The Newest Subway System in America is NOW OPEN! | Honolulu Skyline
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- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2023
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Automated metro systems are commonplace around the world, and with the opening of the SkyLine system in Honolulu today, this technology (and platform gates) are finally now in the US! Let's take a closer look.
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
Transit that ends service at 7PM is almost as bad as non-existent transit. The local busses in my city stop at 7, and it really sends the message that you aren't allowed to use transit and have dinner out after work. A huge number of potential riders won't use the system because of this terrible schedule.
As a local resident of Honolulu, it ends at 7pm because the line isn't finished yet. Most commutes from home to work and back will end before 7. Many won't use it till the entire project finishes. As the video said, many around the stations aren't developed. Wait for development.
Yeah it sends the message, that you are only allowed to use it for work! Be productive for gods sake!
@@BetaD_
Many of the local nightlife is in town.
@@2ry1n and this area of town isn't connected to the Metro yet?
@@BetaD_
Pase 1 complete. Working on Pase 2 and 3 afterwards.
Disney gets a lot of attention in transit largely because tourists actually use it. Hopefully HART has a similar but better impact so that people's only experience with transit isn't a monorail
I concur, this is a real rail system that makes sense for big urban areas
If only it went to the airport already!
This is just the system needed for Las Vegas as described in a previous video. Should LV use smaller trains (like the original in Copenhagen), or larger trains (like this one or the one in Thesaloniki in Greece?)
@@AG7-MTM Yes. As in I guess some lines would justify big trains, other lines smaller trains.
Do a lot of tourists go to Honolulu? I assumed tourists stuck to the resorts mainly
Honolulu is super lucky that its a mostly linear city, squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and really nice mountains. It's incentivised the city to densify, and it also means that this metro line *massively* benefits from having a much easier to reach catchment area for patronage.
That's what makes urban rail in Hong Kong and Bilbao so easy to develop.
The geography is absolutely ideal for rapid transit
One other city in particular that benefits from having a compact size (at least regarding various things within immediate proximity from downtown) is surprisingly Omaha.
All they reed foreseeably is to “full build” their upcoming streetcar in a “plus” or X shape with the two lines directly connecting:
>Midtown (already planned)
>their zoo (with PLENTIFUL parking making it even more appropriate to terminate there accordingly)
>Mid-America Center AND three good sized casinos (and even more hotels inbetween) on the south side of Council Bluffs
>much less their airport (with even more hotels inbetween)
Any other routes could overwhelmingly likely be covered very accordingly with growing their Orbt line into a legit system stretching from Bellevue, Oak View Mall, halfway to the airport (transferring onto said potential streetcar), Council Bluffs’ main drag, and NE 64; very effectively giving much of the entire inner ring of Omaha’s growing metropolitan area within 2 miles or less from a more legitimate mass transit option other than basic bus service…
@@RMTransit If you consider building on volcanoes ideal.
@@dbyers3897 well Japan did
Even though this is a very rocky start, I am very confident that once the airport and downtown phases are open and its operations become smoother, it will be a great success and people will wonder why it wasn't done sooner. The TOD opportunities of the western areas should not be wasted!
Oh absolutely, I think better TOD at the western end is the biggest thing the system needs.
Will they ever open. San Juan did a similar thing with the Tren Urbano and the whole "get downtown" phase simply ended up happening.
@@madcrowmaxwell HART's plans are a lot more concrete than San Juan's and I feel pretty confident about it. Much of the planning is already done, and the airport section is already under construction. They are doing a lot of long-term planning, include right-of-way preservation to UH-Manoa!
@@madcrowmaxwell San Juan should never have destroyed its railway system back in the 1960s. The moment it did, it sealed its fate to become just as carcentric as the mainland US.
@@RMTransit seems as though the attracting TOD on the Western Half may have been part of the goal for the system in the first place. We all know what Brooklyn and Queens looked like when the subway was built. Hoping for the best here, it's a good plan for the future at least. It's likely going to make a lot more sense when the 2nd and 3rd phases are finished and becomes super usable. People are going to love it
I'm a Hawaii fan of RM. Just correction:
Essentially Honolulu Skyline IS NOT meant for tourists. It's meant to connect working class commuters to downtown and any bus lines farther East Honolulu. West Oahu is where people live, East Oahu is hotels and malls people need to work at.
Also Google maps is very out of date. Largest high schools in Hawaii are in West Oahu. Not metro Oahu. It's very populated now.
That seems like a narrow project scope - good transit should be built for everyone in a city, and consider all possible uses.
You hit the nail on the head. There has always been a resistance to provide tourists with a decent public transit option to get between Waikiki and the airport.
There's also a ton of plans to develop the areas around the rail. Can't wait for an est side extension 😂😢
While that may be true, not catering a metro to tourists in a major tourist city seems kind of odd. the Airport and hotels are perfect clients for public transit because they see tons of people every day who don't have easy access to cars. Connecting commuters is obviously also a good idea, but it seems weird to mostly ignore tourists here.
Wow! The US is finally getting a decently modernized transit system; and as a Chicagoan, I honestly couldn't be happier. Props to Honolulu for actually going through with this and not proposing stuff just to throw it away. While it's not perfect, this is a step in the right direction. Also, "subway system"? The entire thing is elevated. Lol
They are only operating it until 7pm, which is completely bonkers for an automated system
@@tonywalters7298 they are changing that tho
subway is a general term for rapid transit
@@RMTransitonly in North America, from what I gather. Otherwise it's "metro" lol
@@RMTransit fair enough lol, i was always accustomed to it meaning an underground transit system, but that has been the trend over the past few years
Hawaii fun facts: Hawaii as a kingdom was historically a protectorate of the UK. A Red Ensign with the Union Jack was given to Kamehameha I by Captain George Vancouver in 1793, who previously visited with Captain Cook in 1778-1779. However, Ireland wasn't part of the UK until 1801, so this specific ensign didn't become the current Hawaiian flag. So what did? Well, Scottish captain Alexander Adams of the British East India Company! The current flag was created by him as part of a China trip in 1817. At this time, he was part of Hawaiian Kingdom Navy. On his way to China, while stopping on Kaua'i for supplies, he gave Kaumualiʻi (last supreme ruler of Kaua'i and Ni'ihau) an ensign to raise at the port, as Kaumuali'i only had the Russian flag left behind from a failed Russian colony.
The state song, Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī, was the anthem of the kingdom from 1876 to 1893, and then the Republic of Hawaii from 1894 to 1898. After US annexation, it became the territorial anthem and was adopted as a state symbol in 1967. Because of its status and Hawaiian pride, it's commonly sung in Hawaiian schools and after the US anthem in sporting events. The words were written in 1874 by King David Kalākaua with music composed by Captain Henri Berger, then the king's royal bandmaster.
>Automated
>Stops service at 7 PM
Make it make sense
Could you perhaps do a video on Santo Domingo Metro? It’s very interesting how the Dominican Republic, a relatively poor country, has managed to establish a pretty good metro system along with a great aerial cable car system. And now, they are building a monorail and light rail system in Santiago, as well as potentially a HSR line for connection between Santo Domingo and Santiago.
- What is most impressive is that the first line, mostly underground, was built in only 2 years (2006-2008) without delays or major issues. Line 2 followed quickly after, and new extensions are being built right now. Panamanians where so impressed that they asked the Santo Domingo team to collaborate in the Panama metro project.
