Riding the Honolulu Rail (what I liked and disliked)

so let's talk about the Honolulu rail I was given the opportunity to ride the rail a little early and check it out and so I want to share my experiences some of the good things and some of the not so good things just as a regular local here on Oahu by the way just enjoying the beach I know the exposure a little bit now I'm just enjoying the beach so yeah just wanted to share just my general thoughts about the row and so I actually got notes and um let's go [Music] I also want to mention that I'm not going to show any videos or photos of me going on the rail and that's because of the circumstances of how I got to try the rail I just don't feel comfortable showing that footage not that there's anything bad it's just the circumstances of that I just don't think that it's right and besides there will be tons of footage once it's open to the general public so first I want to talk about my general overall experience I started at the halawa station which is the one by Aloha Stadium and then we went all the way to Kapolei and then we came back we didn't get off at any of the stations but we did stop at every station and so we got to kind of experience what it would be like as you're kind of going and stopping the estimated 22 minutes down one way and then 22 minutes back and I think that was fairly accurate of course all the road cars were nice and clean everything was just real nice for us and again just very appreciative of the opportunity to go and check it out just like a lot of people are going to be able to check out this weekend for free all right so now let's talk about the pros here first pro about the rail it provided some of the most beautiful views of the west side like Central Oahu going out to the West Side I don't get out much out of town and I grew up in Kaneohe so me going to the west side was pretty much like Waikele maybe occasionally if we go Aulani but other than that we're not going to Kapolei we're not going to Waianae Makaha Waipahu even all that much so the fact that we were able to see or I was able to see some of these places from a top-down view I think was really amazing and so I actually think for a lot of people who live in maybe Honolulu Kaneohe East Side who don't often make it out to the west side it's just kind of a nice way to see other parts of the island and you see a lot of flat land you see a lot of AG land and yeah it's a little brown on that side especially when you compare it to a place like the windward side where it's super green with a nice cold allows you got the Waianae mountains on that side and it's not as beautiful but it's beautiful in a different way alright second Pro was actually the writing experience and a lot of my expectations were quite low when it comes to the rail and so when I was on the rail and we were writing it it's actually quite smooth it was probably comparable to Japan it's little you know you got little bumps here and there but nothing like too crazy nothing too Earth shattering so I think that in terms of the writing experience I thought it was really great all right the third thing is the layout of the individual trains if you notice in the train it's actually quite wide I know in Japan it's a little bit narrow but here they did like they designed it where it's like pretty wide for the aisles which I guess is good for when you get a lot of people but also in between the different rail cars there's no like door so if you're familiar with like Japan there's like individual doors in between the actual rail cars but the way that the rail is set up is it's like one long like tube you know it's like one long hot dog and so there's no like you know where the joints of the different rail cars go there's no doors just like wide open so that was like kind of shocking because other rails do it differently and I guess this is part of the Forward Thinking when it comes to like the wider layout of the actual rail cars is that if people do travel with luggage they're gonna need like wider room so I'm glad that they actually made it a little wide maybe some people might consider it too wide but when you consider standing room and just people riding this thing I think that's actually quite a great design and the fourth Pro is the potential now it's sort of a calm but when it comes to the rail you know where the Rail stations are located right now I don't know how useful it will be for the current population and just where the current housing is it's a difficult sell to be honest it's a difficult sell however as we're going along the rail you know you could see the potential of how this thing could actually be used and a lot of the space that is out there to build potential housing especially when you go up towards like past Waipahu said you can see a lot of the flat land and if they're somehow able to get that land again I know it's controversial but convert the land from AG into land that could be built into housing now again I know there'd have to be some kind of land swap or or something so that we don't lose AG land just to build houses the potential of it you know it's just incredible like if you go into it being pessimistic it's kind of like you're not really going to enjoy the ride but if you just kind of look at it like okay well this is what we paid for this is what we're going with so let's see how it is and then you just look at what could be you know it does bring you a little a little smile on the inside at least it did for me just the fact that huh you know it's it's it's nice you know it's it's an opportunity that if we make the right choices as a state this could actually work out for us you know again maybe not in its current state but this is only like phase one or this is like 0.5 I don't know but like it's not like it's full potential yet but if you can look at the potential of it and what it could possibly do I think you'll see like huh we might actually have something here oh okay my hand getting sore now let's get to the cons and this one I'll run through first things first is the bathroom situation they already publicized that there are bathrooms at each of the stations some people actually use the bathroom while we were there so it does work but it's not open to the public and it has a combination