Fix Oahu!

How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo -- Lessons for Honolulu

2012-01-29T14:50:00.000-08:00

Recently Steven Manlanga of the Manhattan Institute authored "How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo" in the Wall Street Journal. It describes that stimulus was the vehicle for ruining Buffalo, New York and at the core of this stimulus was none other but a light rail system:

In his State of the State Address this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced $1 billion in incentives to attract new investment. Too bad Mr. Cuomo ignores the factors that help keep areas like Buffalo inhospitable to new investment—namely steep tax rates and the high cost of government.
Sometimes these schemes have done real harm. In the 1970s, the federal government decided to invest $530 million to build a 6.2-mile light-rail system through downtown Buffalo. It was supposed to further spur redevelopment.
Opened in 1985 and anchored by a transit mall that banned cars, the rail line fell well below ridership projections—and downtown businesses suffered mightily from the lack of traffic. As Buffalo landlord Stephen P. Fitzmaurice wrote in 2009: "Walk down Main Street on the transit mall; aside from a few necessities like drug and cell phone stores, blight dominates." Last month the city received a $15 million federal grant to restore traffic to Main Street.
These massive investment subsidies failed partly because officials were ill-suited to select the right projects and often instead gave money to favored insiders. Even former Mayor Anthony Masiello described the federal government's redevelopment funds as "a politically motivated system trying to please everybody."
Image: Main Street in Buffalo: Emptied of traffic and stores by a light-rail infrastructure stimulus project in the 1980s.

Lesson 1: Factors that help keep areas like Honolulu inhospitable to new investment—namely steep tax rates and the high cost of government.

Lesson 2: Rail systems are planned as reasons to spur development. They do not. Quite the opposite they produce blight which cost even more money to reverse.

Lesson 3: Yet another rail line where projected rail ridership was a myth ( a lie.)

Lesson 4: Clueless politicians (i.e., Hannemann, Carlisle, Calwell) and appointed boards (HART) are “ill-suited to select the right projects and often instead gave money to favored insiders” (Mr. Malanga refers to pay-to-play politics which are prominent in Hawaii.)

Did You Ever Think that Honolulu Rail Will Turn ... Sexual?

2012-01-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

Rail pimping university economics professor appears to be a real life pimp!

Serious City Mayor: Assessment, Priorities, Solutions, Policies(Tulsa)

2012-01-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

Tulsa: Open for Business -- Tackling city's challenges requires willingness to embrace innovation, competition and market ideas. By Dewey Bartlett, Jr. Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma

This is an excellent article that summarizes how to run a city under financial distress. (Aren't they all?)

I quote this passage:
Water/Wastewater Study: As a result of the KPMG recommendations, the local public utility authority issued an RFP and engaged Infrastructure Management Group, a nationally recognized team of public infrastructure efficiency experts, to review the governance, operations, finances and strategy of Tulsa’s entire utility operations.

And I note that the highly reputed IMG quoted above conducted the Honolulu Rail financial report for Gov. Lingle, issued in December 2009. The report said that the likely minimum cost to build the elevated rail would be $7.2 Billion as opposed to City's $5.3 Billion estimate.

Demographia's W. Cox on Honolulu Infrastructure

2012-01-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

Wendell Cox of St. Louis based Demographia.com made an interesting presentation at the 36th annual Business and Investment Conference organized by Smart Business Hawaii at the Ala Moana Hotel on January 11. Link to Cox's 1/11/12 slideshow.

Some of his important findings and suggestions include:

Honolulu lost 50,000 residents between 2000 and 2009 in terms of domestic migration. Its taxes, jobs, congestion, housing prices, etc. have caused a loss of domestic residents to other Hawaii counties or other states.
Hawaii was 8th highest in taxation in 2009 in the U.S.
Honolulu housing affordability was the worst in the U.S., about three times worse that the US average!
From the U.S., only Los Angeles and Honolulu are included in the 25 most congested cities in the world.
Several other cities in the US have gone bankrupt and Honolulu is racing to bankruptcy with multi-billion dollar liabilities (pensions, sewers, rail, etc.)
Politicians are ignorant of the fast approaching demographic time bomb of Baby Boomers who are switching from taxable paychecks to pensions and healthcare.
Honolulu rail ridership projections are "rosy."
Cautions about the rail's budget "You Won’t Know the Bill Until It’s Too Late"

Follow the Money... Follow the Loop ...

