The past few weeks I have repeatedly made the mistake of trying to drive on Oahu between the hours of 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. The traffic was unbearable. A sea of stuck cars and halting movement.

As I sat in my car, the anger in me began to subside and I thought about how we can fix this.

There are real solutions in the short and long term we can implement to alleviate endless congestion. But in important ways our traffic problems are downstream effects of our physical infrastructure, the built reality around us.

Changing that will require important culture and mentality shifts over the present, and decisions about what kind of Hawaii we want tomorrow.

While Honolulu has infamous traffic jams, the problem rears its ugly head on the neighbor islands too. Maui’s famous Road to Hana was overflowing with local cars and rentals after pandemic era travel restrictions were lifted. Limited road options for Lahaina compounded evacuation and emergency response efforts during the horrific August 2023 wildfires.

On the Big Island, the mayor had to issue an emergency order shutting down Waipio Valley Road due to overuse and poor prior maintenance. Not even Kauai is immune to the problem of heavy traffic.

Our physical infrastructure is simply inadequate to the demands of 21st century Hawaii.

The major shift needs to be away from personal cars as the main mode of transport. We are our own source of traffic, and we have probably reached the limit on how much we can expand our roadways without significant disruption to our communities.

More cars on the road also leads to more and more parking demand. With housing prices and commercial rent stuck at record highs, why would we waste any more of our precious space on unproductive road expansion or parking lots and garages?

Reducing dependency on cars is also a personal boon. The upfront cost of car ownership is significant, loans are expensive (especially with today’s interest rates) and predatory automotive lending hurts everyone, especially working-class families.

Car maintenance is also a significant, enduring cost, with the price of gas stubbornly high along with insurance prices, registration fees, replacing tires and — heaven forbid — if your car needs work.

Improve Public Transit

If we’re going to convince people to use their cars less (or not at all) then we need to make significant improvements to our public transit system. The primary focus should be on improving our county bus systems.

Dedicated bus priority lanes can help greatly improve timeliness of service, something that is critical to many working-class people. Investments in cleanliness, staff, and new buses will be important too.

Honolulu has its Complete Streets project to improve overall quality of life and quality of transportation. The city should prioritize those projects as a short-term, easy wins.

Improving our bus systems is important, but we also need to invest in rail transport. While Honolulu’s rail project has been subject to controversy and delays, it’s already forming an important part of our urban transport network.

The medium to long-term benefits are likely to be substantial as the network expands, ridership increases, and density increases. Transit-oriented development is changing the housing picture in West Oahu.

Looking at a map of Oahu one can easily imagine fruitful rail expansions further into the Waianae-Nanakuli neighborhoods, up the H-2 route and connect Mililani, Wahiawa, maybe even Haleiwa. Traffic is especially bad in Haleiwa; imagine getting all those rental cars off the road by connecting the community to Skyline.

Expanding Skyline further east to better connect Kaimuki, Aina Haina and Hawaii Kai would also make sense. Could contemporary streetcar or light-rail systems benefit the neighbor islands?

Countries around the world can integrate public transit options to smaller, less populated areas. Creating a limited light-rail service between the larger communities on Maui or the Big Island could reduce stress on overcrowded roadways and have the added benefit of less rental cars on the roads as visitors use public transit to get around.

All the counties should consider congestion charges and toll roads too. After years of bureaucratic wrangling, New York City is preparing to institute congestion charges for accessing Manhattan.

Advocates argue that such charges will strongly benefit neighborhoods and provide crucial funding to improve and expand public transit options. A similar charge in Singapore has led to reduced traffic volumes, increased transit usage, and reduced carbon emissions.

London has also seen improved environmental metrics, less traffic congestion, and more transit usage. To mitigate the impact on working and middle-class families, we should phase in future congestion charges and toll roads while gradually reducing the impact of our state gas tax.

While these changes and improvements are great from a technical standpoint, we can’t have a complete discussion without addressing the broader communities we have built. Heavy suburbanization across the state has created disconnected neighborhoods where it’s hard to travel even short distances without a car.

The results have been disastrous unaffordability and imposing the high costs of car ownership on those least able to afford it.

We can start by reforming the permitting processes and zoning. Burdensome regulations have stifled community development, isolated us, and imposed tremendous costs on the natural environment.

Successful public transit systems provide everyday travel options for any reason, not just commuters. Building public transit around the workday commute was a mistake we should stop making.

There’s a lot more we can discuss about transport, including our lack of maritime transport. Ferries are extremely efficient modes of transport and cities worldwide are investing in developing or expanding ferry service. Reestablishing an interisland ferry service would have a transformative impact on connecting all of us, while intra-island ferries and water taxis would provide more options for everyday trips.

So many of the traffic and congestion issues we face come from the built environment around us. Fortunately, with planning and effort we can change that. There are abundant solutions available to us.

None of these interrelated issues are beyond our capacities to solve. We just need to find the resolve inside ourselves to change.