Honolulu: trains at last?

Railway Age, Nov, 1990 by William D. Middleton

After 25 years of studies and false starts, Honolulu finally appears to be moving toward automated, medium-capacity trains and is in the market for turnkey proposals.

Isle "traffic hell" likely to worsen," headlined the "Drive Time" column in The Honolulu Advertiser a few months ago. The source of Oahu's worsening highway congestion, said the Advertiser, could be found in the effects of a 1980s decade which saw a 17% increase in the state's population, a 21 % increase in the number of licensed drivers, and a 40% increase in the number of registered vehicles.

As Hawaii, and particularly the heavily populated City and County of Honolulu on the Island of Oahu, continues to experience a high rate of both population and visitor growth, the island's traffic problems will continue to grow.

"Our traffic problem can't be solved by a single solution," says state transportation director Ed Hirata. "It will take a combination of alternatives. "

Finally moving ahead as one of those alternatives after more than a quarter century of study and debate is a fixed guide-way rapid transit system for Honolulu that will put fully automated, medium capacity trains into an east-west urban corridor that joins major residential areas with the city's principal employment and activity centers. Projected to open in 1997, the 17.3 mile, 24 station route will be linked with a restructured Honolulu bus network and a system of park-and-ride lots to establish an integrated, island-wide transit system that is expected to raise Honolulu's already high transit ridership by a third by the year 2005.

"It will be one totally integrated system," says Honolulu Rapid Transit Development Project spokesman Anthony W DePaul, Jr.

* Design-build-operate. An Alternative Analysis/Draft Environmental Impact Statement (AA/DEIS) for the project was completed earlier this year, and the Honolulu city administration and City Council reached agreement on a final route choice late in July. Now, Honolulu's Rapid Transit Development Project is moving ahead with an innovative design-build-operate procurement process that will weigh competing technologies and seek a large commitment of private investment in the $1.4 billion project.

Honolulu's first serious look at the rapid transit alternative came as part of the Oahu Transportation Study (OTS), begun in 1963 when the Oahu population was already approaching 600,000. Completed in 1967, the OTS recommendations included the establishment of a fixed guideway transit system serving an urban corridor extending from Pearl City to Hawaii Kai that has appeared, with minor modifications, in every subsequent Oahu transit study.

Subsequent studies in the 1970s included two Preliminary Engineering and Evaluation Program studies, PEEP I and PEEP II, which considered a variety of options for Oahu's transit needs that ranged from expanded bus systems to busways, waterborne ferries, and light rail. In the late 1970s, Honolulu came very close to moving ahead with a heavy rail system under the Honolulu Area Rail Rapid Transit (HART) project that would have comprised an eventual system of 23 miles serving 21 stations between Pearl City and Hawaii Kai. By 1981 HART had reached the Final Environmental Impact Statement stage, and the city had a $5 million, 80% share UMTA grant for preliminary engineering work for the project. Abruptly, however, Honolulu's newly-elected (in November 1980) Mayor Eileen Anderson decided to cancel the project, and returned the grant to UMTA. Still another study, the Hali 2000 Study Alternatives Analysis Final Report, developed by the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization and adopted in 1984, considered several mass transit improvement alternatives.

Honolulu rapid transit came back to life in 1985 following the election of pro-rapid transit Mayor Frank E Fasi, who had been in office during the first OTS examination of mass transit alternatives during the 1960s. For this most recent study, the city undertook a modified Alternatives Analysis/Draft Environmental Impact Statement approach that was based upon many of the fundamental decisions already reached in the earlier studies, such as the corridor definition, the need for full grade separation, and the use of a fixed guideway technology. Instead, the new study concentrated on a consideration of alternative fixed guideway technologies and an evaluation of alternative public-private financial and implementation options.

* Corridor chaos. Geography has had much to do with Honolulu's traffic problems. Limited, and costly, property on Oahu has led to a high population density in much of the city, and high rise apartment living has become commonplace for many of the city's residents. Constrained on the south by the Pacific Ocean, and on the north by the steep slopes of the Koolau Mountains, Honolulu has grown in a narrow, linear urban corridor that now stretches from Hawaii Kai to the east through downtown Honolulu to Pearl City and Waipahu on the west. With the predominant east-west traffic flow in this densely populated corridor confined to the H-1 freeway and just a few major arterial streets, Honolulu's traffic congestion has grown even more rapidly than the city's population. During the 23 year period since the initial Oahu Transportation study was completed in 1967, the island's population has grown by 40%, but the number of motor vehicles on Oahu has increased by some 134% to a total of almost 600,000. Measured at the Nuuanu Stream screenline just west of downtown Honolulu, traffic in this corridor grew by more than 30% in the ten-year period from 1977 to 1986, and by 1980 peak traffic volume at key points had exceeded the capacity of the highway system.