- metro connects to 2 separate cable car lines (like the ones in Medellin, metro cable ).
- work on the 3rd line to the airport will start in January ‘24. A mix of suburban/urban metro line.
@@SpanglishTravel Love the idea of connecting it to the airport, an essential part of every metro system. I hope it continues to expand, as the citizens love the system.
I didn’t know that the Panamanian city was inspired by that of MSD, interesting tidbit of information. I do know that our cable car system was designed to replicate that of Medellin, and surprisingly it’s proven to be effective in moving people around lol.
Eventually I would love to!
pretty good? Ok
@@RMTransittime to take a holiday to the Dominican Republic!
I wonder how the price of shipping materials out to the middle of the pacific might have impacted the cost?
Not just the price of shipping materials, but probably also a lack of experienced labor. This isn't just the first metro system on the island, but essentially the only rail system of any type on the island, so they are probably having to bring in people from the mainland as well.
@@smileyeagle1021 and also the first mega project since the completion of H3 which is also the costliest highway in America on a per mile basis
That was my thought too.
@@smileyeagle1021Yeah, this was supposedly going to make jobs for Hawaii, but like a lot of novel projects, the job usually go to mainland folks. It’s definitely nice to have rail and at the end of the day, jobs should go to qualified people, but I don’t doubt that there are qualified engineers and other workers in Hawaii that could have worked on this project. Hawaii is experiencing a major brain drain - young college educated people go to the mainland (or if they went to a mainland college) don’t come back because there aren’t enough well paying jobs to afford the high cost of living.
These projects are also super expensive on the mainland as well. I think the added costs of doing business in Hawaii are only part of the issue.
NYC expanded its subway service 100 years ago into open farmland with the intention of building communities. Don’t disparage foresight. Everything in Hawaii costs twice as much bc they are so isolated and everything has to be shipped in. I hope they can turn this into a shining example of what the future can look like with trains.
As a 35-year (former) Hawai'i resident, I must say that the words "foresight" and "Hawai'i" really CANNOT be put into the same serious sentence. See my post above, for a bit of historical perspective.
@@berkeleyfuller-lewis3442 Honolulu's Skyline appears quite underwhelming because for starters it stops running at 7 p.m. The TTC, the main transit system of my city of residence, doesn't stop running trains on the Yonge-University-Spadina or Bloor-Danforth line (BDL) until sometime between 1 and 1.50 a.m. or so depending on station but following the shutdown of subway service for nighttime maintenance, buses run along much of Yonge St., Bloor St. and Danforth Ave. (the avenue a mere continuation of Bloor St. after a bridge over Bayview Ave. and the Don Valley Parkway). The 1st train, depending on station, arrives sometime between 8 and 8.30 a.m. on Sundays but on other days usually sometime between 5.30 and 6.30 a.m. A similar schedule applies to the Scarborough Rapid Transit line and likely will continue to do so until said line closes in mid-November, with an extension of the BDL.
The Sheppard line, which runs along that North Toronto avenue from Sheppard-Yonge Station in the west to Don Mills Station further east, operates trains past 2 a.m. In practice, I've found myself on a given week having taken the TTC less, from the week of 15 March 2020 Eastern Time (the week during which the Ontario Government would announce its original covid state-of-emergency due to a then-out-of-control pandemic), in part due to working from home most of the time but also due to cutbacks I've made to discretionary spending following the ends of 2 away-from-home part-time jobs during the week of 8 March 2020 ET. As much as I hope to find paid work, should such work involve working away from home, near enough to my place of residence that within 90 minutes and by TTC I can reach it, that transit system does have gaps in service frequency on parts of it during those hours I typically will use it to get to and from work. That said, I don't see myself buying a motor vehicle anytime soon, with Uber and Lyft having long served the most populous part of Ontario (basically Toronto and nearby suburbs [e.g. Mississauga] and exurbs [e.g. Aurora and Newmarket]).
I know. This guy is a bit of a fool tbh. And actually some of the stations do have escalators. In my city they also built into rural areas and guess what. The city caught up and it’s far easier to insert a rail line through countryside than built up areas. Plus the more dense eastern end already has excellent buses.
I like the word "Skyline" as a more modern synonym for "Elevated" or "El". I would imagine people think that an elevated rail system will be gross and antiquated, or compare it with NYC or Chicago. Saying skyline may make people think of a modern above-grade metro or light rail system, meaning they're less opposed to rail projects in a city.
It's a nice modern name
And the word "skyline" has a pleasant association with generally good views.
Especially in contrast with "elevated" which alot of people associate with elevated highways that are eyesores with garbage views.
Skyline makes me think of the actual skyline not the subway
And it only took them five years to come up with that name 🤣🤣🤣 I don’t think I would have the nerve to publicly admit that. I wonder how many dollars were expended?
“Skyline. That is now the official name for Honolulu’s rail system, which is set to welcome passengers in two weeks.
With that name, city officials hope to bring in a new era and a new image to the much-maligned project.
The city’s presentation of the new name was aided by a video with scenic views of the rail route.
The city said the naming process took about five years. There was a lot of brainstorming and getting reactions from focus groups. At the time there weren’t a lot of positive things to say about the project.” khon2 6/16/2023
I lived in Japan for several years. The trains are integrated into the cities. There is a whole life in and around the train stations. It’s good to see Honolulu taking the step with the new system. It needs to get connected to the airport as soon as possible. In Japan, you can go everywhere on trains. Cars are moderately impractical there.
You’re only talking about Tokyo or other major cities, not Japan. Outside the city everyone in Japan has a car. Japan is a car country and there’s an expression that I hear often, 車社会 “car society”. Most scenic places cannot be accessed by public transport, such as Kamikochi and Mt. Fuji. You can only skim the country by train outside Tokyo or Osaka.
@@KOzck over 91% of Japanese live in cities . 60% of Japanese own a car. Most of the cars are kei cars. The highways are mostly toll roads in Japan. The efficiency of the trains send most people attract ridership. The train like goes fo the base of dujthen you can catch a drain to the fifth station. That’s where the ascent begins in earnest Japan has cars but they afertè. The high taxes along with the calls on the road make preservative to drive everywhere. People live for the train. It’s less expensive and very efficient.
I'm sure that is true today but not when Japan first started building their systems including the bullet trains
@@KOzck Agreed, outside of major Japanese cities there's not enough density around train stations. Most of the density is around stroads that run parallel to rail lines. Just plain stupid imo.
@@phillipbanes5484 it's not either/or. It's about developing multimodal means of transport. In the USA, we have historically given individual modes of transit more than enough infrastructure and development. Now it's time we focus more on developing multimodal means of public mass transit. The USA is way behind of other first world countries. It's an embarrassment for the wealthiest country in the world to have a third world public transit system in so many parts of the country. Passenger train service in the USA is a joke for the most part with a few exceptions. It's about time we do much better.
I just rode it for the first time today, it was free all weekend for its public grand opening. The stations are nice and the wait times (by American standards) are pretty short. The trains themselves are nice and spacious, and it moves faster than you think it does just looking at it from the freeway lol.
Its a shame that its gonna take so long to be finished (apparently its stop at Ala Moana is planning for a 2031 opening) but this is a step in the right direction
Just by chance, I happened to sit next to one of the guys at the company contracted to build the screen doors on a flight recently. Was an interesting conversation hearing a bit about the challenges they were running into!
