With rail construction slated to resume later this year, city officials will soon have to decide how they want to manage Oahu’s 100 or so bus routes with its future 20-mile elevated train stretching from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center.
Councilman Breene Harimoto, chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, has a proposal that could reshape the way transit is run on the island if the idea is embraced by his colleagues and eventually city voters.
The Council member, representing Pearl City to Waipahu, says he’d like the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to eventually take over the city’s public bus system. HART, a semiautonomous government agency, was created by a voter-approved amendment in 2010 to oversee the city’s $5.26 billion rail project.
"It makes sense to me, since we do have a transit authority, that the bus would be moved under the authority," Harimoto said last week.
Oahu Transit Services, a private nonprofit corporation, has run TheBus since 1992.
The Council hasn’t formally considered the proposed change, but "assuming rail is on schedule, (2014) would be a good time to start" the discussion, Harimoto said.
He added that he’s working on a proposed charter amendment to give HART responsibility for the bus system, and that he believes voters should take up the measure next year.
"We are proceeding with rail," he said. "It’s a given. We need to plan accordingly."
Any charter amendments proposed by the Council for the 2014 general election would have to be approved first by Mayor Kirk Caldwell, according to the city’s corporation counsel.
However, Department of Transportation Services Director Mike Formby said the city still needs to do extensive research — perhaps through 2014 — before it considers moving the bus service under HART.
"We’re just starting the discussion," Formby said Friday. "Nobody’s in a position yet to say that’s going to happen."
Harimoto acknowledged his proposal is "premature" but said that a recent City Council discussion about OTS’ future as Honolulu’s bus operator forced him to remind his colleagues in public that long-term changes could be coming to how Honolulu manages its public transportation.
If Honolulu’s rail project stays on schedule, its driverless trains would start running in 2017.
Transportation officials started planning years ago to blend the city’s bus service with its future rail system.
A 2012 "short-range transportation plan," prepared for TheBus by transportation firm NelsonNygaard Consulting Associates, states that several of the system’s "largest and most productive" routes would be replaced by rail service running along the same corridor.
The short-range plan calls for many of the city’s "long-haul" bus routes to become "collectors" to drop off and pick up passengers at rail stations.
It further states that rail-related construction "will affect the reliability of transit services for years at a time."
Additionally, the rail project’s 2010 environmental impact statement planned for some 33 bus routes to be changed and that 28 other existing routes be eliminated or restructured to make way for new routes.
The statement also planned for 37 new bus routes, as part of the reshuffling.
Formby said the HART/ OTS task force could follow the plan laid out in that statement or go in an entirely different direction, depending on what they find.
Meanwhile, HART and OTS board members will meet at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at OTS’ paratransit building, 611 Middle St.
They’re expected to form a task force to examine how Honolulu’s bus and future rail systems could better work together. The group will look at interchangeable "smart card" fare passes between bus and rail, communication and technology issues, and ways for the two systems to combine their operations and maintenance, among other topics, Formby said.
"The concept is, it would be a disservice to taxpayers if we didn’t look for opportunities" to save money and run things more efficiently, Formby said.
U.S. cities that have rail and bus typically have both operations managed by one agency.
Harimoto called that the best approach.
"What we learn from other cities, it appears that it is best practice to have all public transportation under one public authority," he said.
But there are exceptions, said Art Guzzetti, vice president for policy for the American Public Transportation Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for transit agencies. Guzzetti pointed to the 23 independent transit agencies operating in California’s Bay Area, including the region’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART. New York also has various independent transit agencies that fall under the larger Metropolitan Transit Authority, Guzzetti said.
"There’s going to be so many models" to manage regional transit, he said, and more cities such as Honolulu are starting to look at what fits best for them. "There’s no one solution."
He added, "It’s not easy to pull a region together."
He said "many little interests" can stand in the way of integrating transit modes. Other models evolve over time.
That’s what happened in the Phoenix area.
In 2002 the Valley Metro Rail agency was formed to build the region’s light rail system. The first 20-mile leg was launched in December 2008 and was managed by Valley Metro Rail, rail officials there said. However, in March 2012 the agency was absorbed by its sister agency, Valley Metro RPTA, which oversaw the region’s bus service.
"There’s greater coordination," Valley Metro spokeswoman Susan Tierney said. "It just lends itself to greater efficiencies."
In Denver a single Regional Transportation District manages that metro area’s bus fleet and light rail across eight counties.
"It makes it a lot easier for us to put our schedules together," RTD spokeswoman Daria Serna said Thursday.
