Supporters of the Honolulu Rail Project are pointing to a new national study which shows that Honolulu has the worst traffic congestion amongst all American cities in 2011. The report, released by INRIX Inc. had Honolulu’s raking jump 36 places in a year to number 1 in the nation mainly due to a change in methodology. It was shown that the average Honolulu driver spend 58 hours a year stuck in gridlock.
According to the study, the two worst sections of the city included a 3.9 mile eastbound part of the H-1 freeway from Vineyard Boulevard to Ward Avenue and a 7.3 mile westbound section of the H-1 freeway stretching to Moanalua Road. Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, Daniel Grabauskas, commented, “Traffic is getting worse and everybody knows that. There’s a lot of times you want to be No. 1, like in football. Where you don’t want to be No. 1 is in gas prices, and you don’t want to be No. 1 in congestion, you know, wasted time in traffic. We’ve got that double whammy here in Honolulu.”
Honolulu Mayor, Peter Carlisle has publicly stated that he is a strong supporter of the rail project. Carlisle noted, “The bad news is the scorecard analyzed the 100 largest metropolitan areas in our country and the worst traffic city in the nation is Honolulu, even worse than Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. The good news is that right now we are building the solution. The Honolulu rail project is under construction. On April 23rd construction began on columns and foundations. Sen. Inouye has confirmed that the only thing that will keep the project from receiving $1.55 billion in federal funding is World War III.” The total cost for the rail project is estimated at over $5.2 billion.
Kirk Caldwell, who is running for mayor, added, ”We sit in traffic for 58 hours a year, wasting time, wasting energy, not being home with family, not being at work being productive. I think rail is about a solution to our traffic problem. This is only going to grow worse without rail.”. Caldwell has been a strong supporter of the rail project since it’s inception.
University of Hawaii civil and environmental engineering professor and critic of the rail project, Panos Prevedourous, stated that rail supporters “tried so hard to use Honolulu’s INRIX No. 1 ranking in traffic congestion as a reason that Honolulu needs rail to solve its traffic problem. But most cities on the list of worst cities for traffic congestion have rail! What did rail do for their congestion? It squandered billions, which could have been used for real traffic relief.” Prevedourous also added, "I do not give heavy credibility to the study. You cannot assess an entire island based on one of the worst bottlenecks in the nation around the Middle Street merge. It is overblowing the situation.”