I don’t think it’s a good idea to put screen doors on a flight.
And what were some of these challenges?
Always fun when stuff like that happens
What were the challenges he mentioned?
I read that it was Stanley Access Technologies who built the screen doors for the system. Stanley is widely-known as the leader in automatic door technology in North America and their doors can be found all over the place, so it's cool that they've dipped their feet into the transit industry. Hopefully they'll continue to stay involved if/when WMATA and MTA install PSDs on their systems.
Hawaii resident here. The story of HART is one of tremendous graft by our recently-departed (and by some polls, least popular in America) governor David Ige (pronounced IY-Gey). The no-bid contract for constructing the rail was given to a company that _just so happened_ to be owned by a personal friend of Ige, and said company _just so happened_ to run into numerous delays that necessitated a near-doubling in budget from the initial ask. Iirc there was a push to allow competition for who was going to build the rail, but Ige overcame the effort at the 11th hour.
To add insult to injury, a scandal during Ige's terms centered around how, at the time he was first pitching the rail idea to the state senate, he in fact _knew_ the initial ask wouldn't be enough and the state would be in too deep by then to cancel the project. Hopefully, Skyline can overcome its cursed beginnings to become an at least alright rail.
This is the sort of thing that Should lead to the relevant officials, and business owners, facing criminal prosecution. I'm assuming that will either not happen or the consequences will be negligible.
Not to mention the company had never built a train system before 🤣
Thanks, your comment explains a lot.
@@jimmcdiarmid7308 He's either still alive, or you're going to have a knock on your door pretty soon
@@laurencefraser Federal grand juries empaneled by the US Attorneys for Hawaii issued three subpoenas to the honolulu rail “authority” in 2019. Assisted by the FBI, they “requested” various types of information, and interviewed some employees of rail contractors too. I have no idea what the status of the investigation is though.
When I was a kid in high school in Hawaii in late 2000s this project was a point of huge debate. Crazy to see it come to fruition. I moved away shortly after they'd started construrion. Insane
Why did u leave. Im from here too. Lots of people sell out n move mainland
@@The808Mixmaster too expensive brah.i graduated from aiea 2012.
@@peerlessvillain lol thsts what everyone says. I mean it is but I still make it lol I no like have to move mainland with all those haoles
@@The808Mixmaster is what it is
I still get fam out in laie. Sall gud
@@peerlessvillain i mean to each their own i guess long as u doing good
It is INSANE that, the service will only run until 7pm. I have lived in Miami, but I've been living in Lima, Peru for several Years now. And BOTH of the Metro Systems run from 6am till 11pm at night... Then again both Cities that I mentioned, have MUCH bigger urban and more denser Areas. 🤔
That's because the line doesn't service the urban area at all. Doesn't even come close.
"Subway"? Should we call it that if it is entirely elevated? That said ... wow!
Call it what rest of the world calls it.... Metro
@@KanishQQuotes lol every place calls it different.
Call it the L :) like Chicago
Topway
I like “overway”.
This is great for Hawaii, no reason why an island with a big city should not have a local train service for the public, the admin for it was terrible,but the infrastructure seems excellent ♥️✌️🇬🇧
I voted for this rail 15 years ago when I was 18. 15 years later, I really can't believe this day is here. Although, I don't think it will make the biggest impact until it reaches the airport and downtown Honolulu (which will take another 8 years minimum), it is still a step in the right direction to get away from car dependency. We live in probably the most beautiful place in the world and it's really a shame how dependent we are on cars here. Sentiment towards the rail still isn't good, mostly because of how HART totally mismanaged the project and many people here have the same American mindset of cars over everything, but I think Honolulu is taking a step in the right direction building up it's public transportation and bicycle infrastructure. Hawaii is expensive to live as it is, at least now we have another choice of transportation if we don't want to go into more debt for a car.
As resident and rail supporter/voter, I will support an extension to UH. It's ridiculous they stop at Ward.
It's a shame they aren't planning on stopping at UH or at least Waikiki. I think it would be great if they stopped at Ala Moana, and built up a tram system you can connect to that went throughout Waikiki, Diamond head Kaimuki, and Manoa areas. At least Waikiki to start. But I know at this point it's a pipe dream 😅
Why would you vote for a commuter rail that goes nowhere useful? This thing is slow, wobbly, doesn't go anywhere useful, low capacity, and cost each resident of Oahu over $10,000 so far. It would have been so much better to start in downtown honolulu and connect it through Kakaako, Ala Moana, and branch out to UH and Waikiki with a loop that connects Makiki. These are the most dense, walkable areas where people could actually utilize the infrastructure. We all know that with no place useful to walk off the train, and no place to even park and ride.
@@2ry1n UH disappeared from the “plan” in 2007.
“Although the vision of rail that captured the public’s imagination was a 28-mile line running from Kapolei to the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, it turns out that the city can only afford to build a smaller section of that line, 20 miles long. Adding enough rail to reach UH Manoa and Waikiki would cost another $1 billion.
The City expects a 20-mile transit line to cost $3.6 billion.“ 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 honolulu magazine 3/1/2007
@@ShaunBray “to eventually get to the University of Hawaii, the preferred route takes the rail line east on Kona Street with a mauka turn near Atkinson Drive to connect to Kapiolani Boulevard.
But the rail agency is now warning officials that the train won't be able to fit through that corridor.
‘There's been recent developments, real estate developments in the Ala Moana area, which essentially block any future extension of the route,’ Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Executive Director and CEO Andrew Robbins said.” hawaiinewsnow 11/18/2017
“When pushed by city councilmembers Tuesday in a planning committee hearing, HART gave several ideas to get the rail line to UH, including one that would require passengers to get off the train at the Ala Moana station.
‘It would be a transfer to Ala Moana to a new system. So an elevator ride up 8 or 9 stories and then a transfer to a new system’” hawaiinewsnow 1/24/2018
“We have to get to UH; it might not be the same technology, maybe there might be better integration,” said HART’s CEO, Lori Kahikina.” hawaiinewsnow 11/29/23
I currently live on Oahu (the island in which Honolulu is located), and when I found out I would be moving here from Korea, the first thing I looked into was the public transportation, as I had grown accostum to living car free for years over there. And I was sorely disappointed to learn of all the delays and issues with the HART project. Oahu is going to need a huge infrastructure overhaul to make this project successful. There isn't much surrounding even the most dense station currently, nor are any of the stations walkable (I believe many, especially further west, are meant to be a drive/ride). Currently the only open stations go suburb to suburb, and it's going to be several more years, if not decades until it serves it's intended purpose of moving workers from the suburbs to their jobs in town. I sure hope it is successful. Oahu is in desperate need of it, as the roads essentially become parking lots during rush hour(s). The traffic here is the number one reason I am pushing to move back overseas to Europe or Asia so I can go car free once again.
You will really hate California then. You need a car here for EVERYTHING.
@mintheman7 yeah, I've got zero desire to live in California, or really anywhere in the United States anymore. It's far too expensive, and after sacrificing a minimum of 2 hours of my life a day in traffic here on oahu, I never want to sit in traffic just to go to and from a job I don't even enjoy.
They only built parking lots at three of the stations, so they're not even pretending it will be useful for commuters.
