DEC. 5, 2006 -- In less than a month a general excise tax hike kicks in on Oahu. The surcharge is going toward a giant transportation project the city council will decide on by year end. Our special report on transit continues with a look at ridership -- will people give up their cars?
Traffic is making us grumpy.
"They are so irritated they swear they toot their horn they scream," city Councilmember Rod Tam says about the state of traffic on Oahu. "And you know, this is not aloha state anymore."
That ought to scare at least some people onto mass transit, but how many? The city's study of alternatives relies on ridership to pencil out. So, will people ride bus and rail, or pony up to use a toll road?
According to the transit study, 178,000 bus trips are taken every day now. Doing nothing, the study says bus ridership would grow to 232,000 trips a day. It'd grow a little more – to more than 240,000 daily trips -- with a managed-lane option. And it is projected to grow a little more than that – 281,000-plus train and bus trips combined -- if rail is built.
The mayor and other rail backers say the study numbers are reliable.
"There's no question in my mind that we have a mentality here of using public transport," said Mayor Mufi Hannemann. He cites current bus ridership and a city poll in which 57 percent of respondents said someone in their family would ride rail, even if they themselves would not.
Critics say bus ridership isn't keeping pace with population growth now. Why should it later?
"We have been seeing a constant slight decline in ridership in our bus system," rail opponent Cliff Slater said. "I fail to see why we're factoring in growth with population when it has not done that at all. Until we get that right, we don't have a ridership number that anyone can trust."
He points to some other cities where rider projections didn't pan out.
"We've got 17 projects that range from 80 percent below forecast to 9 percent over," Slater said.
But the mayor says that trend is shifting for the better.
"Of late, all the ridership projections in the cities that have built rail have all been exceeded," Hannemann said.
The Alternatives Analysis study says rail would get a net 40,000 daily car trips off the road by 2030 -- but nearly 3 million still on.
"The culture is cars, everybody likes their cars, everybody drives them," said Councilmember Todd Apo. "Well, is that an acceptable reason to go with a car-based solution?"
Proponents of managed lane options answer "yes," if the majority is still driving.
"The national experience is that about 3.2 percent of the people ride it," said traffic engineer Panos Prevedouros. "So that is a very tiny proportion"
Rail backers say it doesn't have to be either-or.
"I have never said that everyone now is going to stop purchasing cars, or they're going to get out of their vehicles," Hannemann said. "But I think it all comes down to choices."
The train isn't bullet-fast. Managed lanes could clog at the exit. But there's no "rush" left in rush-hour, anyway.
"We are at grade-level 'F' now for level of service on most of our major throughfares," said Councilmember Nestor Garcia. "We're at grade 'F' now. How can you get much worse than that?"
Tomorrow night, get your pencils and calculators ready. Our series continues with a look at how billions of dollars would be spent, and where the money would come from. That's Wednesday night on "Hawaii at 10."

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