Think if wallowing in our own traffic misery is what you want for Oahu —for years to come, with no relief in sight. If idling in traffic on the H-1 and H-2 freeways for hours every single week, amid growing population, is what you choose for yourself, maybe even for your next generation. Simply, that is what we’ll continue getting — and will deserve — if Ben Cayetano is elected Honolulu mayor with his thin bus rapid transit scheme. We reject such a fate for our Hono-lulu. Oahu deserves better planning on this and other city issues, and we believe Kirk Caldwell can deliver as our next mayor.
The choice between Caldwell and Cayetano is not a character issue. We deplore the third-party PAC attack ads against Cayetano that blatantly mislead about illegal campaign finance dealings when he was governor, and hope they do not backfire now against Caldwell. Both candidates have put in impressive time in public service: Caldwell as former city managing director, acting mayor and state legislator; Cayetano as a two-term governor and state senator.
The Nov. 6 general election decision on mayor should be squarely about who is energized and ready to run this city: on transportation, certainly, but also on steering forward public services like sewage and water, roads and parks.
A mere two weeks from election day, and with absentee voting already under way, there is scant mention by Cayetano of any topic other than kill-rail. In contrast, Caldwell is engaged and readily addresses the myriad issues facing our city, including:
» On homelessness, he advocates "safe zones" and the Housing First concept, which aims to help chronically homeless people afflicted with mental or sub- stance abuse problems by putting housing and needed services under one roof.
» On the city’s sewage and water systems, he knows how to keep apace on sew-age treatment improvements mandated under a federal environmental consent decree, a settlement he helped forge as managing director.
» On trash and recycling, reliable pickup is promised, as are innovative way to reduce landfill trash. "Green" proposals such as recycling HPOWER ash for road repaving materials should be given a chance to materialize.
As for rail, Caldwell staunchly supports it and says, as mayor, he would advocate for better sense-of-place station designs and tighter financial controls. But rail is not an easy sell: It will cost $5.2 billion and no, will not magically make our traffic vanish. But in reducing traffic congestion by nearly 20 percent, as estimated, it also will be a modern, efficient means of moving Oahu’s people up and down our most-trafficked 20-mile corridor, serving many of our population centers, from Kapolei, Waipahu, Aiea, the airport and downtown to Ala Moana. Much of that route is not pristine acreage — in fact, one important aspect of rail is the linkage of urban and town hubs in order to concentrate present and future population centers, restricting further urban sprawl into "country" areas.
Oahu’s population is growing — it already manifests itself in our clogged traffic — and rail allows us to more smartly plan for quality lifestyles across our socio-economic spectrum. Much-needed affordable housing, for example, is envisioned near some transit stations, offering shelter and mobility. Caldwell rightly sees the important potential in such scenarios to direct growth and accommodate future generations.
Hindsight reveals there have been missteps in the handling of rail so far, and legal interpretations that have swung both ways have currently snagged the project. But the present setbacks should not encourage embracing of Cayetano’s bus plan, a cobbling of old or discarded ideas like a Nimitz Highway flyover ramp and street underpasses. The former governor has done a masterful job of wishful-thinking salesmanship, but voters need to realize his plan will take years to even move off the drawing board, let alone be analyzed for viability and vetted for funding eligibility.
Cayetano is, simply, a one-issue candidate. And weighty though that issue is, voters deserve more.
The city’s diverse concerns run the gamut, and we need a mayor who has given depth of thought to Hono-lulu’s problems and has formed proposals to tackle them. That candidate is Caldwell.
