Homework Assignment before Thursday’s TV Show: Read Why Rail Is Still a Must for Honolulu Despite New Challenges

 

                                                                            Elevated Transit in Lille, France

Mayor Frank Fasi arrived in Paris 30 years ago this month at the invitation of Matra Transport, the Paris-based company that would soon submit a bid to build an elevated rail line between Kapolei and UH Manoa.

Fasi and his entourage traveled by train to Lille in France’s north to inspect Matra’s elevated system there. He stood beneath the guideway (pictured above) and asked Matra’s representative when the next train would arrive.

 

“They’ve been passing overhead for several minutes,” was the reply by John Marino, Matra's North American marketing director. Fasi was shocked he hadn’t heard those trains, so quiet was the system.

 

Matra didn’t win the bid to build Honolulu’s $3.7 billion project. Another consortium did, but the project died in 1992 after the City Council defeated by one vote a local tax to help pay for the project.

Today, Honolulu’s resurrected system is miles shorter and vastly more expensive than the plan pursued by Frank Fasi, a rail champion across the decades. Honolulu officials and citizens now debate whether it’s worth it to fund the final four miles of the line. 

 

The Need Has Never Changed

 

Ending construction at Middle Street would slash billions from the project’s cost, but doing so would cripple the effort to build a relatively fast transit line between residential communities in West Oahu and Honolulu’s employment center downtown.

 

Thursday night’s “Insights” program on PBS Hawaii’s TV channel will be devoted to “Honolulu’s Rail System – Where Are We Now?” Citizens might well prepare for that show by reviewing the rationale to build grade-separated transit along Oahu’s southern corridor.

 

An exhaustive planning study by the University of California, Berkeley examined why Honolulu is well-suited for elevated transit. The study is several years old, but the case for building a travel alternative to the automobile is unchanged. The study’s introduction notes: 

The Honolulu urban area is the fourth densest in the United States, trailing only those of Los Angeles, San Francisco-San Jose, and New York. Honolulu was the most traffic- congested U.S. city in 2011, ahead of stalwarts like Los Angeles and San Francisco (INRIX 2012). Yet unlike Los Angeles and San Francisco, Honolulu has not had an operational rail transit system to serve as an alternative to automobility since the early 20th century….

‘Train to Nowhere?’

 

Ending the line at Middle Street would match rail critics’ description of Honolulu’s current project, but leaving that argument aside, Honolulu residents might well scan the Berkeley document for its scholarly assessment of the need for rail transit here. Then watch “Insights” on Thursday at 8 p.m. 

 

Yes2Rail’s own background site is linked at the Aggregate Site in the right column above. Especially recommended are the project’s goals. 

We also propose a rallying cry at this critical stage of the project:

 

“Get Rail Done!”