Thank you for a honest review of this ridiculous failure of a project. Most residents know how big of a scam this was from the start. Unfortunately, voting people out and getting another same party member gets nothing different. Same old club with same old scam. Really feel bad for all the Hawaii residents having to pay for this without any say.
If you have no hope for Honolulu and generalise all of North America, you are clearly a brainwashed NJB fanboy.
As a Londoner it mostly reminds me of the DLR.
Gotta say as cool as the name Skyline is, considering they have TheBus, I wish they chose TheRail 😂. I know subway is a general term for rapid transit, but I wouldn’t call it that since none of the stations are underground. Just call it a metro or light metro! But that aside, about time Honolulu has rail! Did it take a lot of time and money? Yes, but it will still help the locals big time! I love the fact that all the station names not only have two languages but that the Hawaiian names are featured as the more prominent names thanks to the effort of the Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group or HSNWG. The world is lucky to have so many languages from Hawaiian to Papiamento and Tagalog, and it’s important we do our best to protect this diversity.
However, it’s absolutely silly that this closes at 7 pm daily. I know certain people love to hate on the NYC Subway and while it's certainly not perfect, but a big advantage of it is that it runs 24 hours a day, every day of the year! It's one of the only systems in the world to do so! Seeing that it will close at 7 pm makes me appreciate the NYC Subway even more. Last I checked, Honolulu has a nightlife and people are still getting home at that time! It's like how certain local or state governments not running or barely running any service on Sundays despite the fact that people wanna go places on Sundays!
Please ask the City/State those questions.
Hawaii is a particularly high cost area for the US from its high wages (due in part to the military bases bringing in a lot of money) to the high cost to import into the state. So add on the US' normal incompetence at infrastructure cost control with those factors and this was a worst case scenario for costs really. Making this elevated and automated however is fantastic and I very much hope they lean into the advantages that allows and extend the hours of operation and frequencies (though every 10 minutes already beats the peak per line frequencies in my much larger city of Atlanta...) because I REALLY want to point to this project and say "this is how we should upgrade our rail lines!"
I wonder if Hawaii has a corruption problem, like Chicago or Boston.
Hawaii does NOT have the high wages needed to compensate for the high cost of living. In fact, wages are lower than average.
@@Palanibert The question of whether Hawaiian wages are high enough for the higher cost of living is a distinct discussion from "do Hawaiians get paid more in nominal terms than the mainland therefore making the price tag of construction higher". And that answer is definitively yes. I invite anyone who thinks I'm making that part up to look at median household income by state. Hawaii, like basically every state, has plenty of inequality, but median REAL (aka inflation adjusted) household income in Hawaii is ~$82,000 per the St Louis Federal Reserve. Not the highest real median income, Massachusetts, Colorado, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Washington (both state and DC), Maryland, and Utah are higher, but every other state is lower. And yes, cost of living in Hawaii, especially housing, is VERY high, its the most expensive state to live in. But that still means nominal wages will be expensive and contribute to higher price tags.
@@TheScourge007 l agree with your statement. l was writing about over all cost of living not just construction. Honolulu has to import workers from the U. S. mainland due to a shortage of skilled workers there. Those imported workers are getting paid a lot more than if they were local.
@@Palanibert Agree absolutely! And then there's a lot to be talked about when it comes to particularly the situation of native Hawaiians and lack of respect for traditional land rights in many cases!
it took 12 yrs which is "kinda of crazy" "its incredible how expensive this project has been" California high speed rail has entered the chat 🤣
Thing is in Hawaii the reason things take long time to build is when a project is done you do not want to be laying off a large number of construction personnel. You are also on island time.
You should do a video on transit systems of the Caribbean.
I'd love to!
@@RMTransit thanks!
The reason it goes from West to East is that it is a development tool. It was promoted by the landowners on the westside. Oahu has a pinch point between the upper reaches of Pearl Harbor and the Koloolau mountains that backs up road traffic between the westside and Honolulu proper. Releasing that pinch point has been considered key to getting people to move to the westside. The rail solves this. At the moment, none of the stations are really high traffic areas, so the first few years of operation are going to be a financial disaster. In about 2 years when it gets to the airport, ridership may increase and when it gets to downtown and Kakaako, there may be decent ridership. But, it really needs to go to Ala Moana, and ideally Waikiki which is not only the top tourist destination , it is also the most densely populated part of the island and at least some people there don't have cars. Alas, the hotel owners don't want an above ground transit system in Waikiki. (I lived in Chicago many years ago, and I loved the "EL".)
Nothing wrong with that, especially if it will relieve the housing crisis there in the long run. It's much better to densify the land around the new railway stations, especially in east Kapolei.
Also, I don't get the disdain for elevated railway networks in Hawaii and across the US. I mean, Okinawa, which I think is at par with Hawaii, has elevated monorails, and yet millions of tourists still flock there.
The most ideal run would be from the Haleiwa down to Hawaii Kai and also from Kaneohe to the airport.
As a former Chicagoan that is now living in Honolulu, I also miss the El (without all of the violence on the Red & Blue Lines).
@@T.S.000 One thing I miss about Chicago's train system (having spent significant time there for work), is the fact that Union Station is designed so well in terms of being a place where there is no reason to surface at any point when making connections. You also have a lot of access to nearby buildings. This is great when it gets snowy out. The design of this type of system is great. You see this a lot in France too where you have the Metro integrated into many buildings, or even the larger terminals where you have RER or airline connections.
@@T.S.000 ...That move from IL to HI is a huge change too in every way. Less humidity in Hawaii though,. Chicago summer gets sticky, reminds me of Thai summer.
Here in Mexico City, most of the new public transit lines are and will be elevated
3:43 because most of the locals live west and they have to commute to
East to get to work. Rail is suppose to be for the locals
In Honolulu for work and will be taking time today to ride Skyline on its opening day. Looking forward to the future potential of the system.
Closing 7pm seems fair in Hawaii. The earliest the sun sets is 5:45pm and the latest is probably 7:15pm. Most Hawaiians go to bed around 10:30pm and they have been home way before 7pm.
But think about those who go out to do things in the evening?
I imagine the immense cost is the price of shipping material to Hawaii (thanks to the Jones Act) and the price of labor as Hawaii is expensive to live in, thus the wages would have to match. Vancouver on the other hand is a major port city just north of the US border and has plenty of low cost areas to pull labor from, keeping prices for construction down. It's very easy to go "wow, why is it so expensive, typical America" and make comparisons without looking at all the factors involved.
Soft factors are everywhere - hell, it's why the 2nd Avenue Subway was so expensive. People think corruption but actually, it's really damn hard to tunnel through solid rock and especially underneath an active city; not to mention reworking lots of pipes and other such below ground infrastructure because you might as well when you're doing all that digging anyways. Add in the difficulty getting anything to Manhattan due to a very short number of ways for trucks to drive in and a high CoL in the region and it's an expensive bill in the end.
Hawaii also has the added costs of archeological/historical work to factor in (as well it should, I am all for not bulldozing over cultural heritage if we can save it).
Wages in honolulu are actually lower than Vancouver. Shipping costs are an issue, sure. But corruption runs rampant in the state of Hawaii. Especially in the unions and contractors who were hired for the job. Billions of dollars were wasted, and they are facing an audit from the federal government. This isn't the first time a major infastcuture project in honolulu has had issues with cost and not meeting deadlines. When they built the H3, which is the 3rd major freeway on Oahu, it took 3 times longer than expected and cost 4 times more. Similar incompetence and corruption issues were discovered with that project. Finally, HART (SKYLINE) has a new president, and she seems to be running things much better. But the state wasted nearly 15 years with incompetent leadership at HART.
