HART

«The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new» — Socrates
From my perspective, the light rail represents an important starting point to addressing Honolulu’s future challenges that our ever expanding population presents to us all. Note I said starting point. I believe the mistake most people make in judging the value of building the rail is that it represents the end game to Honolulu traffic problems. Rather, they should look at it as a means to the end. The rail will become part of Honolulu’s critical infrastructure and give community leaders the opportunity to make better decisions and offer more creative life style options to future generations of residents. Supplemented by government policy, regulation, incentives and over sight, the rail serves a vital role as a central spine around which high density housing is built around the surrounding areas. In this role, the rail reduces urban sprawl that has infected many of other major cities on the US mainland. Urban sprawl severely taxes our limited resources such as open natural space, water, sewer, storm drainge, roadways, electrical grid and vital public services such as law enforcement, fire and medical emergency services. Common sense tells us that if left unchecked, urban sprawl will greatly increase the costs of these resources and services in perpetuity if we continue to address these issues with weak bandaid short term solutions. If, for example, our population doubled and our roads proportionately increased as well, I’m sure that the costs to provide and maintain these resources and services in perpetuity would dwarf the initial costs of building the rail. Honolulu had reached a tipping point and our politicians had the foresight and fortitude to fight through the adversity and old school thinking to get this done. No one is expected to give up their cars to use the rail exclusively, but if car usage can be reduced even by a small percentage, the resulting cost savings, traffic reduction and the intangible savings of preserving environmental open spaces would be substantial. I believe that progress and respecting the past can co-​exist together. Let’s not dwell so much in the past that we fail to prepare and build for the future.
Most locals may have forgotten or don’t realize that planning for a mass transit system to connect outlying neighborhoods with urban Honolulu began in the 1960’s, the Honolulu Area Rapid Transit (HART) was created back in the late 1970’s when planning studies were just started to get underway for a rail project and funding was finally approved in 2005. Meanwhile, our population has been increasing and spreading out further from urban Honolulu. So, HART was revived in 2011 as a semi-​autonomous group to oversee the planning, construction, operation and extension of a rail system.
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