2012-01-17T15:48:00.000-08:00

Urban Rail and Terrorism

2012-01-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

The recent article "For Transit Agencies, Terrorists Are Moving Targets" in the magazine of the New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority raises many critical issues relating to the security of urban rail systems.

Security experts and transit officials alike all but guarantee that some intentional tragedy will, sooner or later, befall the transit infrastructure of a major American city.
al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have also struck mass transit. Since 2011, bombings have taken place on transit systems in Mumbai (2002, 2003 and 2006), Madrid (2004), Moscow (2004 and 2010) and London (2005).
According to the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) Data Base of Terrorists Attacks against Public Surface Transportation, over 4,000 people were killed in 1,434 attacks between 2004 and 2010.
Transit infrastructure by its very nature presents a ripe target, terror experts say. While airline passengers have to go so far as to take off their shoes and submit to controversial full-body scans, transit passengers move freely through portals like ghosts. And what passengers can do, so can couriers of bombs, nerve gas and anthrax.
To combat everyday crime, such as theft, that takes place on their systems, transit agencies have long maintained their own police forces, or contracted out to other law agencies.
Regardless of the money that Washington, D.C., does not provide, transit officials say that vigilance is their most important resource. Waiting for a threat that may never emerge—scanning subway platforms day-in, and day-out—can, however, be a mind-numbing task.

The bottom line is that:

(1) FTA does not provide funds for security,

(2) Substantial funds are necessary just to combat groping, pickpocketing and other petty crime, and,

(3) Rail transit security is nearly impossible to accomplish at any level comparable to aviation, but the cost for it is very high given the number of stations and passengers (and potential criminals and terrorists) that utilize the rail systems.

In the picture below from LA's Gold Line rail one can see six security officers (that is, six salaries and benefits) and no passengers!

Privacy Issues Survey -- The Economist and Hawaii Results

2012-01-13T18:34:00.000-08:00

I like people, global and local issues, and numbers ... so I present a mini-series of surveys on major issues which have been debated at The Economist. I recommend that you visit their site and learn more if the issue presented is of interest to you.

I selected blocks of questions on Privacy, Economy, Technology, Energy and U.S. Politics. I used my several thousand contacts and Internet friends as well as SurveyMonkey to conduct surveys and solicit responses from Hawaii. Both my and The Economist surveys are based on "self selected" respondents so the results may provide trends or indications but they are not scientific.

Obviously the results only represent people with at least a basic level of computer and Internet savvy. However, the results may be sufficiently indicative because most questions along with the careful wording of questions lead to straightforward answer: Agree, Disagree or Do Not Know. The Economist has received a few thousand responses to each of their questions. I post results only when Hawaii surveys exceed 100 responses.

Privacy Issues Survey (click to take the survey)

I grouped four of The Economist questions into a privacy issues survey, as follows:

DNA sequence is a person's business, and nobody else's.
Loss of privacy from digitizing health care will be more than compensated by increased efficiency.
Cloud computing can't be trusted.
Government must do far more to protect online privacy.

The results are summarized below.

The immediate observation is that Hawaii responses are more agreeable than The Economist responses. The graph shows that both Hawaii and The Economist responses trend in the same way. By a large margin, Hawaii respondents prefer high levels of privacy for a person's DNA and for online transactions.

Public Apathy "Promotes" Boondoggles. Another H-3? The Obama Effect on the Rail Vote

2012-01-12T09:39:00.001-08:00

PUBLIC APATHY. It is one of the major boosters of the ridiculous Honolulu rail, according to award winning journalist and author John Fund of the Wall Street Journal. He spoke about it yesterday at the 36th annual Business and Investment Conference organized by Smart Business Hawaii at the Ala Moana Hotel.

Cost is ridiculous, environmental impact is horrendous and federal monies are no more. Yet Honolulu rail rolls along. Why?

Because too few local citizens participate in protests, contact and pressure elected officials, contribute money and time, etc., etc. He also acknowledged that in most cases major successes are achieved by a few, so those of us really working on stopping the rail are not the exception.

So, I say, if rail happens Abe Lincoln will be correct one more time. In a moment of disappointment Abe said "People get who (or what) they deserve."

