Item in today's News Wire about arrival of first two light rail cars arriving in Honolulu last week. Finished up in Pittsburg, California, and then shipped, apparently from San Diego to the islands. Several weeks I saw one of the cars on a flatbed trailer coming southbound on CAL-125 in El Cajon, all nicely wrapped up in the Hitachi gift-wrapping. It looked exactly like one of the pictured on the Hitachi rail website.
Sorry this is not quilify as "Light Rail" ist a a "Metro" heavy rail EL train system
The Honolulu is going to be like a the Baltimore System eventuly with Heavy rail Metro above and below ground and Light Rail streetcars on the street leval.
CandOforprogress2The Honolulu is going to be like a the Baltimore System eventuly with Heavy rail Metro above and below ground and Light Rail streetcars on the street leval
AFAIK from my recent visit and the HART web site, all stations will be elevated above ground. For such a very crowded area I'm surprised at this design, but the main reason provided for elevated stations was lower cost. Here are some links:
http://www.honolulutransit.org/inform/rail-facts
http://www.honolulutransit.org/ride
It is also surprising that it does not extend into Waikiki, a major tourist and hotel area. As a result, the Ala Moana mall area will be a major bus cluster and even more nightmarish to drive around than today.
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What about earthquakes and volcanoes? The whole island could blow up like a 1950s B movie.
Honolulu does get occasional earthquakes, and these need to be (and no doubt have been) a consideration in engineering HART. But I wouldn't worry about volcanoes. Only the Big Island currently has active volcanoes; geologists say that Oahu last saw volcanic activity around 70,000 years ago. In any event, Hawaiian volcanoes don't produce Hollywood-style explosive eruptions, just gradual lava flows.
Waikiki is two miles long, but only three main streets deep from the beach to the Ala Wai Canal. My guess is that hotel and business operators would throw a major and well-financed NIMBY-fit at any proposal to run an elevated line along Kalakaua Avenue, Kuhio Avenue, or Ala Wai Boulevard, casting its shadow on the tourists. (Much like the reason the Las Vegas Monorail doesn't take the logical route down the median of the Strip; but at least in Vegas there was room to hide it away at the back of the east-side hotels.)
Alan Follett ... (Much like the reason the Las Vegas Monorail doesn't take the logical route down the median of the Strip; but at least in Vegas there was room to hide it away at the back of the east-side hotels.)
... (Much like the reason the Las Vegas Monorail doesn't take the logical route down the median of the Strip; but at least in Vegas there was room to hide it away at the back of the east-side hotels.)
But in so doing, it made the Vegas monorail little more that a tourist attraction, and not a terribly useful transit option.
Couldn't HART do some street running through Waikiki?
Waikiki is very congested and street running would be incredibly slow.
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