honolulutraffic.com

formerly The Alliance for Traffic Improvement

Seeking cost effective ways to reduce traffic congestion on Oahu

July 12, 2005

BART: SFO Chronicle spells out what we may be in for:

San Francisco Chronicle Editorial gives us a flavor of what we can expect: " … political pressure … pot of money ... a nightmare … another work stoppage in view … health-care and pension deficits … riders should be furious … ridership down … public anger... READ MORE

June 27, 2005

Portland loses money big time:

This afternoon, in response to a request from the afternoon Mike Buck Show on 830AM we researched the Portland's bus and rail costs. In 2003 they had fares of $54 million and operating expenses $266 million. Passengers carried about 50 percent more than ours. We thought you might also like to compare Portland with TheBus. HONOLULU    PORTLAND

June 27, 2005

Where are the those who speak for the less affluent?

It is very interesting that we do not hear from Ah Quon McElrath, Larry Boyd, and others on this rail issue. In other cities they help the bus riders form unions to protest the inevitable over spending on rail and short changing the inner city bus riders. Here's some greater detail on three community actions against rail lines:

LOS ANGELES    SAN FRANCISCO   VANCOUVER

June 26, 2005

Bay Area BART completes a $1.2 billion overhaul:

We sometimes forget that once rail systems are in place, the maintenance begins. This began in 1994, twenty years after the trans-bay system opened. Among other items, BART has completed a ten-year major renovation of the original 430 cars at a cost of $1.2 million each. READ MORE

June 26, 2005

Seattle Post: Monorail balloons to $11 billion:

"It will cost more than $11 billion to pay for the 14-mile monorail Green Line project and the debt to finance it, according to documents made public yesterday." The State Treasurer said the typical principal and interest payments on a state project amount to double the construction cost of the project.  READ MORE

May 1, 2005

San Francisco's BART in financial woes:

To put things in perspective, BART has average daily ridership of 350,000 versus Honolulu's TheBus of 230,000, showing that BART has about 40 percent more ridership than we do. Supposedly rail lines have less operating subsidies than buses. It does not appear to be that way with BART. According to their 2004 ANNUAL REPORT BART's fare revenues were $234,546,000, operating expenses were $498,503,000, leaving losses of $263,957,000. Capital costs make the situation worse.

That was in 2004 and now their latest budget is $50,000,000 short, which will mean even greater losses. And that is on top of new charges of $5 a day for park-and-ride spaces, fare increases and reduced discounts for seniors. BART has 45,000 parking spaces so that will add up. READ MORE READ MORE

February 20, 2005.
Update: The Last Word On Rail Transit:
Rail transit forecasts for ridership are normally for 20-25 years in the future and they usually forecast a 50 percent increase in the percentage of commuters that will use public transportation.
However, we can look back 20 years and see what happened in the 22 U.S. metro areas with rail transit since most of the rail transit lines opened between the 1980 and 2000 Censuses.
The Census data shows us that the percentage of commuters using public transportation declined in all but one of them — San Diego — and it only held its own. All the other 21 metro areas with rail, saw a decline.
On the other hand, four of the metro areas that did not have rail, increased their percentage.
Get the federal data from us at the ATI SITE or the Federal Highway Administration site.(FHWA) (Look for page 4-9 in Chapter 4).