As a planner, former City Council member and Council chairman, I have followed the development of Oahu’s transportation system with keen interest throughout my career. As our transportation system goes, so goes the growth of Oahu and the kind of development that takes place. This development, in turn, will shape the way of life we enjoy.
Calls to halt construction of Oahu’s rail transit are nothing less than threats to our island’s future quality of life. Oahu’s transportation network will determine if we succeed or fail to accommodate the nearly 200,000 additional people who will be living on Oahu in less than 30 years. The foundation for that network is rail transit.
Will we be able to keep the country country, or will we witness uncontrolled sprawl and the monumental traffic congestion that goes with it? By 2030, 69 percent of Oahu’s population and 83 percent of employment will be located within the transportation corridor served by the rail system.
The City and County of Honolulu General Plan — the city’s objectives and policies for Oahu — directs this future population and employment growth. The General Plan projects the populations of Kakaako and Kapolei will increase by 370 percent or more, while Ewa’s population will more than double.
Current residential areas in Windward Oahu and Central and East Honolulu have no more room for growth. West Oahu and the Leeward Coast are the areas where future generations will live and work. Our children and grandchildren who will live there are going to need rail, the only viable alternative to existing congested highways.
The rail’s development really started with the 1967 Oahu Transportation Study, which concluded that a fixed-guideway transit system extending from Pearl City to East Honolulu would be needed to meet future travel and transportation demand. A series of studies, plans and proposals by the Oahu Metropolitan Transportation Organization (OMPO) and the city followed, each building on its predecessors.
Jump to 2004, when OMPO, while developing the Oahu Regional Transportation Plan 2030, surveyed Oahu residents and identified traffic congestion during the commute period between Ewa and Central Oahu and downtown Hono-lulu as commuters’ biggest concern.
By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, residents said that improving transit was more important than building roadways. Seventy percent of the respondents believed that rail rapid transit should be constructed as a long-term transportation solution and 55 percent supported raising taxes to provide local funding for the system.
For the past eight years, the public has been involved in the planning and developments that led to the rail system now under construction. Besides hundreds of public meetings, which continue, this involvement includes the 2008 vote in support of the system now being built and a 2010 vote to create the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to oversee and manage its development.
These votes took place against a background of vocal opposition that has repeatedly resorted to misinformation and scare tactics to obstruct progress and disrupt the process. The latest chapter in the effort to nullify the democratic process and thwart the will of the voters is the entry of former Gov. Ben Cayetano into the mayor’s race.
His candidacy has provided a platform to resurrect the entire catalog of anti-rail misinformation. It is unfortunate that the Star-Advertiser poll was done during this hoopla and shortly after the controversy over the decision to award the rail car and core systems contract to Italian corporation Ansaldo — small wonder that support for rail took a dip.
A single isolated snapshot of opinion should not be seized on as an excuse to second-guess the wisdom of rail transit or the years of planning and input that have gone into making it a reality.
Unfortunately, the poll occurred before the city received approval from the Federal Transit Administration for construction.
I am confident, now that the project has begun in earnest and the public will begin paying closer attention, the benefits will become more apparent and we will see renewed enthusiasm for rail transit.
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Gary Okino is a former member of the Honolulu City Council and city planner.