“The question is how much does shipping increase our cost of living in the islands? The answer, according to experts interviewed by Civil Beat, is less than 7.5 percent - and perhaps far less.” civilbeat 4/6/2015
As a Hawaiian urbanist I've been saying for years that they should have built between the airport and Waikiki FIRST! I don't live in Waikiki, but in a part of Honolulu that's not too far away and it's hell to land at the airport at 3 in the afternoon and have to either take the bus, taxi, or have a friend pick you up and get stuck in traffic for an hour or more just to go like 7 miles.
I'm sure someone can find examples of an urban rail system that started building outside the city center first and eventually ended up there, but my guess is those examples are rare compared to the more obvious ones of starting in the city center and building outwards. Backwards is right.
There’s an easy answer to that.
“Mayor Carlisle, now a lame duck, says he will ‘do everything [he] can to get rail far enough along so that it cannot possibly be stopped’” the transport politic 8/18/2012
They started from an old cane field and did the easiest bit first for one simple reason. To get as many miles completed as possible so stopping would be increasingly unpalatable. The storage and maintenance facility is on 44 acres adjacent to LCC’s Pearl City Campus. They could have started there and gone towards Ala Moana, but they knew that Middle Street to Ala Moana would be an order of magnitude more difficult.
logically yes it should have started from town side. but in retrospect with how long it took just to get this first segment done, along with the massive construction boondoggle it was imho it’s better that all those mistakes were made didn’t disrupt urban honolulu as much. now hopefully with some of the biggest challenges behind them the construction in town hopefully will go smoother.
I’m a construction consultant for one the subcontractors on this project. I’ve been in the business for 23 years and have had projects all over the world including Bagram air base in Afghanistan and this project is the biggest disaster I’ve ever worked. The issues on this project are the most ridiculous and beyond belief I have ever encountered
I'm from northern Japan, Sapporo, and our metro had absolutely NO escalators at all. We have elevators, but everything else is just stairs. It is actually very useful because of just how crowded it gets, and it keeps people moving reasonably. But for a lower density subway it's a bit odd, although you get used to it really quick
Just curious. How great is the subway there? Also, does the network reach Otaru and other outlying towns?
@@ianhomerpura8937 that's for the regional rail. The subway is good, not as expansive as Tokyo but it's on time and useful. Honestly I don't have too many reasons to ride it
Wow, I wanted to visit Sapporo! I tried the last time I was in Tokyo, but I stopped at Hakodate since the Super Hayabusa Shinkansen did not go all the way to Sapporo. :(
@@BeerOverIP we are so boring don't don't here
I was in Sapporo recently. Loved taking the train to Otaru every morning!
For some reason, transit projects here in the US always seen to cost ridiculous amounts of money, more so than many other parts of the world. I don't know why that is. It makes no sense to me. But, I am glad that projects like Honolulu's Skyline are being built.
Too many regulations, too much red tape. Countless environmental impact statements, endless hearings and redesigns. But the worst thing is any nimby can hire a lawyer for thousands of dollars to stop a project worth billions of dollars.
It's because the US is the wealthiest country in the world and can afford to waste whatever they want to on the most ridiculous things possible. 🤦♂️😂😂
Even if it does nothing to reduce traffic due to the induced-demand effect, it will give more people the opportunity to go to more locations when they want to for work or for commerce.
I thought a lot about the HART/Skyline when I visited Honolulu a few years ago as the taxi I rode in inched along the road from the airport to Waikiki in terrible traffic. I can't wait to go back and ride above all the car congestion!
Wouldn't that be great? Only problem is, currently, Skyline only goes as far as Aloha Stadium. From there, visitors have to take a bus to Waikiki, which sit in the same bumper to bumper traffic as taxis.
I can't wait for the people mover in LAX to finally start working
Good video. I'm from Vancouver and frequent Hawaii
Marta gets full gangway trains in the next year or two, so they barely beat Atlanta getting that title
The WMATA system in DC’s upcoming 8000 series cars will be walk-thru. But they won’t be available for a few years.
At least walkthrough between 2 cars, as they will most likely have gangways in married pairs
In fairness, NY does have open gangway prototype trains on property, just not in service YET, but they will start in July. So technically Honolulu has the first in service open gangway trains in the US. Initially with HART the original plan was to have a full line open to downtown but ballooning costs attributed to the phasing of the project. I still see this as a stepping stone for a potential metro renaissance for the US to entice smaller cities to consider automated light metro in alternatives to traditional light rail or BRT services
The orginal design documents had phasing. It is just delayed enough that it was supposed to be fully open by now.
Regardless US are too late as always. Outside of US had open gangways for decades.
I am pretty sure it was used on some lines already for couple of months
@@maxkatz4254 as of today, there are 2 non-open gangway sets in revenue service. The 2 R211T’s on MTA property have not begun the 30 day revenue testing phase.
They stole the money...should have never cost ten billion
4:55 That is absolutely insane. This is the very first time I've screamed at this channel. For the service to end at 7 p.m. is absolutely unacceptable.
Yep!
Honolulu should have kept the name HART, just changing the acronym to Honolulu Automated Rail Transit.
The project construction and issues/delays left bad taste in so many peoples mouths that they didnt want to name the system that 🤷🏾. So they end up polling for a new name for the system and “Skyline” was the winner.
@@safuu202
Oh, they actually polled it? Well that's good. I don't like the name personally, but if it was chosen legitimately I can absolutely respect that.
Thank you for posting this and I do have to say the word you used "illogical" is correct in terms of why wasn't it built primarily within the urban core instead of out west to lesser populated areas. But you have to understand when first proposed, the push was to encourage people to move out to that side of the island to live, so a plan had to be devised to bring them into the major employment centers in Honolulu proper like the downtown central business district, Ala Moana shopping center which is also a major transit point for the island wide bus system that services the various valleys, Waikiki and the University of Hawaii. Interestingly, because of the high demand for more "affordable" housing, major growth there during the last few decades has been relatively easy, making the rail system even more viable.
I have lived in NYC and LA and a proponent of rail because there are just too many cars here. Unlike cities in the "lower 48" or mainland as we call it, when one moves out of state, it's not like you can just drive to another place to live. You need to spend the money and time to ship it to either Oakland or Long Beach. So many opt to sell their cars here. So as new cars are being sold, the total number of vehicles here keeps growing, making the roads more crowded. For a time period, I lived out towards the west side of the island and during one going home commute, I spent over 90 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic that had me and the thousands of other cars spewing out tons of emissions, not to mention the countless hours we all spent sitting in traffic.
I am hopeful one day it'll expand to the University and Waikiki and become something we are glad they built. For those who complain about the cost overruns, this is an issue with the bidding process. Also, I didn't pay for the construction of two of the old major highway systems here or tunnels over to the windward side of the island, but it's like everywhere else where one generation pays for the next. Lastly, having a familiarity with development here, if one took some BLM land in Las Vegas, it'd probably take 9 months to a year to move from that conservation type use to urban zoning where one could start building. In Hawaii, that process takes and average of 13 years.