so you're going to have to ask for assistance to go to the bathroom I think that is going to be tough for some people and something that I hope that they figure out a way around because I just don't see like for my son for example right if we go to the rail he's got to use the bathroom he's a kid I can't imagine being like okay well we got to go and wait and then we gotta go and find that attendant so to me I wish that they had public bathrooms I wish they had either Porta pot or just something for now and then maybe figure out another long-term solution in the future another one that maybe they're not talking about but I think it's actually quite a big deal is the stairs now there are elevators and escalators for Access that was totally fine but we took the stairs up from the Halal one we took the stairs up I don't know why we just we just did I was just following the crowd okay so I took the stairs and I gotta say that was kind of a lot of stairs and again you know for me it was it was fine it wasn't huffing and puffing too much on the way up to the top however I will say that if the escalators ever break or the elevators ever break man that's going to be a lot of stairs for some people to climb and then even on the way down we had to take the stairs down and my concern is just like that's just a lot of stairs and again you know what I'm thinking about Hawaii people right not necessarily the best Walkers yeah Mobility you have capuno you got all these different issues you know you got families with strollers it's going to be tough I know that they have accessibility which is great but just trying to think like if some of this stuff breaks down man that stairs is gonna be tough another con that only probably applies to some people that I don't know if people will notice initially but there's definitely something I noticed as I was looking around is the height of the railing so the way that they set it up is there's these railings that you can grab if you're riding kind of like on the bus and then there's these straps now there's not that many straps so if some people are holding onto the strap and they're standing up if you got to reach for the rail you got to be at least five eight like in height in my opinion like you got to be at least five eight because I was trying to reach up for that poll I couldn't reach it so I'm thinking okay if I gotta if I'm standing there and I'm kind of in the middle part and I gotta grab onto something it's it's kind of hard yeah it's kind of hard so I don't know if they're gonna add more straps I wish they just lowered the bar like maybe just like a few inches just so regular people can actually reach the bar I think that would have been nice and these are just some last minute random notes that I jotted down uh West Oahu to me this was one of the biggest concerns that I had because I remember a long time ago I went to this graduation at uh West and then they were showing the the the pillars and I was like oh it's kind of far yeah from the campus and they're like oh yeah don't worry Dory they're just gonna walk and I was like how and I was under the assumption that when they were walking like these students now are gonna be walking like super far away from the campus and it it's quite far but back then there was like no infrastructure so I'm glad that now when we stopped at that station and I looked and I saw okay at least there's kind of like a path for these students and you know I wish it was a little bit closer I wish there were more buildings a little bit closer to the rail so it's not as far but at least they have like a path for them to walk I hope it's lighted and I hope that they have security because it is it is a distance you know it's not like you just get off the train you go to school so I'm glad that it's better than I thought it was because I really thought that these kids would have to walk in the middle of a field or some like you know cart path instead of you know it's a nice path nice sidewalks again I just hope that it's safe and secure for some of the students so that was really nice to see another thing is the parking now we parked at the halawa station which is always stadium and had plenty of parking so that was really nice when we're at the other stations though I don't know if there's any parking at all might be one of those drop-off deals so that's going to be a pretty big challenge for the other stations now I don't know if the parking is free it was hard to tell if when you go to Aloha Stadium like when it's normal not like the free weekend but during normal is it going to be free and then if it is free you know how are they going to enforce it being free parking here like guys are going to go to potentially Aloha Stadium in the future or they're going to go airport or you know like is it going to be free like how is that going to work for everyone so I think that will need to be figured out or at least communicated better because right now it looks like it's open parking but you know in Hawaii you get open parking and it's like people park there for all kinds of stuff so I don't know how the parking is going to work but again that's sort of big picture stuff but just a concern that I had as we were going from each Station to Station because some of them don't it doesn't seem like there's enough room to even include like a small little parking lot and last thing I want to mention is just some suggestions that I have from based on my experience the first thing is it's nice that the inside of the trains are clean right now but there's absolutely no advertisements and when you go to Japan you notice that the trains have tons of advertisements lots of screens and just general like ads and I don't know if that's a way for the train to potentially make some money but I think it would be great if they could at least explore that if that's even allowed I don't know if that's allowed under contracts and there's procurement and all this other stuff but I just thought you know if they needed to utilize some real estate for ads they could add that to the rail another thing that I would suggest is maybe figuring out a better way to include where you can store the luggage because as I was looking at some of the places for the luggage I mean you could fit like maybe