LIHUE — President Obama signed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act earlier this month, securing $1.3 billion in federal help for Hawaii’s transportation over the next five years. According to a press release from Sen. Mazie Hirono’s office, $261 million
LIHUE — President Obama signed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act earlier this month, securing $1.3 billion in federal help for Hawaii’s transportation over the next five years.
According to a press release from Sen. Mazie Hirono’s office, $261 million will go toward public transit and almost $1.1 billion will be put toward improving infrastructure.
“The FAST Act is long overdue and will provide stability for transportation agencies as we continue to search for solutions to modernize and maintain our critical infrastructure needs,” Hirono said in the release. “While not perfect, this bill supports bus and public transit programs that many Hawaii commuters and visitors rely on every day.”
The breakdown of how that money will be disbursed by county hasn’t been released yet, according to Hirono’s press team.
Celia Mahikoa, the executive on transportation for Kauai County, said the island’s transportation system definitely uses federal funds to keep above water.
“Without subsidy from the federal government, it would be difficult to operate The Kauai Bus with the routes and services that we offer,” Mahikoa said. “We usually receive approximately $1 million for operations and $400,000 in capital funds annually from the U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Transit Administration, which is passed through the Hawaii Department of Transportation.”
A boost in the federal aid certainly couldn’t hurt Kauai’s transportation system.
Nationwide, the FAST Act allots $305 billion in highway transit spending from 2015 until 2020. $835 million of that will go toward biking and pedestrian infrastructure over the next two years, and then that amount rises to $850 million each year for the following three years.
Bike and pedestrian paths are something Kauai County has also chosen to focus upon, and there are planned projects islandwide to create an interconnected network of such paths.
“The bike and walking paths are great, people use them all the time,” said Janie Miller, who was walking her dog Chaos with Mike Westerhout Friday afternoon in Kapaa. “They’re great for the island.”
The FAST Act also looks into the future, making several provisions for self-driving.
The act establishes grants for “advanced transportation and congestion management technologies deployment,” as well as “technologies associated with autonomous vehicles and other collision avoidance technologies.”
Google and Tesla are two of the companies currently developing these robot cars. They haven’t made it to Kauai roads yet, which is a good thing, Westerhout said.
“Robot cars wouldn’t do well here until people stop jay-walking,” Westerhout said.
The new law, which is more than 1,000 pages in length, also reauthorizes the Export-Import Bank. That’s the official export credit agency of the U.S. government. It finances and insures foreign purchases of U.S. goods for those who don’t want to assume the credit risk. It was established in 1934 by executive order and made an independent agency by Congress in 1945. Its charter expired in June, but with the president’s signature, it’s been revived until September 2019.
The Export-Import Bank helped Hawaii businesses make more than $6 million over the past five years, according to Hirono’s press release.
