The March 31, Zip-geddon

The disablement of the Zipmobile on H-1 Freeway cause a major lane imbalance for the afternoon commute in west Oahu by reducing available freeway lane capacity by two lanes.

My immediate reaction od Facebook got over 160 "likes" as of this writing:

I am sorry folks. I am at home now watching the rivers of red lights all over town. They'd be the same with or without rail. We used to have two or three of these a year. Now its a half dozen per year and getting worse... Just wait for the prolonged lane closures for the rail stations. So sorry that our place is run by smooth talking lawyers and uninformed voters. What an avoidable lose-lose!

Hawaii News Now's Ben Gutierrez interviewed me for a piece on After traffic nightmare, other options may be reconsidered:

University of Hawaii civil and environmental engineering professor Panos Prevedouros has advocated reversible express lanes from the H-1/H-2 merge to the downtown area, which he calls a critical stretch for commuters.

"If we had it yesterday, two or three lanes, express to the H-1/H-2 split, it would be like nothing happened," he said.

Star Advertiser's  Kristen Consillio quoted me extensively in her article Jam costs $1 million in lost gas and time:

The economic loss of more than 75,000 vehicles carrying more than 100,000 people stuck in an hourslong traffic jam was estimated by Panos Prevedouros, professor and chairman of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Hawaii.

Prevedouros, a former mayoral candidate, calculated the loss based on a typical one-hour trip growing to four or more hours, and using the minimum wage and current cost of gas to value the time and energy wasted.

"Obviously it's disruptive to people's schedules so it's a waste of time and money," added UH economist Carl Bonham. "At the end of the day, it's really wasted time when people could've been doing something productive."

The severe congestion that started around 2 p.m. delayed deliveries, while some flights were missed.

"Some people arrived home so late that they were planning to call in sick the next day — that's another loss," Prevedouros added. "Every major event has both positives and negatives. Yesterday's horrendous congestion was no exception."

Many bus drivers gained extra overtime, some taxi drivers had some large fares and many restaurants in town had an unusually busy Tuesday dinner business, Prevedouros said.

"Of course, idling for hours makes drivers fume and it is highly polluting, but empty tanks is more business for gas stations," he said.