Very good points, but I think this rail was meant first for local workers in the suburbs to be able to get to Honolulu and Waikiki to be able to serve all of the tourists, and second for the tourists to get around. Traffic from west suburbs to Honolulu and Waikiki is horrible in the morning and vice versa in the afternoon, and the expansion of roadways is not possible on an island with limited space
Despite the problems with the HART Skyline construction, it is still arguably a far better run project than the Eglinton Crosstown in comparison. While Skyline is a fully-automated metro with high travel speeds and frequency, Crosstown does not.
As someone who grew up in Vancouver it is mind blowing that this is the first automated train in the US when we got ours in 1986!!
Constructing anything in Hawaii is a major PITA, which is why they built the lower density parts of the line first - simpler to construct in a lower density area than through the densest parts of the city
But, eventually, they might run out of money and not build the rest. That is what happened to Miami’s Metrorail in the 80’s. They were supposed to built a north-south line connecting to an east-east line connecting the airport with Miami Beach. The airport taxi drivers and some of the residents in less affluent neighborhoods in the northwest part of the city wanted a line there and where going to sue the transit authorities. Because of that, only 1 line was built because they ran out of money buying the right of way going northwest to a mostly industrial/low density areas. Heavy traffic still persist east-west and there are no plans to built the 2nd line ever because of lack of fundings.
The HART doesn’t even have plans to extend the line to Waikiki!
@@SpanglishTravel that already happened haha, ala moana station's been axed (for now)
Construction is hard everywhere for different reasons, Hawaii has different conditions but they are not unique
@@RMTransit Being located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is pretty unique. Being subject to the Jones act is also pretty unique.
However, the logic to start with the easier-to-construct segment of the line is not unique, it's what California HSR is doing for example.
It's a very dangerous proposition - if things go badly you're left with a line segment connected to nothing
Having lived in Honolulu, my hope is that this metro system will be successful and that they eventually extend from the Ala Moana Station into Waikiki (the largest tourist area) and down Kapiolani BLVD all the way to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. That would make it even more useful for tourists and students to use it. If they could extend it even further I think it could go out to Hawaii Kai, but the rich people who live there would likely fight that.
I agree, 7 pm is too early however it’s nice that a US state finally has an automated raised rail. Keep it up Hawaii. Once the extension to the airport is complete, then it will be on my list.
It was never meant for tourists though. It was always suppose to support locals first.
Well tourism is the biggest contributor to our economy😂 on any given day there’s 200k tourists on Oahu
@@SurvivorQT I know that I lived there for 18 years
Not a subway, it’s all elevated
Skyline has huge amounts of potential. Hopefully, it's able to meet it.
I hope so too.
Hello Reese, I live in Watertown, MA, a suburb of Boston. I wanted to tell you about the abhorrent transit situation that the nearby city of Lynn has found itself in. The city has been building more densely around its commuter rail station, however, the MBTA has closed the station due to the disrepair of the building, even though it was built in 1991. A new station will not be done until 2030, which is absolutely ridiculous.
The city has urged the MBTA to build a temporary platform, which will take 12-18 months. Otherwise, they have to take a shuttle bus to Swampscot for the commuter rail or a shuttle to Revere for the Blue Line, which will take a long amount of time during rush hour. It's ridiculous that Lynn, which is the same distance to Boston and Brooklyn is to Manhattan, has no accessible transit to get to Boston. This is compounded by the fact of the large Latino and Black population in Lynn. This has also caused economic problems as building contractors to have densified around the station will suffer since young commuters will not move in without transit. This has led to a grocery store cancelling its plan to move into one of the buildings. I wanted to spread the news about this. If you want to see the full article, it's in the June 25th Boston Globe written by Joan Vennochi.
The purpose of mass transit is to cut down on car traffic which is exactly what this transit system does. It focused on the western section because that is where the workers live. They can now take HART into the city to work and leave their cars at home. There is a stop in the middle of a field because that is a good spot for a parking lot for people living farther out to drive in and park to take HART.
The Vancouver SkyTrain ,at least on paper, seem to me like the best type of system for most NA cities.
Small frequent automated trains on dedicated elevated track
And hart seems to be modelled on that
Huh, turns out Reece's next video addresses exactly that, where he says a Stadtbahn would be better for this purpose.
I dont know if you'd count it, but the new R211s actually running on the A line in NYC (though, its only one train) are fully walkthrough and in service.
Those are the R211A's which are the standard cars. The R211T's are the open gangways and won't enter service until the fall.
@@TheREALTHAAANG Thanks for pointing that out! I had only heard of them, never ridden them. I don't take the A.
Granted, HART has had there's since 2019-20, doing testing before the opening of the service
Minneapolis has all-open train carts in their system! I think all of the newer models have it opened
Theres 20 r211's in NYC with open gangways but thats some trains on one line. I know Atlanta's new trains will have open gangways but they haven't been rolled out yet.
I don’t think they are in service
3:40 You're not wrong that so much of it is west of the airport, but Honolulu's new subway system isn't the only one. St. Louis's MetroLink is the same way, but with a slight twist.
Our system, in terms of line length, is about 50/50 split between Missouri and Illinois, but not so much when you look at how far it goes from the city.
The Illinois portion runs 20 miles (in terms of line length) to Shiloh, which is 17 miles from downtown. The Missouri portion is 15 miles total, but it only runs through the city's mid section for 6 miles, and splits into 2 different 7-mile lines that go north/south through some inner suburbs within 1 to 4 miles from the city line.
So when they finish expanding 5 more miles to Mid America Airport in 2025, our MetroLink's Illinois segments will be run roughly 4 to 5 times further from the city than the Missouri portion.
the whole reason they started in kapolei was that they wanted people who live in the suburbs but work in honolulu, to use the rail (skyline) instead of driving
They had to densify the land around the new railway stations to make that work though. Better to learn from the Japanese on transit oriented developments.
It's very reminiscent of London's DLR, although waaaay more expensive to build! It looks great and I hope it gets lots of use and gets extended in useful ways, rather than half-heartedly left to rot. Running it past 7pm would be a good start. What a ridiculous time to finish service. Sends the message that this is only for commuters and ordinary travellers are not welcome.
You did some good research and your criticisms are pretty spot on. I think it might also be worth mentioning that they don’t have public restrooms at any of the Skyline stations. Sure, they have a locked restroom that can be unlocked if/when you find a worker to unlock it for you, but staff has been advertising them as “for emergencies only” lol. I dunno about you, but every trip to the bathroom feels like an emergency when you (or your kid) have to go. Much like the lack of elevators, it just feels like they tried hard to save a few million after burning through a few billion.
This bathroom thing is a big complaint right now, but no bus stop has bathrooms and the waits for buses are usually much longer than the Skyline schedule of every 10 minutes.
@@hebneh maybe so, but bus stops are *usually* conveniently located near establishments with public restrooms, no? Ideally, a train station will be be far more crowded than a single bus stop will ever be. Whatever Skyline’s excuse may be, there’s no way to justify such a poor decision, especially if we are to believe they expect Skyline to be a success. Their budget could’ve easily afforded restrooms, multiple escalators, and more.
@@hebneh moreover, TheBus has public restrooms at their transit stations. Another glaring issue, aside from the fact that the current route is useless to the majority of the people they intended to serve, has to do with their restrictive hours. I guess they’re leaning into producing an extremely minimally viable product, but it’s hard to ignore how much money went into such a lackluster launch.
