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The folly of the in-town BRT

Many alert readers have asked me, “What is the BRT?” Here’s what it is—and also what it isn’t.

BRT is short for Bus/Rapid Transit, and it is the city’s plan for public transportation in the Leeward Corridor. [i] It has two different parts, the regional [ii] and the in-town, [iii] and they would connect at either the Middle Street Transit Center or the Iwilei Transit Center, which is on King Street opposite A’ala Park. All told the capital costs incurred by the city would be $370 million and the balance by the federal government. [iv] The city will pay virtually all the operating costs [v] and any cost overruns in its construction.

The regional BRT creates “a continuous H-1 BRT Corridor from Kapolei to downtown using a.m. and p.m. contraflow zipper lanes and express lanes.” [vi] The benefit of this, the city says, is that typical bus travel times from Mililani to downtown, for example, would be cut by 25 minutes.[vii]

So far, so good.

The in-town BRT, using large hybrid diesel/electric buses, [viii] will run from the Middle Street Transit Center to the Iwilei Transit Center where they split into three branches—one to UH and two to Waikiki (one of which will service the Kakaako Park area). [ix]

The city claims the BRT buses will make better time than regular city buses by being able to use certain lanes exclusively—and some semi-exclusively by sharing with buses. These special BRT lanes will be converted from what are currently general traffic lanes. In addition, the BRT buses will have traffic signal priority, which will enable them to prolong green traffic lights.

The benefit of the in-town BRT, the city says, is that rush hour bus travel times from downtown to UH would be cut by 1.8 minutes, and downtown to Waikiki by 1.3 minutes. [x] (Pause here to let that sink in.)

At the end of this year the city plans to start construction of the total BRT system by first building the in-town line from the Iwilei Transit Center to Waikiki. [xi]

After spending significant time with drivers of Honolulu’s delivery vehicles, tour buses and taxis lately, I now understand the strength of their opposition to the in-town BRT. Here’s why:

First, that valuable road space is being taken away from regular city buses, truckers and other delivery people, tour bus operators, and taxi drivers to allow the BRT bus to have priority. They believe it will seriously disrupt traffic.

For example, the city proposes to reduce:

Kapi'olani Boulevard from four lanes inbound in the morning to two, [xii]
the three lanes each way on Ala Moana Boulevard to two, and
the two lanes on Dillingham Boulevard to one. [xiii]

In addition, the city will have to narrow certain lanes to make room for the special BRT lanes:

Ala Moana at Hobron Lane presently has lanes 12 feet wide and they will narrow these to 10 feet,
Kalakaua Avenue’s from 11 feet down to 10 feet, and
‘Auahi Street’s from 12 feet to 10 feet.

Second, they believe the way the city proposes to handle BRT passengers is going to worsen traffic congestion. For example, on the mauka side of Ala Moana Center today, most bus passengers are loaded and unloaded within the Center itself. The BRT plan calls for these passengers to load/unload onto two platforms—each 160 feet x 8 feet x 13 inches high—in the middle of Kapi'olani Boulevard. These platforms are on either side of Keeaumoku Street will exit onto the existing pedestrian crossings. [xiv] Such center street loading platforms are along Pensacola, Dillingham, University and Kapi'olani.

Third, giving traffic signal priority to the BRT buses will throw off the traffic light synchronization—along King Street, for example.

Fourth, since the in-town BRT from downtown to Waikiki only offers one-minute savings, why not start with the regional BRT and see if that delivers what the city promises? Riders will have to change buses anyway; why not just transfer onto regular buses if all the BRT saves is one minute?

It’s tough to argue with that approach. After all, it is a 25-minute savings for the regional versus a one-minute saving for the in-town.

In fact, with such little time-savings one wonders why, with only a minute to be gained, we need to spend all that money, and create such traffic havoc. In fact, why build the in-town section at all?

Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at: www.lava.net/cslater. Engineering drawings and other views of the proposed BRT project can be found on that site.