden imposed on those with low and moderate incomes. There are ways to make our overall tax system more fair. We should ensure that those who paid for rail with their grocery bills receive other benefits. Instead of spending billions on rail, we could’ve invested in education or health or other programs to improve the quality of life for our residents.

» Value capture. There will be "winners" from the increase in property values around stations resulting from greater access, foot traffic and investment opportunities. We should capture these "windfalls" and spread the wealth in our community, using tools like tax increment financing, benefit districts and other mechanisms for value capture.

» Integrate development around stations. Transit provides an opportunity for new development including affordable housing, retail, office, schools and health services. Boosting densities and mixed-use development will also generate ridership and increase convenience for our residents.

» Fix the alignment. There’s still time to fix the rail route. It’s not going to all the right places. It needs to better serve car-less households and those most likely to use transit. Many key locations such as the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Waikiki are not included in the initial plans.

» Get the technology right. The system mixes apples and oranges. On the one hand it is a high-speed system serving the growing communities in West Oahu. On the other, it is an urban light rail system with frequent stops and slower speeds in downtown and Kakaako. This is the same mistake that San Francisco’s BART system made.

» Go at-grade downtown. Instead of a massive elevated system downtown, switch to an at-grade system which will be cheaper and more visually appealing. It is also appalling that we haven’t taken aesthetics and visual blight more seriously in the planning and design of this system.

» Integrate buses, shuttles, Handivan, bicycles, electric vehicles and all other transport modes. We need deep integration with other travel modes. Rather than view other modes as competing, use fixed rail to improve the overall system of transport.

» Treat the rail line as an infrastructure corridor. Use this massive construction project to improve trunk services for power, water, wastewater, telecommunications, cyber and other infrastructure. There are opportunities for increasing resilience, redundancy and recoverability of systems with coordination across utilities.

» Emphasize security on the system. For people to use rail transit, it needs to be safe, well-policed, with effective surveillance and monitoring of stations, platforms and vehicles. There needs to be many businesses and activity generators in stations as well as careful design to ensure security.

» Capture the full benefits and costs of this project. We need to know the full environmental costs and benefits of this project. It involves understanding not just the construction, maintenance and operations, but also the complete environmental and social costs and benefits in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, travel time savings, reduced spending on cars, gasoline and other impacts of this system.

Since the rail project appears to be a fait accompli, it is my sincere hope that at a minimum, we can learn from this experience and better understand and improve planning in our community. Perhaps some of these fixes are underway but many believe that it’s too late or useless to make big changes. Like the H-3 freeway, Superferry and other great planning disasters, history is repeating itself in Hawaii.