A few notes for context:
On the rail yard land issue, to be fair to HART, they were required to minimize Eminent Domain as much as possible and suitable Federal land closer to town was for various reasons largely untouchable and unnegotiable for the State/City.
The neighborhoods around the western stations were originally intended to be more dense mid-rises and finished in conjunction if with not earlier than the metro. Naturally, public pushback meant that those developments were delayed and scaled back.
Finally the current headways were a result of HART converting half their rolling stock order from powered cabcars to unpowered middle-wagons for cost cutting. Essentially going from 5min headways with 20 two-car trains to the current 10min with 10 four-car trains at opening.
wow, i didn't know that last bit. mahalo!
They could have started at the rail yard and worked their way into the city. Instead they started at the rail service year and started building away from the city. This is why the section that is open now does not even go to the airport. It starts in an Empty field and ends at an Abandoned stadium that is being demolished. It is literally a train to nowhere.
And the absurd 7pm closing? Solely to reduce operational costs? Even 9pm would be too early, 10pm could be slightly justified.
"public pushback", so basically a few butthurt NIMBYs not wanting more housing to be built.
@@Novusod Partially nonsensical comment but will bite.
The first portion of your comment is exactly what they are doing. They built a rail yard in the closet available lot to town near LCC and have the first working segment be connected to it. Service to the airport and Middle St will be part of opening phase 2 in a couple years with phase 3 to Civic Center open a few years after that.
Last time I checked, Aloha Stadium is being torn down and replaced with a new stadium building starting this year or next so isn’t technically abandoned. The lot itself is a transit center for TheBus and both hosts the weekly Swap Meet and becomes a fairground during larger events. More so they closed the current structure down during Covid but due to its age and worn state it was already a safety risk and remained closed.
As for your train to nowhere comment, unless UH West Oahu, downtown Waipahu, LCC, Pearl Highlands Center and Pearlridge Mall are also nonexistent, closed and/or see no usage ever even by the bus network, such a claim is just negative hyperbole, especially since this is just opening the completed first section of a nearly 19-20mile long line.
I have one word for y'all: FINALLY!!!
They took their time!
@@RMTransit They sure did! And still not even in the city centre..
@@antimatter_nvfGive it until 2027... hopefully
@@MarloSoBalJr according to their 2022 “recovery” plan, the shortened route (1.2 miles and two stations shorter) will be completed in 2031. But their planning is now done at P65, which means 65% probability.
The final 1.2 miles and two stations ro reach Ala Moana as originally contracted with the FTA will cost $1.37 billion according to hart’s 2022 “recovery” plan. No schedule given because the funding does not exist.
I have been to Honolulu, Hawaii before, and I am so proud of them for getting this new subway system. I know that many don't like the cost and are very upset about it, but I am still proud of them. I visited there for the first time for my graduation to get my doctorate degree in accounting from Argosy University back in 2016. Since then, I earned two more degrees, one in Applied Science in Accounting and the last one, a master's degree in accounting for a total of five degrees I have earned. For my celebration, I will be visiting Hawaii very soon as soon as I find a job after graduating with my last degree on May 21, 2023, from George Washington University School of Business.
Islands are honestly where public transportation makes the most sense, and tropical islands make renewable sources truly viable. Cars cost money to ship to the island. Then you have to constantly ship fuel. But rail helps residents and tourists alike. Solar power for and electric grid is a no brainer.
Keep in mind Honolulu and Hawaii of course, is in the middle of nowhere. The nearest lands are thousands of miles away and even then also islands, everything there is expensive, milk is about 8 dollars, and most goods are a tons more things that are maybe 3 or 4 times. Because they are so isolated the way things get into Hawaii is mainly priced off of how they bring in something, including ships which is most reasonable of bringing in materials for the system. So if everyone is wondering why so expensive the project was. It was the importing price
It's easy to blame on the isolation but this still doesn't explain why the mainland has so many expensive projects as well.
@@MarioFanGamer659Unions... next!
The price of concrete and lumber isn't that much more expensive in Hawaii. These materials don't have the same cost as shipping dairy, and it's easy to bulk ship. So the extra cost of materials is nothing. It's the leadership and unions.
I would have liked to see suspended rail instead of standard elevated for a system like this, but it's good that they're doing something at all.
Llike the ones in Wuppertal and Shonan?
@@ianhomerpura8937 More like the one in Shonan, considering the one in Wuppertal is over 100 years old, but yes.
I will ride it this weekend and tell you all how it goes, also I did NOT expect to see a video from RMTransit on this. super cool.
IKR!
Because it's an elevated system, it provides passengers with unique and beautiful views that weren't available before this opened. I wouldn't mind riding it just for the views.
Phase 3 doesn’t even include Waikiki!! The most dense area with the highest opportunity for ridership from the airport to the hotels.
It seems they could build a smartly designed elevated train over the Ala Wai Canal ending near the Waikiki Zoo.
They could create something architecturally smart like NY’s High line, like a hybrid of an elevated park with the transit line that offers great views of the canal and Waikiki while serving a great purpose for transit. Maybe I’m just a dreamer :/
Correct. The metro will never reach to Waikiki which is the densest part of the city.
Theoretically a Waikiki extension is possible in the future (it was in the original proposal), but that is going to be a long, long way away. I wouldn't expect it until the 2060s...maybe later. Losing an Ala Moana connection and having that deferred to a notional Phase IV at some future point is harder hitting, since Ala Moana is a big bus nexus and it would be a great interchange point to pull in people from places to the east and north...like Waikiki! There are a bunch of bus routes that go straight through Waikiki and pass through Ala Moana Center. Ah well...
It's because it doesn't make sense. The rail's main purpose is to serve suburban commuters over a high traffic corridor, and it doesn't go to tourist-heavy areas. Tourists aren't really hanging out in Kapolei for the most part.
@@meijiishin5650 Ko'Olina which is just West of Kapolei is a huge tourist area. That is where the Disney resort is. It is stupid that they didn't extend it to Ko'Olina. Instead it just dead ends in an empty field.
@@Novusod That would have been another 7 mile extension just for tourists though.
Here’s the thing- we already have a relatively dependable bus system here. The reason we are building rail is because it does something that busses can’t do- it has a dedicated route that cuts through traffic. It doesn’t make sense to initially build to Ko Olina when uou can take care of it with a bus route.
We didn’t spend 12 billion on this thing to have it act like a bus.
You could have just said "America's newest subway" in the beginning of the video, and avoided the whole "North America" argument.
I remember back in 2018 I went to Hawaii for a vacation and the project was still in construction, it's cool to finally see that it's in operation now. More rail less cars.
One of the main reasons for it was the daily clogging of the H-1 west of Honolulu. I sat in that traffic every day for years. Love it or hate it, something needed to be done that didn’t involve more roads.
According to their environmental impact statement, table 3-12, rail will reduce daily car trips by ~48k after 10 years of full time operation of the original 20.1 mile, 21 station route. Unfortunately, that’s out of a total traffic volume of 2.8 million car trips per day, so the improvement is only 1.7% (48,000 / 2,800,000 = .017). However, due to the shortened route, their ridership estimate has decreased from ~118k to ~84k, so you can expect a commensurate drop in the traffic “improvement.”
