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Honolulu has the most ridiculous transportation system imaginable. Continuous traffic jams of single people in cars commuting all to the same few places (and hu

Honolulu has the most ridiculous transportation system imaginable. Continuous traffic jams of single people in cars commuting all to the same few places (and huge amounts of real estate devoted to roads and parking), in a setting where their cars literally can’t go anywhere else (it’s an island!) or fulfill any of the supposed advantages of cars vs. other modes of transportation, and where the primary industry is tourism – visitors who obviously can’t bring their own private vehicles. Scrapping 3/4 of the private vehicles there and investing in frequent high quality public transportation would make the city dramatically nicer.

dylan604 5y ago
My one visit to Hawaii was kind of eye opening in how there were so many cars just abandoned on the roads. They are just left there to rot in the salt air. The gov't doesn't remove them. It was just such a bizarre thing to see for a not-3rd world state.
- forgingahead 5y ago
  just such a bizarre thing to see for a not-3rd world state Unfortunately I'm not sure how valid this couching is any more. A lot of what was historically perceived as "third world" started from a POV that was 1950s - 1970s America, where the rest of the world was still either under communism or recovering from the ashes of WWII. Today, there are many hundreds of cities & states in Asia that far outshine many US and European cities & states in "developedness". The problem is that the leadership in these Western places refuse to realise they can't keep relying on historical achievement to compete in the 21st Century. Hawaii (and others) need to buck up.
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    Historical achievement? History is written by the victors.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Then 'perception of historical achievement'?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Which is an historical achievement in and of itself is it not?
      - avgcorrection 5y ago
        Touché
  - bluGill 5y ago
    > where the rest of the world was still either under communism or recovering from the ashes of WWII. That is history: English is a living language, and today first world mean rich industrialized nation (developed), and third world means poor industrialized nation. Those Asian nations in todays English are first world countries even though they weren't Nato or Warsaw pact which is what third world meant in 1950-1970.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      In my day to day, I have never understood 3rd world to mean non-NATO or non-Warsaw pact member states or anything specific to WWII. 3rd world status has always been understood by me to being a state of development on things like infrastructure, technology, medicine, gov't, etc.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        I'm guessing you are younger than 40? In my school they made a big deal about this, but it was already clear in popular use it wasn't about NATO/Warsaw pact.
        dylan604 5y ago
        You'd be guessing wrong. I'm definitely over 40 for some time now. I'm confused now on what you're saying. Now, you're saying in popular use it wasn't about it, but yet you claimed earlier it was.
        stormbrew 5y ago
        My interpretation: if you're 40 or older then (within some other constraints like where you live, etc.) your education was likely colored by cold war propaganda which still somewhat weakly insisted on dividing the world into 3 nearly exclusive spheres of influence (American, Russian, and Non-Aligned aka 1st, 2nd, 3rd), and that may have shown up in your education even though the concept was already pretty much already obsolete in the 80s. I'm around that age, and Canadian, and I think it was at least brought up as the 'true' meaning of third world in my social studies classes, but it wasn't how people used it in regular use already. Fwiw I think it's a term that there isn't really a lot of use in preserving, especially since its original meaning is so divorced from current reality. Current parlance for what people actually mean when they say third world is usually "developing world" which is in some ways better (it at least implies it's something that changes over time) but also carries a lot of awkward colonialist baggage.
Zanni 5y ago
I'm going to guess you don't live in Hawaii. We already have a bus system (TheBus), which is decent but still painfully slow compared to a personal vehicle. And we're in the process of building light rail system which, due to budget overruns and bizarre blunders, will be years before it ever sees operation and goes roughly nowhere to nowhere. "Frequent high quality public transportation" is great for dense urban cores, which doesn't remotely describe Honolulu.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  It's a common mistake to think of public transport as something imposed on unchanging cities, but it actually drives considerable change as well. Whatever the flaws of Honolulu's LRT may be, it will drive increased density in the corridor it serves, and that's exactly how it's supposed to work. This does, however, assume that zoning near stations is also adjusted to allow this, which is something that many US cities including the Bay Area are notoriously bad at.
  - Kye 5y ago
    People can see how highways affect development: you only need to look at any overhead view of any major city outside the pre-WW2 core. Metro Atlanta is full of little outposts dangling off roads. Wandering around this mall was one of the only things to do growing up other than watch TV and mess around on the internet: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0657829,-83.986029,3799m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0657829,-83.986029,3799m/dat... Everything else cost money or was too far away. I think underdeveloped imagination is why so many people can't see that better transit options would have the same effect, but with increasing density rather than increasing sprawl.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  I do not live in Hawaii, but from what I can tell (from visiting one time and looking at what maps/analyses I can find in 10 minutes of web search) most of the traffic sources and destinations in Oahu are within a couple miles of a single 20-mile-long stretch of freeway (H1 / H201). We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people trying to drive every morning/evening along the same stretch of freeway in individual private vehicles (3–4 lanes wide in each direction), instead of riding some more space-efficient mode of transportation along the same route.

