Honolulu buys 48 vans for TheHandi-Van fleet

The City and County of Honolulu announced the purchase of 48 more gas-powered vans for TheHandi-Van, the city’s under­resourced paratransit service, that should arrive in August.

The vans cost about $9.7 million, and about 80% of that is federally funded, Department of Transportation Services Director Roger Morton said Thursday at a news conference in front of Honolulu Hale. The city is also funnelling $750,000 into building a new software system for reserving the vehicles, Morton said. The department is also looking into using private partners and smaller vehicles to help ease the shortage of available vehicles, he said.

“Finally, the city is also putting their money where their mouth is,” Morton said.

The influx of cash comes as users of the van service, who cannot drive or use the bus, face long delays, dropped calls and wrong drop-offs as they try to get where they need to go. The 209-vehicle system struggles to retain enough reservationists to take calls and enough vans to meet demand, with about 3,000 people riding it each day.

The new vans will not expand the fleet, but they will replace other vehicles that are “at the end of their life,” Morton said. Because the vehicles have a considerably shorter life span than buses, Morton hopes to purchase 30 to 35 vans annually as part of his “multiyear plan.”

The reservation software, expected within a year, will allow some riders to schedule their own trips without first having to call a reservationist, Morton said. “If we can get 25 (percent), 30% of our riders to actually use computers to schedule their trips, that’ll be better for everybody,” he said.

Reservationists working the phone are reported to be prone to absenteeism. There are 35 reservationists on staff, but only about 75% attendance every day, according to Robert Yu, president of Oahu Transit Services, which oversees TheHandi-Van. Why some skip out on work is not clear. “We don’t really ask in detail,” Yu said, citing respect for staff privacy.

Erik Soderholm, co-owner and vice president of Soderholm Bus and Mobility, the company that assembles TheHandi-Vans, said he was glad to have reached a deal with the city.

The government “saved our company,” Soderholm said.

Gabi Soderholm, Erik Soderholm’s daughter and the company’s assistant operations manager, previously told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the family business had initially proposed a contract for 65 vehicles at $149,377 apiece but had to ask for a 34.72% price increase as interest rates and Ford’s prices went up. She said that Ford’s E450 chassis, which forms the foundation of TheHandi- Van, has become more expensive, possibly due to the global shortage of semiconductors.

Morton hopes that future vehicle purchases for TheHandi-Van will be electric, but the electrification of such models is still in its “infancy,” he said.