WAILUKU - Despite ongoing budget woes that have put the brakes on other aspects of Maui County's burgeoning public bus system, the county does have money to move forward with plans to build bus stops.
County Transportation Director Don Medeiros said he expects his department will use $450,000 allocated by the County Council this year to build nine bus shelters within Maui Bus' hub outside the rear of the Queen Ka'ahumanu Shopping Center. Construction should begin near the start of 2010, he said.
Maui Bus is operated by Roberts Hawaii under a contract with the county and has an annual budget of about $7 million. Medeiros said that even with exploding ridership since the bus program's inception in 2003, the county still subsidizes the Maui Bus (which was launched about three years ago) by about $6 million a year, not including millions in federal funds for new buses and other equipment.
With property tax collection headed in the wrong direction during the recession, Mayor Charmaine Tavares told all county departments last summer to slash their budgets in preparation of the 2010 fiscal year. Maui Bus lost 8 percent; and as a result, Kula residents probably won't get $500,000 for their much-anticipated bus route for at least a couple more years, Medeiros said.
"We're going to meet our goals," Medeiros said. "It's just going to take some time. We're working on it. People have to remember that we're only 3 years old."
Still, the Maui Bus operates 13 regular routes and seven routes for commuters. Buses hit the road on the Valley Isle as early as 5 a.m., and many don't stop until 10 p.m. It's $1 per trip or $35 a month for a bus pass. And the Maui Bus offers free rides on five routes in Wailuku, Kahului and Lahaina.
There's no question: Bus riding has caught on here. Big time. And local politicians love to point to Maui Bus as one of the success stories of what government can do for its people.
In its inaugural year, the bus system carried just 29,000 passengers. Two years later in 2006, ridership jumped to 292,000. The next year, the hub - or central location where passenger transfers occur - was located at Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, and ridership hit 865,000.
Last fiscal year, which ended June 30, saw Maui Bus handle more than 2 million riders. And with gas prices in constant flux and the economy handcuffed to insecurity, Medeiros said he has no idea where bus ridership will plateau.
"The stress and high ridership of Maui Bus has put a strain on the system, threatening to have a negative impact on service quality," Mainland consultants wrote in a report issued to the Maui County Council a year ago.
County officials, with Tavares in the lead, have echoed a mantra that they need to do more to make taking the bus as pleasant an experience as possible in order to encourage more ridership. Thus, the need for a six-year bus stop construction program. However, council members scrambling to balance the budget actually reduced the Maui Bus capital improvement budget this year by $200,000.
Better bus stops are much safer bus stops, too, county transportation officials said.
The amenities at a bus stop are dependent upon on how many riders use a stop each day, Medeiros said. If more than 30 people use it daily, the stop gets the full treatment with a shelter, solar-powered interior lights, trash cans, bicycle racks as well as signs, sidewalks and wheelchair ramps.
So far, the county has spent $250,000 on planning and design for the bus stops, a process Medeiros said is about 70 percent complete.
A study completed last August by the KFH Group of Bethesda, Md., estimated it would cost taxpayers $4.3 million to build 143 bus stops, not including those for the new routes that will likely spring up when and if the economy rebounds.
In the meantime, local businesses, community groups and "menehune" contributed a slew of unofficial bus stop benches, Medeiros said. He said the county didn't build the simple benches and declined to say who did.
Riders don't seem to care. Some said they're just happy not to have to crouch on their haunches above the hot concrete.
In addition to the construction funds and federal stimulus money, Maui Bus should be adding six new buses in the next year and a half, including an 80-plus seat double-decker bus, to the existing 33-bus fleet, Medeiros said. In the next 15 months, the county is expected to receive more than $2.2 million in federal transit funds.
Medeiros added that, hopefully, plenty more of that should be coming Maui's way, since President Barack Obama has only released 14 percent so far of the stimulus money he set aside for mass transit.
* Chris Hamilton can be reached at chamilton@mauinews.com.
