Have You Ridden da Bus Lately on Oahu?

Have you ridden da bus on Oahu? An account of how it works and how well it works from the experience of a daily rider using public transportation in Honolulu.

Have you ever ridden the bus on Oahu? Did it come late? Was it painfully slow? Was the sound of the engine inside deafening? Were you comfortable? In my experience with the bus system in Hawaii, it has been a random combination of all these factors. Having roughly three years of experience riding the bus to and from school every day has given me a pretty good idea as to how it works, and how well.  

    At the beginning of my bus riding experience, I didn’t really have an accurate idea of what was good and what was bad when it came to the bus. However, after a while, as I got used to it I began to notice a lot of inconsistencies. A lot of the time, I can’t rely on the bus apps because the bus rarely arrives when the app says it will. On a typical day, the bus is five to ten minutes late, sometimes more. However, you can’t rely on that because it randomly comes before scheduled and anyone using the app misses the bus. At one point, the bus arrived thirty minutes late and I ended up late for school. 

    The time it takes for the bus to arrive at my destination most times is inconsistent as well. A trip that for me on a regular day takes around an hour and fifteen minutes has taken up to two hours. On other occasions, it’s taken only one hour. This issue is often based on how bad the traffic is or the weather, stuff you can’t really control. However, sometimes it’s just that the bus is really late, or the driver is driving incomprehensibly slow.

    Another big issue, in my opinion, is the problem with the bus stops. Many of the bus stops are filled with homeless and it can be a little unnerving. When you are waiting at the bus stop, especially in the dark and some homeless person, with who knows what, is walking around you in a fit, it’s fair to think that they might attack you. Now I’m not trying to pin this on the homeless people, but nobody is stopping them from taking over bus stops like this or looking out for the safety of riders.

On top of that, there have been several occasions when we have found urine and human feces on and around the benches and ground at the bus stop. To make matters worse nobody came to clean it, despite our repeated reporting. To me, that means they’re either too understaffed to deal with the problem or they just don’t care about people taking dumps at the bus stops.

    Now I may have said things that might deter people from wanting to ride the bus at all, I want to make clear that it isn’t my intention to do so. I merely want to inform the public of what they can expect so they can be prepared and when it comes to it they won’t be so shocked.

It’s also important for us to speak out about what’s wrong so that it can be improved. I have traveled on the bus system in other countries and the difference was staggering. The buses ran on schedule, were clean with comfortable seating, and even offered power outlets to charge phones! They also ran the buses extra during rush hour times to help avoid traffic delays. If they can have a respectable functioning bus system why can’t we?

It’s difficult to believe that we once had an award-winning bus system. The fare rates are consistently being raised yet there have been no improvements in service, something is wrong with this picture…

Now despite its flaws, the bus system is still is an important resource to have in Hawaii that lets people get to where they need to be for a relatively cheap price. It may have some problems but they can be fixed. Hopefully, this article will inform enough people on the realities of our bus system so that they will take the initiative to fix these issues.                                           

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