some carry-ons but you know if you're traveling with like regular sized suitcases especially you know help some people pack nowadays it's gonna be hard to lift it up there but also I don't even know if my suitcase would be able to fit up there I know like if you go like on the shinkansen in Japan there's like a dedicated area just where you could put your big luggage so you don't have to worry about the big luggage you also have to worry about anyone taking it but you know well that's a whole other issue but I feel like that's an important thing to consider is like the small luggage can fit on the top but I don't know if the big luggage can't and even if it can I think it's going to be hard for most people to lift it up that high okay and my last suggestion I think that after the first weekend or so when everyone wants to try it and things to themselves well probably never writing this again I think that what they should try to consider doing is to hold either monthly or quarterly like family events at the Rail stations to get people to go because to me once a novelty wears off after this first weekend or so I don't know how the ridership is going to do because it's really not a lot of reason for most people to ride the rail now it doesn't really take you anywhere it works and that's great and you can have a good time on it but in terms of the rail as a utility like to be able to use it for something meaningful I I'm not sure if it's there yet they have to figure out how to keep that momentum how to keep interest in the rail so that when the rail eventually gets you know phased in with you know the full phase all the way to at least airports or you know once it hit Middle Street they have to make that exciting or make it interesting for people and I think they can do that by having like certain event days so maybe at some of the real stations they could have like music or you know food you know things that local people like right you know like uh farmers market or craft fair or something where at each of the stations maybe they have like certain vendors and then so you could park at one end and then you can go and take the rail and then you can go do all these things with the family and then you know you can eventually go and come back again the issues with bathroom and stuff like that but I I do think that they need to find ways to make it so that people will use the rail once the initial novelty wears off because my worry is that once everybody tries it and says oh yeah that was cute and they post other pictures and you know they talk about it once that happens is nobody's gonna ride it again and then we're gonna see these like really bad numbers of writers and people just not care if they could just find a way to continue that momentum it would help and this momentum is going to have to be for possibly years but at least till it gets the airport I think and then after that I think there'll be more functionality and people will actually use it so that's just some of my general thoughts on the rail and I can just say going into it I was not really expecting much and I think that's why I was kind of Blown Away you know by the potential of what this can be I never considered living out on the west side at least like Kapolei side and working in town it's just the drive right now is is too it's too hard you know and it would take a lot for me to move there but as we're driving by like whole pili and some of these other places I thought to myself you know what if the rail ever makes it to town and we get the opportunity to buy out there it's a possibility you know I never thought I'd even say that or consider that but if I can get from the rail in Kapolei all the way out to town in what 30 40 minutes and then get from the station to my office I'm probably gonna have to bike that but that's fine or walk I was like oh maybe maybe I this is a possibility and so I was pleasantly surprised I was genuinely impressed and I think for all the bad press and this project got a lot of bad press and I know and even for operating costs and I know a lot of issues but I will say for what it is right now it's it's it's pretty good and uh I can't speak for how it's going to be maintained in the future or you know when stuff breaks how we're gonna fix it I don't know but I can see it as it is now for what it is from Kapolei to Aloha Stadium I think it's pretty good I was pretty impressed and I would encourage people to go and check it out either on the free weekend or just on their own if they got you know 50 minutes to kill just go park and go down and come back it's kind of cool and again you get to see Oahu a different part of Oahu if you're not from that side from a different perspective big question is would I ever use it no probably not because we live in town so it doesn't make sense to go out that way however if the rail gets connected to town whenever that is and there's housing opportunities out on the west side it could be a possibility and I guess that was the whole point of this right so I hope that they build a lot of housing along the rail along the Rail stations especially and really make it for local families doesn't have to be fancy doesn't have to be all luxury stuff just make it affordable and again if you don't know what affordable is it means cheap when you hear the price it's like oh that's cheap that's what affordable means does it mean the units are are cheap like cheaply made it doesn't mean poor quality it just means that it's for local families that oh and they actually say the number they don't have to borrow a down payment from grandparents they don't have to do all this stuff they can just be like okay I can't afford that that's really nice and it's just the place for us to live so I hope you get a chance to try out the rail thanks for watching and aloha hello hello hello hello hello hello hello [Music]

Channel: Hello From Hawaii

Views: 10,941

Keywords: living in hawaii, Life in hawaii, what is it like in Hawaii, Moving to hawaii, hello from hawaii, hawaii, oahu, honolulu, hawaii life, life on hawaii, hawaiian life, honolulu rail, honolulu skyline, oahu rail project, riding honolulu rail, riding skyline honolulu, review of honolulu rail

Id: 9lMYtHQfimM

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2023