The flight to Los Angeles from Hawaii is pretty much the same every time. About four-and-a-half hours after leaving Maui, you can first spot the lights of the mainland up ahead. Just before making landfall, the plane begins a long gentle right turn to the south, continuing an almost imperceptible descent over the city for…
It was early in 1970 and Frank Fasi had been mayor of Honolulu for about two years when the crisis hit: bus drivers for the privately owned Honolulu Rapid Transit company went out on strike. Public transportation on the Island of Oahu came to a virtual standstill. The shutdown had, in fact, been engineered by…
Various Honolulu city administrations have been trying to get a transit system built in Hawaii’s capitol city since the mid-1970s. Twice the project failed by one vote on the Honolulu City Council, but a few years back it finally got the green light. That, of course, brought out the crazies and they have been relentlessly…
Do we really need any further evidence that high gasoline prices are causing more and more people to switch to public transit? The Chicago Transit Authority has recently announced that all seats will be removed from some of the cars used on their commuter trains during rush hour. As many as 50 additional passengers can…