A rail public-private partnership could have resulted in a different Honolulu today.

In the 1980s, I was the Hawaii representative for a Japan-based consortium that proposed to design, finance, build and operate a 20-mile rail line in Honolulu for free.

The consortium lead was Marubeni Corporation, in a unique business niche: a Japanese trading company (“sogo shosha”) that identifies energy, infrastructure and transportation projects and arranges project loans with banks.

Marubeni has carried out numerous rail projects in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. In 2011, Marubeni entered into an 18-year public-private partnership, or PPP, with the Queensland State Government to build and operate a light rail system on Australia’s Gold Coast. Recently, Marubeni funded the construction of railways in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

The second partner was Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, which provided expertise in electronics, software and railway signaling.

The third was Kawasaki Heavy Industries, with a record number of safe and reliable trains, including Japan Railway’s first “Bullet Train” and rolling stock used for Taiwan’s high-speed rail line to the New York subway.

In 1987, the Japanese consortium met the then mayor, Frank Fasi. Consortium staff placed a model train on the mayor’s office table and handed out a brochure with potential Honolulu rail routes.

The consortium’s “pitch” to Mayor Fasi was simple: the entity pays for the construction of the railway, trains, maintenance and operation. Not a penny would come from Hawaii taxpayers.

Imagine if the following had actually happened:

The city and the consortium have joined forces to map the “best” route and station sites. The consortium had a monopoly on railway station development and negotiated with land / business owners to continue to operate in new developments or offer them future compensation, such as condominiums or retail rental income.

Population and ridership

The consortium’s rail line began with Honolulu’s busiest bus route: from Waikiki to Ala Moana Center, a densely populated area with visitors (and residents) without a car. In the 1960s, Honolulu Mayor Neal Blaisdell described Honolulu as the east-west analogue of Manhattan Island’s north-south transit grid; Honolulu’s urban density is 10% lower than New York’s.

A key rule outlined in Jarret Walker’s book “Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives” is that population density equals the potential for using public transport.

From the Ala Moana center, the proposed consortium rail line extended west to Kakaako, downtown, Kalihi-Palama (the latter census tract has 43,000 inhabitants) – then beyond Red Hill until what was primarily – in 1987 – an agricultural expanse of western Oahu: in retrospect, this fact is very significant.

The consortium’s loans for the construction of railroads were ‘repaid’ by train fares plus hotel revenues, condominium sales, and office and retail rents (local partners would provide their support. design, marketing and licensing expertise) – over 30 to 35 years.

The daily ridership projections were less weighted in value than condominium sales in Waikiki or retail rents in Kakaako. The bulk of the consortium’s revenue is said to have come from real estate development at Waikiki-downtown station.

Loan costs, construction delays and goodwill were the responsibility of the consortium, not Honolulu. Following P3 rail models like Hong Kong (the port city operates its MTR metro line 85% profit over budget!), The consortium must contractually reach “milestones” of city construction and transit operations or pay fines.

After the end of the PPP rail project contract, the consortium transfers the ownership / operation of the rail line to the city and county of Honolulu.

At the end of the 1987 meeting, Mayor Fasi, pulling on his trademark pipe, said “Thank you”. The rest is history.

An “What if…” Is that Mayor Fasi signed a PPP rail contract. In the late 1990s, the inaugural Waikiki-Ala Moana rail “section” was outnumbering runners targets. Of course, the existing TheBus route had a high number of “proven” passengers, not projections relied on by Excel.

In the early 2000s, a rail-triggered micro-impact occurred in Kakaako. Thousands of Kakaako residents in new residential towers atop train stations took the train to jobs in Waikiki or downtown. Instead of reporting on the decline of Hawaii’s population, especially among young people, today’s media would be celebrating the growth of Hawaii’s population.

The 250 largest companies in Hawai Business magazine have relocated their workers to new office “campuses” adjacent to train stations west of Red Hill.

Employees of many companies moved to apartments near Waipahu and Pearl City stations and walked to their offices, removing hundreds of cars from daily traffic.

Ironically, given that housing construction did not take place in West Oahu (the main reason for the “rush hour” traffic congestion, hence rail as a remedy), lands at sugar and pineapple have evolved into a diversified agriculture; vegetables and fruit were sold at train station kiosks, supermarkets, and shipped to markets in Asia-Pacific.

Tourists mingled with families with children on trains to visit the flower gardens, dairies, athletic fields, pop-up restaurants and hydroponic farms of western Oahu, dubbed West Oahu’s ‘second economy’. Hawaii.

Workers in Honolulu’s “inner core” boarded trains for an east-west route, the reverse of today’s Oahu traffic pattern.

So many Honolulu residents – with well-paying jobs and lower taxes – have chosen a “car-free” lifestyle that traffic congestion in Oahu has eased dramatically; City of Honolulu staff hosted delegations from Pensacola, Florida, to Pusan, South Korea, seeking information on Honolulu’s “Best City to Live in the World” ranking.

Rail P3 (real estate investment / financial risk) could have created an “alternative” Honolulu – a “dense” urban corridor connecting the green expanse of western Oahu dotted with eco-agri-sports and culinary attractions for residents and visitors.

The Vancouver model

Since the 1986 Vancouver World’s Fair (which Mayor Fasi attended), the Skytrain’s raised rail design and financing model – a mix of passenger fares, gasoline taxes, property taxes and federal government payments – deeply influenced Honolulu rail planning.

By reducing traffic congestion and increasing population density, the Vancouver Skytrain is a success. Launched in 1983 as a one-mile light rail experiment (identical to the Waikiki-Ala Moana “home” route), three years later, 15 stations were built over 13 miles. Today, the Skytrain has 53 stations, 50 miles of track and 500,000 passengers per day.

We can only imagine that half of Oahu would be… a “sustainable” economy and a “livable” city.

Achieving the number of train passengers is a challenge. Christof Spieler’s Trains, Buses, People – a review of transit in the United States – points out that Honolulu’s rail projection of 120,000 weekday runs is “among the highest riders per mile in the United States.” United, tied with Washington, DC, Metrorail ”.

This last rail system began four decades ago!

Since the opening of the SkyTrain, the population of the rail service area has grown from 400,000 to 1.3 million inhabitants (potential passengers). Between 1991 and 2001, Vancouver’s population living within 500 meters of the SkyTrain line jumped 37%, compared to Vancouver’s overall average of 24%.

Residential, office and retail development along the SkyTrain “corridor” has created car-free “downtowns” with young workers who anchor Vancouver’s vibrant economy. A rail line built by taxpayers alone has not attracted passengers or spurred job growth. Real estate investing was the key.

Of course, none of this actually happened. Instead, we can only imagine that half of Oahu would now be in job-generating / food-producing green spaces: a “sustainable” economy and a “liveable” city.

Yet the hindsight is still crystal clear.