COMMENTARY
Toll roads not the way to go for Hawaii
By Jeff Merz
Like so many modern cities, Honolulu has grown accustomed to sprawling, paving and driving its way into the future. While this approach is less of a concern in say, Houston or Omaha, this modus operandi has proven disastrous for our city. In short, Honolulu is low on turf and high on sensitive environments and topography. Unlike a Dallas or Kansas City, our development is hindered, dictated and slowed by geography, oceans, tight land use regulatory controls and a finite amount of land. Our urban solutions cannot and should not mirror those of most North American cities.
So why do we continue to import obsolete Mainland transportation models and development patterns? A huge percentage of our island has been resigned to the car in the form of parking lots, parking structures, freeways, surface roads and ramps, resulting in the loss of open space, access, sidewalk room, transportation alternatives and our environmental health.
We don't have to live like this, and we should no longer allow it. The car/freeway industry and their lobbyists would have us believe that transit, infill development and walkable communities are being forced upon us by some sinister, liberty-robbing, social-engineering bureaucracy. But Americans today are not fooled. Let's look at what Americans really think about transportation and development.
A 2007 Growth and Transportation Survey by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America finds that Americans now understand transportation is not just about getting your car from point A to point B as fast as possible. It is about the direct effect our mobility choices have on everything from global climate change to our household finances to our body-mass index.
For instance:
Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to the private ownership of roads; that is, selling key roads and highways to private companies who would charge a toll and give a portion of the toll money to the state.
So much for those supporters of pie-in-the-sky "Lexus Lane" toll viaducts in Honolulu.
So, we finally "get it" on transit, but do we get it to the tune of $400-$500 a year each household in Honolulu is being taxed to pay for our enhanced transit system? Let's compare the cost of our only current alternative, the car. Owning and driving a car is not cheap, and is getting more expensive all the time. The cost of owning and operating a new car was put by the American Automobile Association at 50.2 cents a mile. For the average 50,000 mile a year driver, that is a whopping $25,000 and does not even account for lost productivity sitting in H-1 traffic. A Center for Housing Policy 2006 study concludes that the average working family spends more annually on transportation (29 percent) than on housing (27 percent).
A recently published Bureau of Transportation Statistics Issue Brief found that those Americans who commute by public transportation to and from work saved an average of $515 per year. Add in all the nonwork trips (which now comprise 85 percent of all trips), and public transportation can save families thousands of dollars every year.
Add to these financial gains, the overarching benefits of reduced global warming, reduced foreign oil dependence, better, healthful, walkable communities and more open space, and it is a wonder that anyone would still oppose transit and advocate more freeways and sprawl for Honolulu. Let's no longer allow ourselves to be lulled into the detrimental status quo by those who benefit most by keeping it that way. We as a community are brighter and better than that.
Jeff Merz is on the Waikiki Neighborhood Board. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
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