The Newest Subway System in America is NOW OPEN! | Honolulu Skyline

Transit that ends service at 7PM is almost as bad as non-existent transit. The local busses in my city stop at 7, and it really sends the message that you aren't allowed to use transit and have dinner out after work. A huge number of potential riders won't use the system because of this terrible schedule.

Honolulu is super lucky that its a mostly linear city, squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and really nice mountains. It's incentivised the city to densify, and it also means that this metro line massively benefits from having a much easier to reach catchment area for patronage.

Disney gets a lot of attention in transit largely because tourists actually use it. Hopefully HART has a similar but better impact so that people's only experience with transit isn't a monorail

I'm a Hawaii fan of RM. Just correction: Essentially Honolulu Skyline IS NOT meant for tourists. It's meant to connect working class commuters to downtown and any bus lines farther East Honolulu. West Oahu is where people live, East Oahu is hotels and malls people need to work at.

Hawaii fun facts: Hawaii as a kingdom was historically a protectorate of the UK. A Red Ensign with the Union Jack was given to Kamehameha I by Captain George Vancouver in 1793, who previously visited with Captain Cook in 1778-1779. However, Ireland wasn't part of the UK until 1801, so this specific ensign didn't become the current Hawaiian flag. So what did? Well, Scottish captain Alexander Adams of the British East India Company! The current flag was created by him as part of a China trip in 1817. At this time, he was part of Hawaiian Kingdom Navy. On his way to China, while stopping on Kaua'i for supplies, he gave Kaumualiʻi (last supreme ruler of Kaua'i and Ni'ihau) an ensign to raise at the port, as Kaumuali'i only had the Russian flag left behind from a failed Russian colony. The state song, Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī, was the anthem of the kingdom from 1876 to 1893, and then the Republic of Hawaii from 1894 to 1898. After US annexation, it became the territorial anthem and was adopted as a state symbol in 1967. Because of its status and Hawaiian pride, it's commonly sung in Hawaiian schools and after the US anthem in sporting events. The words were written in 1874 by King David Kalākaua with music composed by Captain Henri Berger, then the king's royal bandmaster.

Even though this is a very rocky start, I am very confident that once the airport and downtown phases are open and its operations become smoother, it will be a great success and people will wonder why it wasn't done sooner. The TOD opportunities of the western areas should not be wasted!

Wow! The US is finally getting a decently modernized transit system; and as a Chicagoan, I honestly couldn't be happier. Props to Honolulu for actually going through with this and not proposing stuff just to throw it away. While it's not perfect, this is a step in the right direction. Also, "subway system"? The entire thing is elevated. Lol

>Automated >Stops service at 7 PM Make it make sense

Could you perhaps do a video on Santo Domingo Metro? It’s very interesting how the Dominican Republic, a relatively poor country, has managed to establish a pretty good metro system along with a great aerial cable car system. And now, they are building a monorail and light rail system in Santiago, as well as potentially a HSR line for connection between Santo Domingo and Santiago.

NYC expanded its subway service 100 years ago into open farmland with the intention of building communities. Don’t disparage foresight. Everything in Hawaii costs twice as much bc they are so isolated and everything has to be shipped in. I hope they can turn this into a shining example of what the future can look like with trains.

I wonder how the price of shipping materials out to the middle of the pacific might have impacted the cost?

I like the word "Skyline" as a more modern synonym for "Elevated" or "El". I would imagine people think that an elevated rail system will be gross and antiquated, or compare it with NYC or Chicago. Saying skyline may make people think of a modern above-grade metro or light rail system, meaning they're less opposed to rail projects in a city.

Hawaii resident here. The story of HART is one of tremendous graft by our recently-departed (and by some polls, least popular in America) governor David Ige (pronounced IY-Gey). The no-bid contract for constructing the rail was given to a company that just so happened to be owned by a personal friend of Ige, and said company just so happened to run into numerous delays that necessitated a near-doubling in budget from the initial ask. Iirc there was a push to allow competition for who was going to build the rail, but Ige overcame the effort at the 11th hour. To add insult to injury, a scandal during Ige's terms centered around how, at the time he was first pitching the rail idea to the state senate, he in fact knew the initial ask wouldn't be enough and the state would be in too deep by then to cancel the project. Hopefully, Skyline can overcome its cursed beginnings to become an at least alright rail.

Just by chance, I happened to sit next to one of the guys at the company contracted to build the screen doors on a flight recently. Was an interesting conversation hearing a bit about the challenges they were running into!

I just rode it for the first time today, it was free all weekend for its public grand opening. The stations are nice and the wait times (by American standards) are pretty short. The trains themselves are nice and spacious, and it moves faster than you think it does just looking at it from the freeway lol. Its a shame that its gonna take so long to be finished (apparently its stop at Ala Moana is planning for a 2031 opening) but this is a step in the right direction

I lived in Japan for several years. The trains are integrated into the cities. There is a whole life in and around the train stations. It’s good to see Honolulu taking the step with the new system. It needs to get connected to the airport as soon as possible. In Japan, you can go everywhere on trains. Cars are moderately impractical there.

I voted for this rail 15 years ago when I was 18. 15 years later, I really can't believe this day is here. Although, I don't think it will make the biggest impact until it reaches the airport and downtown Honolulu (which will take another 8 years minimum), it is still a step in the right direction to get away from car dependency. We live in probably the most beautiful place in the world and it's really a shame how dependent we are on cars here. Sentiment towards the rail still isn't good, mostly because of how HART totally mismanaged the project and many people here have the same American mindset of cars over everything, but I think Honolulu is taking a step in the right direction building up it's public transportation and bicycle infrastructure. Hawaii is expensive to live as it is, at least now we have another choice of transportation if we don't want to go into more debt for a car.

I currently live on Oahu (the island in which Honolulu is located), and when I found out I would be moving here from Korea, the first thing I looked into was the public transportation, as I had grown accostum to living car free for years over there. And I was sorely disappointed to learn of all the delays and issues with the HART project. Oahu is going to need a huge infrastructure overhaul to make this project successful. There isn't much surrounding even the most dense station currently, nor are any of the stations walkable (I believe many, especially further west, are meant to be a drive/ride). Currently the only open stations go suburb to suburb, and it's going to be several more years, if not decades until it serves it's intended purpose of moving workers from the suburbs to their jobs in town. I sure hope it is successful. Oahu is in desperate need of it, as the roads essentially become parking lots during rush hour(s). The traffic here is the number one reason I am pushing to move back overseas to Europe or Asia so I can go car free once again.

When I was a kid in high school in Hawaii in late 2000s this project was a point of huge debate. Crazy to see it come to fruition. I moved away shortly after they'd started construrion. Insane

Hawaii is a particularly high cost area for the US from its high wages (due in part to the military bases bringing in a lot of money) to the high cost to import into the state. So add on the US' normal incompetence at infrastructure cost control with those factors and this was a worst case scenario for costs really. Making this elevated and automated however is fantastic and I very much hope they lean into the advantages that allows and extend the hours of operation and frequencies (though every 10 minutes already beats the peak per line frequencies in my much larger city of Atlanta...) because I REALLY want to point to this project and say "this is how we should upgrade our rail lines!"