Stopping rail transit at Middle Street with a required transfer to the bus steals Leeward commuters’ time and guarantees that rail would fail.

The DaBus App and published schedules show travel times for the “A” Express Bus from Middle Street to Ala Moana averages 35 minutes. Optimistically allowing 10 minutes for rail-to-bus transfers makes this portion of the trip at least 45 minutes, compared with 12 minutes for rail. That’s a 33-minute loss for every trip, or more than an hour loss every day for a commuter.

East Kapolei to Middle Street on rail would be 30 minutes, plus 45 minutes for the bus to Ala Moana — a total of 1 hour, 15 minutes. Rail will take only 42 minutes.

Bottom line: Stopping rail at Middle Street would steal more than an hour every day from Leeward commuters’ lives and kill all incentives for them to use rail. Time lost is priceless.

Sam Gillie

Hawaii Kai

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