An initiative to make transit free for all youth across Hawaiʻi that had raised supporters’ hopes appears dead, a victim of tight budgets and funding concerns. 

Under Rep. Sean Quinlan’s House Bill 1879, the state would have funded free transit for resident youth through a new special fund financed by a tax on imported petroleum. Transit advocates had turned their attention to it after a bill to make rides on buses and rail free for everyone was killed off last month.

The keiki bill got a good ride. It was referred to three House committees. It passed the Transportation Committee and Human Services and Homelessness Committee, but when it got to the Finance Committee, it hit a roadblock: chair Chris Todd never scheduled it for a hearing. 

“I believe in expanded free public transportation options for our keiki,” Todd said in a written statement to Civil Beat. But this is a tight budget year for the state, he said, which precluded the bill from becoming a fiscal priority. 

The bill’s senate companion died similarly when its introducer, Sen. Lorraine Inouye, killed it off in her chamber’s Transportation Committee in mid-February. 

Inouye said the move was unfortunate given the raft of supportive testimony from agencies such as the state’s Department of Health and Department of Transportation, but “there are issues with regards to the funding mechanism for this bill” since it would reduce revenue that goes to the general fund.

Other cities like San Diego and San Francisco started offering free transit for youth after the pandemic, as did Washington state. Abbey Seitz, director of transportation equity at Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, said she’s disappointed the initiative didn’t pass here given that it could reduce people’s cost of living.

It didn’t help that supporters couldn’t come up with a specific dollar amount for the needed funding, she said. Programs already exist that give some youth free or reduced transit fares, she said, but not everyone who’s eligible takes advantage of them, making it hard to estimate how much fare revenue would be lost if a blanket program began. 

Still, she was heartened to see a strong foundation of support for free youth transit. 

“These bigger efforts do typically take a few years,” Seitz said. “I’m excited by how much engagement there already was in the first year.”