A new study by the Brookings Institute finds that the tens of thousands of Honolulu residents who don’t have cars are well-covered by public transportation options. 

Brookings,  a Washington D.C. nonprofit, finds that there are 30,793 no-car households on Oahu. Between 98 and 100 percent of those households in Honolulu were located near a transit stop. This may come as no surprise, given that the Brookings Institute already named Honolulu the best city for commuting by public transit earlier this year.

According to the study released on Thursday, Honolulu residents who don’t use cars are more likely to make it to work within 90 minutes than their counterparts behind the wheel. But if you’re thinking about how slow TheBus can be, it’s important to remember that zero-vehicle households tend to be located closer to the areas where most of the jobs are.

So what does all of this tell us about Honolulu’s transit habits? Adie Tomer, a senior research analyst with Brookings, offered some perspective. 

“One of the big questions around transit and thinking about how it works vis a vis the car is that the quicker and more efficient and more comfortable transit is, the more people are going to take it,” Tomer told DC808. “That comfort doesn’t have to mean comfy seats but if driving a car is a total headache, people make that choice.” 

Tomer also pointed out that speed is a major factor —  people want to get where they’re going — and that Hawaii has a unique host of considerations when it comes to transit. 

“You guys have concerns very different than every other metro area in the country,” Tomer said. “The island nature and the utmost concern to the environment… Transit offers a lot of longterm solution but at the same time, to get it done right, you need to attract people out of their cars.”  

Read more from Brookings. Would you consider trading your keys for TheBus? What about rail?