dylan604 5y ago

My one visit to Hawaii was kind of eye opening in how there were so many cars just abandoned on the roads. They are just left there to rot in the salt air. The gov't doesn't remove them. It was just such a bizarre thing to see for a not-3rd world state.

forgingahead 5y ago
just such a bizarre thing to see for a not-3rd world state Unfortunately I'm not sure how valid this couching is any more. A lot of what was historically perceived as "third world" started from a POV that was 1950s - 1970s America, where the rest of the world was still either under communism or recovering from the ashes of WWII. Today, there are many hundreds of cities & states in Asia that far outshine many US and European cities & states in "developedness". The problem is that the leadership in these Western places refuse to realise they can't keep relying on historical achievement to compete in the 21st Century. Hawaii (and others) need to buck up.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  Historical achievement? History is written by the victors.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Then 'perception of historical achievement'?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Which is an historical achievement in and of itself is it not?
    - avgcorrection 5y ago
      Touché
- bluGill 5y ago
  > where the rest of the world was still either under communism or recovering from the ashes of WWII. That is history: English is a living language, and today first world mean rich industrialized nation (developed), and third world means poor industrialized nation. Those Asian nations in todays English are first world countries even though they weren't Nato or Warsaw pact which is what third world meant in 1950-1970.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    In my day to day, I have never understood 3rd world to mean non-NATO or non-Warsaw pact member states or anything specific to WWII. 3rd world status has always been understood by me to being a state of development on things like infrastructure, technology, medicine, gov't, etc.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I'm guessing you are younger than 40? In my school they made a big deal about this, but it was already clear in popular use it wasn't about NATO/Warsaw pact.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        You'd be guessing wrong. I'm definitely over 40 for some time now. I'm confused now on what you're saying. Now, you're saying in popular use it wasn't about it, but yet you claimed earlier it was.
        stormbrew 5y ago
        My interpretation: if you're 40 or older then (within some other constraints like where you live, etc.) your education was likely colored by cold war propaganda which still somewhat weakly insisted on dividing the world into 3 nearly exclusive spheres of influence (American, Russian, and Non-Aligned aka 1st, 2nd, 3rd), and that may have shown up in your education even though the concept was already pretty much already obsolete in the 80s. I'm around that age, and Canadian, and I think it was at least brought up as the 'true' meaning of third world in my social studies classes, but it wasn't how people used it in regular use already. Fwiw I think it's a term that there isn't really a lot of use in preserving, especially since its original meaning is so divorced from current reality. Current parlance for what people actually mean when they say third world is usually "developing world" which is in some ways better (it at least implies it's something that changes over time) but also carries a lot of awkward colonialist baggage.

Zanni 5y ago

I'm going to guess you don't live in Hawaii. We already have a bus system (TheBus), which is decent but still painfully slow compared to a personal vehicle. And we're in the process of building light rail system which, due to budget overruns and bizarre blunders, will be years before it ever sees operation and goes roughly nowhere to nowhere. "Frequent high quality public transportation" is great for dense urban cores, which doesn't remotely describe Honolulu.

dustintrex 5y ago
It's a common mistake to think of public transport as something imposed on unchanging cities, but it actually drives considerable change as well. Whatever the flaws of Honolulu's LRT may be, it will drive increased density in the corridor it serves, and that's exactly how it's supposed to work. This does, however, assume that zoning near stations is also adjusted to allow this, which is something that many US cities including the Bay Area are notoriously bad at.
- Kye 5y ago
  People can see how highways affect development: you only need to look at any overhead view of any major city outside the pre-WW2 core. Metro Atlanta is full of little outposts dangling off roads. Wandering around this mall was one of the only things to do growing up other than watch TV and mess around on the internet: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0657829,-83.986029,3799m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0657829,-83.986029,3799m/dat... Everything else cost money or was too far away. I think underdeveloped imagination is why so many people can't see that better transit options would have the same effect, but with increasing density rather than increasing sprawl.
jacobolus 5y ago
I do not live in Hawaii, but from what I can tell (from visiting one time and looking at what maps/analyses I can find in 10 minutes of web search) most of the traffic sources and destinations in Oahu are within a couple miles of a single 20-mile-long stretch of freeway (H1 / H201). We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people trying to drive every morning/evening along the same stretch of freeway in individual private vehicles (3–4 lanes wide in each direction), instead of riding some more space-efficient mode of transportation along the same route.