ANOTHER H-3? John also quoted past Mayor Mufi Hannemann who after the marginal 50.6% "yes to steel on steel rail" vote proclaimed that "this is not going to be another H-3." Yet as you know from my previous posts the cost of rail was predicted in late 2010 to be at least 40% higher compared with the cost estimates during 2008 campaign. Project construction is 3.5 years late.

Rail has already faced one lawsuit in state court on Hawaiian issues and is facing a major one in federal court for NEPA violations. But this is only the beginning. There will be lawsuits for illegal agricultural land conversions and usage. Noise impacts in the proximity of HUD financed homes and apartments because rail noise violates HUD night time noise levels. A challenge for the misuse of TheBus funds to sore-up TheRail finances is also in consideration. And of course dozens of eminent domain lawsuits.

H-3 was built in the middle of nowhere, whereas rail steps on the toes of thousands of citizens. We have not seen anything yet in terms of legal challenges.

THE 2008 ELECTIONS OBAMA EFFECT ON RAIL. John Fund provided statistical evidence that in the 2008 election "island son" presidential candidate Barrack Obama drew thousands of new voters in the polls particularly younger ones who overwhelmingly voted in favor of rail. (I add that I have noted this attitude in young people. Rail is a government project for their future which will cost them next to nothing because it is the government's monies and not theirs...) John argued that if there was a more typical election without the prominent "Obama effect" in the local polls, the rail question would have been a solid No.

Survival of the Unfittest: Why the Worst Infrastructure Gets Built

2012-01-10T14:12:00.000-08:00

The worst infrastructure gets built! This is the concise conclusion of analysis by Oxford University professor Bent Flybjerg who for many years has been emphasizing the pitfalls of "megaprojects" which typically turn out to:

be much more costly than predicted before construction started
provide fewer benefits that planners predicted, and
attain a 50% lower ridership than predicted, for urban rail systems

Dr. Flybjerg attributes this to several factors, many of which are prevalent in the proposed Honolulu rail megaproject, as shown below, followed by my assessment from * meaning "not so much in Honolulu rail " to ***** "spot on for Honolulu rail":

Such projects are inherently risky owing to long planning horizons and complex interfaces. (***** Honolulu rail is all elevated, heavy rail in the middle of vital arterial streets of a a crowded city with cultural, historical and soils issues)
Technology and design are often non-standard. (** Honolulu rail is heavy rail guideway with light rail automatic trains by Ansaldo)
Decision-making, planning, and management are typically multi-actor processes with
conflicting interests. (**** Honolulu rail is heavily political project built as a city project in the middle of state highways with political push from Senator Inouye in Washington DC.)
Often there is ‘lock in’ or ‘capture’ of a certain project concept at an early stage, leaving analysis of alternatives weak or absent. (***** This is exactly why the NEPA-based lawsuit was filled in federal court. Mufi Hannemann took office in Jan. 2005 and by late fall 2006 the ~100 page Alternatives Analysis had selected elevated rail as the "winner".)
The project scope or ambition level will typically change significantly over time. (**** Honolulu rail started as a 34 mile proposal for about $4 Billion and right before construction it is a 20-mile $5.2 Billion project that excludes Kapolei town, Waikiki and UH-Manoa!)
Statistical evidence shows that such unplanned events are often unaccounted for, leaving budget and time contingencies sorely inadequate. (*** Honolulu rail will be subjected to many changes as eminent domain lawsuits begin once construction starts.)
As a consequence, misinformation about costs, benefits, and risks is the norm throughout project development and decision-making, including in the business case. (**** Even pro-rail local newspapers and City Council members gripe about the lack of transparency and the ever evolving changes in costs.)
The result is cost overruns and/or benefit shortfalls during project implementation. (***** If built, Honolulu rail's ultimate result will be a 50% cost overrun and a 50% ridership attainment, at best.)

LINK to the full article Survival of the unfittest: why the worst infrastructure gets built—and what we can do about it by Bent Flyvbjerg. Sa¨ıd Business School, University of Oxford, e-mail: bent.flyvbjerg@sbs.ox.ac.uk. Part of the research for this paper was carried out while the author was professor at Aalborg University, Denmark, and Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Large Unions and Massive Labor Laws Lead to Fewer Jobs

2012-01-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

France is a prime example of having large and powerful unions, a 3,300-page Labor Law and employee payroll taxation at 39%. The result of all this is more automation and fewer jobs.

