It is encouraging to see a growing awareness of the importance of a sustainable community. But we have ignored one of the most compelling sustainability challenges facing Kauai today: land transportation.
The present land transportation system — a network of highways primarily supporting single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) — is unsustainable. Each year, Hawaii consumes over 400 million gallons in liquid fuels for land transportation. If imported fossil fuels stopped coming, our economy and lifestyle would collapse. We were recently reminded of this by the long gas lines that formed in preparation for Hurricane Iselle.
How can we achieve a sustainable land transportation system, especially in times of declining federal funds?
On Kauai, we have clearly outgrown the state highway system of mainly two-lane roads. We need to expand its capacity.
The conventional wisdom of widening existing highways and building major bypasses will not work for several reasons (depending on circumstances, short bypasses could work):
1. It is not sustainable because the SOV is the most inefficient and wasteful land transportation mode (measured by fossil fuel use, land use and greenhouse gases). This does NOT mean we shouldn’t use cars, but we need to make other transportation choices more available and more attractive.
2. Even if we were to abandon our goal of sustainability, we don’t have the money to finance “more of the same.” Current construction to widen two miles of highway from Lihue town up to Kauai Community College will cost about $80 million. According to the Hawaii Department of Transportation, Kauai will be lucky to get $600 million in federal funds over the next 20 years, enough to widen only a fraction of existing highways, and often that means just moving the bottleneck down the road.
3. Adding lanes or bypasses won’t meet all our community’s future mobility needs. By 2035, 30 percent of Kauai’s population will be 60 and older. The elderly, young, disabled and those who cannot afford a car — over half the population — will not be optimally served by simply adding lanes or bypasses.
What is the answer?
1. Mode shift: changing our means of land travel. 2. Compact mixed use: putting mixed land uses of residential, commercial and public uses in close proximity to each other.
We can expand our existing highway capacity by shifting the mode of travel that most people choose each day from SOVs to transit, walking, and biking. This shift will happen, not by discouraging car use, but by making other modes of travel more easily available, safer, and user-friendly.
To see how mode shift increases highway capacity we first have to understand vehicle miles traveled (VMT). For example, if 40 people at Lihue wanted to travel eight miles to Kapaa, the highway capacity needed to move them varies dramatically based on travel mode. Forty people each using a car for eight miles is 320 VMT (40 cars times eight miles); whereas 40 people riding in a single bus is only eight VMT (one bus times eight miles). Forty people riding bikes or walking is 0 VMT! In this way, shifting the mode of travel expands highway capacity.
Compact mixed use further reduces highway use. For example, putting affordable workforce housing near work centers lessens highway use while making walking and biking to work more feasible.
Kauai County’s Multimodal Land Transportation Plan aims to increase bus ridership over the next 20 years by 1,000 percent. This is bold but achievable. Bus demand presently exceeds services available. We don’t have to convince people to ride the bus; we just need to expand services.
To expand bus services, the county needs a reliable and sustained funding source and support from the State Department of Transportation (HIDOT) because most road travel occurs on state highways. State highways must be transit-friendly (sheltered bus stops, turn-off lanes, carpool lanes), must include bikeways and must have sidewalks through towns.
HIDOT’s long-range plan for Kauai highways must strategically address all travel modes. Yet the urgent need for improved transit service remains unaddressed in the most recent draft of the plan.
Gov. Abercrombie has proclaimed sustainability a state goal. HIDOT must move beyond its “more highways” strategy. Doing so requires support from the Legislature, the governor, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. It requires the availability of state and federal funds for transit, bicycle, and pedestrian facilities. A good first step was the Legislature’s recent approval of $600,000 for bus shelters on Kauai.
Aligning HIDOT’s long-range land transportation plan with state and county goals and securing a reliable and sustained funding source will enable us to move toward a multimodal land transportation system — and a sustainable future.
• Councilwoman JoAnn A. Yukimura is chair of the Kauai County Council’s Committee on Housing and Transportation.
Editor’s note: This is an edited version of a commentary published in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on June 11.
