Transit corridors would link Maui's population cores

The Maui News
Sunday, October 28, 2007
By RON YOUNGBLOOD, Staff Writer

SPRECKLESVILLE - Unveiling a concept for a mass transit system for Maui, a subcommittee to the Maui General Plan Advisory Committee emphasized that establishing the routes may be a key to future success.

"It's important to set the corridors early on to keep down the cost of acquiring property," said Tom Cannon as he unveiled the mass transit concept for Maui.

Cannon was reporting to the Maui General Plan Advisory Committee as it works with the Planning Department to come up with a Maui island plan as part of a new county General Plan designed to guide development through 2030.

The transit system concept was developed by the GPAC's four-member Transit Investigative Subcommittee - Cannon, state Rep. Joe Bertram III, Lucienne de Naie and Warren Shibuya. Other GPAC members raised questions over costs and whether the Maui island plan should specify any type of transit system.

The corridors, "primarily for raised rail," in the view of the subcommittee, would link Kahului Airport with a central hub at Puunene. From the hub, one spoke would go 27 miles to the Kapalua-West Maui Airport, another 16 miles to Makena and the Maui Prince Hotel, the third 12 miles to Haiku through Paia, and the fourth 25 miles to Pukalani and Kula.

The route to Haiku would follow roughly the same path used by the railroad that operated from Kahului to Haliimaile until 1965. The route through the pali would follow the old road above the current highway.

Cannon, a long-time advocate of raised-rail mass transit and chairman of the Maui GPAC, said the routes were laid out with the idea of maximum convenience and minimum impact on the land. He said if the corridors were established early, they could avoid "the problem Honolulu is having" in proposing to establish a rail transit system from central Oahu to downtown Honolulu and Wakiki - over properties that already are fully developed.

Convenience would foster ridership, Cannon said. Having relatively few stops as collection points would turn, for example, a two-hour bus ride between Makena and Kahului into a half-hour journey.

The subcommittee suggested stations in Puunene, Olowalu, Lahaina, Mahinahina, Kihei, Makena, Paia, Pukalani, at Kahului Airport, the Haiku Marketplace and near Kula Elementary School. The stations would have park-and-ride facilities and also be fed by the Maui Bus.

"This is a wonderful concept," said retired plantation Manager Doug MacClure, "but I question how the finances will pencil out."

Cannon said one way would be to give property owners allowing rights-of-way to have concessions at the stations.

Committee member Jeanne Skog said the GPAC should be looking at the best corridors and not necessarily at specific modes of transportation.

"We've got to look at the routes in general," she said.

Cannon said a raised-rail system would have less impact on land use and established corridors could also be used as pedestrian walkways and trails, bicycle paths, equestrian trails, community gardens, commercial plant nurseries and routes for utility lines.

"You could grow crops or have pastures under the line."

Cannon described a raised-rail system as having a small footprint, "a 10 by 10 slab of concrete here and another 100 feet away."

GPAC Vice Chairman Dick Mayer asked Cannon to come up with estimates for the relative cost per passenger mile for such a system. Cannon urged consideration of the "environmental cost" of alternative forms of people moving.

"You're going way too specific," said Susan Moikeha, urging the GPAC to be more general in establishing routes, including highways. Cannon said the state would plan the highways and that a mass transit system would eliminate the need for freeways. Moikeha noted that she drove all over the island with her four kids and that she couldn't have done that without a car.

"People have no concept of mass transit," said De Naie. "It's a change in thinking."

As a child in the Los Angeles area, she said she and other children routinely used mass transit to get around without the need for accompanying parents. Part of the change in thinking "is to look at compact development" linked by a transit system, she said. "We have a perception problem," said Hinano Rodrigues. "We wanted you to come up with options."

"I think we can propose corridors, just not a specific kind of mass transit," said Stan Franco.

The Maui General Plan Advisory Committee scheduled another look at the transit concept at 5 p.m. Dec. 6, its next scheduled meeting, at Kaunoa Senior Center.