In the late 1990s Paris totally retrofitted metro line 14 which today carries 725,000 passengers a day. It is totally automated and the computerized trains run much closer to each other.

Self checkout has proliferated and continues to gain ground in countries where labor is expensive. Other examples from France include:

Orders at many McDonald's are taken via touchscreen devices.
Transit services operate with smart cards
Self-serve car washing Elephant Bleu has grown to 472 stations

One result is that France is a leader in the creation and adoption of automation. Another is that unemployment rarely drops below 10%. More details in The Economist's Driverless, Workless article.

Honolulu Rail 2011 Summary

2011-12-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

In 2004 I started keeping tabs on major events of the infamous Honolulu Rail. This link takes you to the 2004 to 2010 highlights. The 2011 highlights are below.

January 18: FTA issues Record of Decision. The ROD allows the city to take these actions if it so chooses (but read the statement after the list):

the acquisition of any real property or real property rights identified in the Final EIS or ROD as needed for the Project;
the relocation of persons and businesses on that property;
the relocation of the Banana Patch community, if it so desires, in accordance with the ROD;
the relocation of utilities affected by the Project; and
the acquisition of rail vehicles for the Project.

This pre-award authorization is not a real or implied commitment by FTA to provide any funding for the Project or any element of the Project. However, if FTA were to provide grant funding for the Project, the cost of the actions listed above, performed after RAMP approval, would be eligible expenses. No other Project action has pre-award authorization at this time." [Underlined in the original].

January 31: The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation filed a lawsuit Monday afternoon in Honolulu Circuit Court to stop construction of the city's $5.5 billion rail project.
"The complaint filed by Paulette Ka'anohiokalani Kaleikini claims both the city and state failed to perform a complete archeological survey of native Hawaiian remains, or iwi, along the entire 20 mile rail line as required by state law. Kaleikini is being represented by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, a non-profit group dedicated to preserving the indigenous people."

February 4: The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization released a Brief titled, "Honolulu rail Transit: Do the Benefits Justify the Costs?" Their conclusion was that, "Preliminary considerations suggest a high degree of uncertainty about whether the benefits of rail justify the costs. As the conversation about rail costs advances, we should continue to consider the relative size of the benefits."

February 16: "FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff said Tuesday the City and County of Honolulu’s revised financial plan for rail transit must be more robust and not compromise public bus service. "We need to see a financial plan that shows that they have not only the funding to meet their obligations above the federal commitment (but) they also need to demonstrate to us that they have sufficient resources to keep the existing bus service operating and well maintained,” said Rogoff, during a nationwide conference call with reporters. “In the most recent financial plan submitted to the FTA in September of 2009, the city uses of $300 million in federal bus subsidies to fund construction of the $5.5 billion elevated rail system.”

The city's current financial plan for funding rail construction shows it will use $1.5 billion in federal New Starts funds, $300 million from the federal bus funds, and $3.5 billion from the additional ½ percent GE tax. As of the end of 2011 a "robust" financial plan is unavailable.

February 22: City has a "ceremonial groundbreaking", not a groundbreaking ceremony in the middle of nowhere along the North-South Road.

March 22: Ansaldo Honolulu wins the bid to build the city transit cars for $574 million, and will also operate and maintain the system. See below a quick summary of the bids. Phase 1 is called Design-Build (DB) and phase 2 is called Operation and Maintenance (OM)

------- Ansaldo---------Bombardier------ Phase
----$573,782,793----$697,263,592-------1, DB
----$506,030,806----$262,717,960-------2, OM
--$1,079,813,599----$959,981,552-------Total build and 15 years of operation

For Phase 1 Ansaldo is $125 Million less than Bombardier, but in total Bombardier is $125 Million less than Ansaldo, and Ansaldo won! (Honolulu math....)

