Its official name is the Route C Country Express!, the bus that shuttles riders down the Waiʻanae Coast every morning. But that’s a misnomer right down to the exclamation point, unless you think an hour and half bus ride is “express.”

City officials had planned to make improvements to the often punishing commute from the Westside — with potential designated bus lanes and bus stations in the middle of the road — but federal funding for the project evaporated this week as part of the Trump administration’s latest cuts.

Waiʻanae commuter Chris Gropp said his 45-minute bus ride to his job in Kapolei is twice as long as the drive.

“It’s really unpredictable,” Gropp said, because the bus scheduled to come once every half hour is often delayed. “It would be nice if there was just more of them running, right? Like more frequently.”

The $4.8 million Waiʻanae Coast bus rapid transit project was the most expensive of seven federally funded city projects terminated, according to a letter from the city’s managing director Michael Formby to the City Council.

The others included maintenance on housing for vulnerable people and environmental and business programs. While the total of roughly $10 million is a fraction of the more than $300 million in federal funding the city expected to receive, a look at the programs affected offers a glimpse into how specific cuts can impact daily lives.

A Delay Or A Death Sentence?

Department of Transportation Services Deputy Director Jon Nouchi still hopes to increase the frequency of bus service to coincide with the planned Oct. 1 opening of the next segment of the city’s rail system, Skyline. But the federal budget cuts are putting some of the Waiʻanae planning on hold for now.

The vision for the Waiʻanae Coast a partnership between federal, state and city government “to really benefit a constituency that endures the longest travel distance and has probably some of the fewest transportation options,” Nouchi said.

Beyond improvements to bus service there, for which $4.8 million would have paid for planning and potential environmental impact statements, the balance of the $10 million in federal funding cuts to Honolulu that came down this week targeted three congressional earmarks and three federal grants.

The earmarks include deferred maintenance on the city’s 63 special needs housing properties for people with disabilities or in vulnerable social circumstances, a green stormwater infrastructure planning study and a community equity program for small disadvantaged businesses.

Also cut was a sustainability-focused internship program called Climate Champions, food waste reduction and a microgrid — a small, electrical system — at Kaimukī Middle School.

Formby said in his letter that the city will reapply for the congressional earmarks next year, and he said the city’s climate resiliency office plans to dispute its loss of Climate Champions funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Nouchi hopes this year’s cancellation of bus rapid transit funds represents a delay to the program’s implementation rather than a death sentence, and he stressed that details are still to be determined.

“This is the very start of an infrastructure project that could potentially be a very large-scale construction project in the future,” he said, “but we have to start somewhere.”

Finding Funds Elsewhere

Local governments like Honolulu now must figure out what to do about programs whose funding is cut as the Trump administration continues slashing what it deems wasteful spending.

Honolulu budget committee chair Tyler Dos Santos-Tam said it’s unclear exactly whether and how this money can be made up with city funds. Some city projects rely on federal funding in addition to their local match.

But he pointed to tens of millions of dollars that Mayor Rick Blangiardi set aside in this year’s budget as a contingency against the cancellation of federal grants.

The city’s Fiscal Stability Fund also has about $200 million, which has narrow requirements for how it can be used. Blangiardi wants to expand these requirements as another way to brace against federal funding cuts, and council members have introduced two bills that share that goal but differ slightly.

The city’s new budget kicks in July 1 of each year, but Dos Santos-Tam said the council could reopen discussions on it later in the year if the president were to cut funding beyond what the budget has the capacity to absorb.

That possibility is similar to state lawmakers’ prediction that they could enter a special session if the president cuts funding after their session ends in May. 

“Who knows what the magnitude of these cuts will end up being,” Dos Santos-Tam said. 

Long Term Infrastructure Vision

Planning for better bus service along the Waiʻanae Coast is part of a larger vision of making Farrington Highway a less dangerous road, according to Nouchi, the city transportation official.

One example is that bus stations in the middle of the road, a key part of many bus rapid transit systems around the world, can double as a way to break up the distance pedestrians need to travel as they cross the street. Nouchi hopes this can help reduce fatalities.

In the meantime, Waiʻanae bus riders – such as Farrington High School sophomore Breon Gillespie, who moved from Kalihi to Waiʻanae last year but continues to attend Farrington to play on its football team – will continue their long commutes down the coast.

It’s about an hour and 15 minutes each way for Gillespie, who wakes up at 5 a.m. and gets home around 9 p.m.

While federal funding cuts have put the project on hold for now, an eventual bus rapid transit program down the Waiʻanae Coast could shorten the commute for people like him.

“That’d be cool,” he said.

Hawaiʻi’s Changing Economy” is supported by a grant from the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation as part of its work to build equity for all through the CHANGE Framework.