Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Can We Solve Honolulu’s Pervasive Traffic Congestion Problem?

Yes we can!

There are several specific projects that mitigate congestion that if one could magically install half of them overnight, Honolulu’s congestion level would be so low that traffic congestion would be removed from people’s list of worries. That would be a great thing for quality of life on Oahu and a booster to our tourism and the overall local economy.

Part 1 gives some background on congestion (did you know that some congestion is a good thing?) and presents low cost and shorter term traffic congestion solutions. Part 2 presents longer term, high cost traffic congestion solutions.

Honolulu Traffic Congestion – Part 1: From Bumper-to-bumper to Zoom-zoom by Removing One Third of Honolulu's Traffic Congestion for Less Than $500 Million

Honolulu Traffic Congestion – Part 2: Up-shift to Overdrive by Removing another One Third of Honolulu's Traffic Congestion for Less Than $5 Billion

These two white papers illustrate the dozens of doable, affordable, all-local-labor and effective projects for mitigating one of our largest problems on Oahu, traffic congestion.

Traffic congestion mitigation in Honolulu is in the hands of government and politicians. They may actually be the main causes of our traffic congestion.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hear you and I think their going ahead with out all the funds is awful.They want to take the bus and Hani van monies to show the feds they have the money. They can't pay it back and how can ofilme synthse they take from a working system to give to one that will be bankrupt like all the others. Just check and see. Most rails fail because they can't make it on the fares. We do not need to be having our chidren end up payng for something that does't work.

Anonymous said...

Honolulu has an Intelligent Transportation System which does not appear to have all the elements of ITS to manage or relieve traffic congestion on the H1 or improve traffic flow in Downtown. Two elements of ITS are missing such as Ramp Meters and Variable Speed Limit Signs. A third element as road sensors may not be there also. And AI software designed under specifications of a traffic engineer to mimic what a traffic engineer would do when confronted with data transmitted by the road sensors.

Panos Prevedouros said...

Honolulu clearly has lopsided priorities:

The Traffic Management Center would help coordinate and take advantage of installed ITS. It started when Mufi was mayor. They are still finishing the building... No traffic relief in sight till late 2013.

Meanwhile, the rail, which has incomplete Final Design and no federal funding, has started construction!