O'ahu's traffic jams are now infamous, but the development pattern that led to Honolulu's jammed freeways is busily being replicated on other islands.

Hotel and other employees clog the roads on Maui and in Kona trying to get to and from work, and even the Hilo area endures a milder version of the same sort of traffic snarl as commuters shuttle between town and the bedroom communities in Puna.

The Sustainable Tourism report observed that Neighbor Island residents in particular resist efforts to expand two-lane highways to four lanes in an effort to preserve a more rural look for their communities.

That resistance delayed highway projects, especially on Maui and the Big Island, and undoubtedly led to more congestion.

Solutions suggested in the report include adding staff to the state Department of Transportation, raising the gas tax, and working with counties to "plan future development that is more independent of the automobile."

"You have to ask, is it going to get harder or easier in the next 20 years to live 40 or 50 miles from where you work and drive there?" said Chris Yuen, Big Island county planning director. "There are several signs pointing in the same direction, like gas prices, global warming and congestion. All point to the fact that it's going to be more difficult to have a lifestyle based on long commutes."

As Honolulu again wades through the debate over a proposal for a rail system that could cost as much as $2.8 billion, Toru Hamayasu, chief planner for the city Department of Transportation Services, acknowledges the project will only "slow down the growth of traffic congestion."

"We don't expect the traffic congestion to be less in 2030, but obviously it will be much worse without (rail)," he said.

Cheryl Soon, former city director of Transportation Services, said O'ahu's traffic congestion will ease for a time as more employers set up shop in Kapolei, or lanes are added to the freeway, or a rail system is completed, but O'ahu's growth will soon replenish the number of cars on the road.

Hamayasu said he doesn't believe there will come a point where traffic congestion will become so bad it will block growth, creating a red-line boundary beyond which no more development can occur. That hasn't happened in other cities that are far more congested than Honolulu, he said.

"Our responsibility is to never have that red line appear. ... As professionals, our job is not to define that line, but to make it work, no matter what that point is," he said.