It’s also worth noting that UH Manoa, the largest single source of traffic on the island, was the original eastern terminus mentioned as far back as February 2006. Manoa was dropped from the “plan” by March 2007 due to expense. Kapolei to Ala Moana was then estimated at $3.6 billion. 🤣🤣🤣
Even with all the current problems, it's great to see a brand new system starting its journey! Truly hope that the connection to the airport & city center will be finished as soon as possible. Totally agree that for such locations, the link between airport and dense urban area would be more reasonable for a start.
US are still too late. They're always too late, most countries outside North America had driverless metros for years and decade. We had them since 2002.
Yay! Happy to hear about more rail! So needed in the U.S and def agree with making each stop a destination with development as soon as you exit a station. Best part of having traveled to Korea and Japan. DC metro is good..ish but it can be made so much better and could bring in tons of money if done right. Hope DC would get more loops and extend to BWI at least! Hope it happens one day!!!
marta's new stadler railcars will have open gangways, hopefully in service by 2025. they've already been built and shipped from hungary to utah where they are currently being customized before returning to atlanta.
Sounds like Honolulu needs to consult you for advice and marketing
As a Honolulu resident and fan of mass transit, this project has so many issues I don't think it will succeed. The well has already been poisoned with the main problems of essentially not serving the busiest areas. People will not use it because it is not useful to go where they need to go. The rail should extend from Kapolei to University as those are the busiest places. You can literally see commute times diminish when the university is out of session. Plus, bus service needs to be made way more robust. Service dwindles to once per hour after about 7pm. Other commenters have also stated how various political administrations used their influence to steer the project in their personal favor. Plus there might be a massive real estate tax increase to an already high cost of living. All of these issues will diminish the little support that remains for the project.
Then all the more should the railway network expand even further to serve those areas then. Many cities never stopped building new rail lines and extensions, because cities always expand, and transit must expand along with it.
It closing at 7pm is baffling though
Their reasoning is that they predicted that ridership would fall heavily by thatntime. Primarily because the intial phase would serve western suburban/rural neighborhoods that probably wouldnt demand late night service or have a surplus of late night workers like the east end. A shame but hopefully theyll extend the hours once the airport section comes online.
This would be a great video to loop at the stations or in the cabin. A good idea to reinforce who to use it and where to go.
Once this gets to Ala Moana (and then hopefully to the convention center and University of Hawaii) it will be an amazing service for residents, college students, and tourists alike. Whenever we've gone we relied heavily on bus service but this would be so much better. I love Oahu.
Most of the people working in Waikiki and Honolulu are mostly from west of the airport and beyond
One thing that hasn't been mentioned much (at least as far as I have heard) is that part of putting HART/"Skyline" on an elevated track is important for Honolulu because Hawai'i is at risk of tsunami. If Oahu is struck by a tsunami, suddenly the Skyline becomes a crucial artery and refuge. Put that track on the ground or, even worse, underground, and you have yet another casualty. Putting it on an elevated track hopefully allows it to survive any such event and become the way into, and out of, the effected areas.
As long as the concrete doesn't suffer premature corrosion, I can see your point, but Oahu has very steep terrain apart from the lowland shorelines
I thought only Hilo was affected by the 1946 and 1960 tsunamis. Was Honolulu affected as well?
It won't.
And the current power plants (which aren't enough to power the current grid and the team) are located on the shoreline. As are all the major airports on Oahu.
Interesting point, though much of the current line, particularky through Waipahu and west of there, is far enough inland to be out of the danger zones as according to the tsunami evacuation maps.
Nice video. I almost forgot about Honolulu's system. The rapid transit in the field isn't a big issue I believe. If I'm correct. That's how the Bronx in NYC got started. Development may get moving later. Unless some people object to the cities expansion.
Great video! Very informative, thanks for sharing!
Would love a review on the miami SMART plan! Talk about extensions to south beach and the N and NE extensions
Extensions of what? The MetroRail?
@@safuu202 it's a multi model expansion plan. 2 new metro lines north and north east. Beach monorail line from downtown to south beach. And 3 brt extensions south and 2 east west
I live in on Oahu where this is built and I'm gonna put this out there, this was not meant for the tourist. The primary reason for this rail was for working class people that live on the west side to have another option to get into town for work. It's not uncommon to drive from the west side to town which is 30 miles or so and sit in hours long traffic. That being said, this project was so poorly managed and there are problems already popping up and it opens today. Nearly everyone that I've talked to about this says that this was a waste of time and money because they won't use it. The only folks excited for it are the people that already use public transportation which in turn will have no impact on our traffic.
I'd like to add something as someone that does take transit along this corridor daily-- it's a huge win for us. Busses are constantly late on this stretch and get stuck in traffic a lot. I know it won't reduce traffic if you drive a car, but now none of us are getting stuck in traffic with the car guys (well once its fully complete, at least), and our ride will always come on time. Basically, the drivers aren't going to drag us down with them anymore.
@meijiishin5650 That's a fair point. I do see it as a win for you guys once it reaches town. I brought up the issue of this not affecting our traffic because one of the original talking points was how it was gonna reduce traffic and when the plan was to go to UH, that was an acceptable argument because as you can currently see, since the students aren't in school, there's ALOT less traffic.
As far as the bus system goes, it's always been like that. Never on time. I used to catch the bus well into my early 20's and at a certain point, I got tired of adding on an extra hour to and from to make sure I catch the right bus at the right time and got me a beater till I could afford something better.
Great vid. One correction though is Skyline is not a subway...at least not yet....the line is elevated or at-grade in some places. Digging too far below -- 100 feet or so -- below the sea level island of Oahu will mean seawater will flood into the system.
I really want to love this but I can't use it at the moment. I live in Honolulu and work in Kapolei, so taking the rail for me would be a no-brainer, if it were possible. I hope this system expands in the near future to lower car dependence on this beautiful island.
TheBus routes A, 20, 40, 42,1L, 51, 53 all go to the Halawa Aloha Stadium Station from town
As a Hawaiian taxpayer I’m feeling really ripped off $13 billion dollars doesn’t serve densest part of city or major university.
No escalators? It doesn’t serve Wakiki beach.
Chicago actually USED TO have some walk through trains. The OLD 5000 series (not the current one) were built in 3-car articulated walk-through sets.
We have needed this here for many years.
My guess as to why it runs only till 7pm is that by that time traffic isn't so bad so those who may have gotten to their destination by train can just take the bus after 7pm, but the problem with buses here even when there's no traffic is lack of frequency and they don't go in a straight line so it takes forever and a half to get home.
That’s about what they claimed. Makes me wonder what is costing $257k per day to run this thing though.
“The rail system is now expected to cost the city $94 million to operate in its first year, including $54 million paid to the rail’s operator, Hitachi Rail Honolulu, according to Roger Morton, the city’s Transportation Services director.” civilbeat 5/10/2023
Ending at 7 is unusual, but it is not as problematic considering many businesses close by 4. It would make more sense to run later though, and run extended service Friday-Sunday, or for airport runs.
It doesn't go to the airport. It ends at 7 because it doesn't go anywhere but Pearl Harbor, so ridership is going to be extremely low until they extend the line to downtown. Even running it with those limited hours, they're not going to make any significant money.
@@katrinahayes4893 I thought I saw it closer to the airport. They definitely should have done the Oahu to airport segment first, then next connect areas for commuters once they have a revenue stream.
@@MichaelNolhanthey still working on airport. ittl be open 2025