May 14: Complaint (LAWSUIT) filed against against the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, various executives of the Federal Transit Administration, and the City Transportation Director:

Count 1: defining the purpose and need so narrowly as to preclude consideration of all reasonable alternatives
Count 2: failure to consider all reasonable alternatives (NEPA)
Count 3: failure properly to analyze the environmental consequences of alternatives (NEPA)
Count 4: improper segmentation (NEPA)
Count 5: failure to identify and evaluate use of native Hawaiian burials and traditional cultural properties (section 4(f))
Count 6: arbitrary and capricious evaluation of the project’s use of section 4(f) resources
Count 7: improper project approval (section 4(f))
Count 8: failure to account for effects on historic properties (NEPA)

July 14: Rail contract appeals set for Sumitomo, Bombardier

July 16: Honolulu Magazine publishes critical article on rail

August 15: HART Board set-- Eight of the ten-person “apolitical” and rail-clueless HART board consists of six current and former City employees and two union officials. The minority two are businesspeople. Also, Bombardier appeals to FTA in Honolulu rail dispute. And Sumitomo--Losing bidder on Honolulu rail project goes to HART of the matter.

August 21: How the city misled the public. By Walter Heen, Benjamin Cayetano, Cliff Slater and Randall Roth.

August 24: Closer look shows why Sumitomo may have decided against Honolulu rail appeal

August 27: Pacific Business News reverses position to now oppose rail.

September 13: Bombardier loses latest appeal of Honolulu rail contract

October 14: Bombardier files new appeal of Honolulu rail contract

October 21: Ansaldo, State Reach Deal on Licensing Violation
Ansaldo Honolulu JV has agreed to pay the state $150,000 to settle two cases alleging that the company didn't have a contractor's license. Submitting a bid without a contractor’s license constitutes unlicensed contracting. The fine for unlicensed contracting activity ranges from $2,500 and can run as high as 40% of the total contract price.

October 26, 2011: Ansaldo penalty 'slap on the wrist,' councilman says
City Councilman Tom Berg, a critic of the selection of rail car contractor Ansaldo Honolulu, said the city should have disqualified the Italian-based company because it was in violation of state law by bidding for the project before obtaining a contractor's license.

November 23: Pro-rail Star Advertiser editorial tells HART "Honolulu's contract with a subsidiary of an Italian conglomerate to design, build and operate the city's rail transit project was scheduled to be signed next Friday, but a delay is needed to reassess what increasingly looks as shaky as the euro." And "In our 100 year history The Outdoor Circle (TOC) has seen no other venture that holds the potential to degrade the landscape of Oahu as the proposed Honolulu Rail Transit project. TOC has been involved in virtually every step of the project from the moment it was first brought to the public for discussion. For more than five years, at every opportunity, we have urged the City to explain how it will mitigate Transit’s horrific visual damage to this island as well as the degradation to neighborhoods and communities along the route of this six billion dollar project."

November 28, 2011: Why Does Carlisle / Hamayasu / Horner Stick with Ansaldo while Under so Much Fire?

November 29, 2011: The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation signed a $1.4 billion contract Monday with Ansaldo Honolulu JV, giving it the go-ahead to start construction on the system’s cars and other key components. There will be no guideway and rails for at least another 5 years. So why did we order trains?

December 12: Senior Federal Judge A. Wallace Tashima denied the City/FTA Motion to a) dismiss certain of the plaintiffs for lack of standing, and b) the plaintiffs did not identify certain historical sites during the environmental process. The lawsuit is definitely GO!

December 18: Bidding Irregularity and Delays Imperil Honolulu Rail Insurance Program
"A program that was supposed to reduce insurance costs for the Honolulu rail transit project by $20 million has been indefinitely delayed after irregularities in the city purchasing process forced the city to cancel a key contract award. "

December 29: FTA grants HART permission to enter the Final Design phase but has many difficulties with HART's financial plan. The FTA asks HART to the State legislature and the City Council to get an unspecified extension of the ½ percent General Excise Tax increase or find other monies ... "these revenue sources require actions by the State of Hawaii and/or the City that have not been taken and which are beyond HART's ability to control. In addition, "HART made assumptions in three areas that require justification."

The figure below is an exact copy of the City's mid-2008 Draft EIS. The blue dashed line is my addition that shows that the project is late by 3.5 years well before any actual construction has started!

US: Gas v. Wind -- Hawaii: Geothermal v. Wind

2011-12-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

Matt Ridley concludes his article Gas Against Wind as follows:

To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it.

Like the U.S. mainland has abundant gas Hawaii has abundant geothermal energy. Tapping into geothermal power can be more expensive than hydraulic fracturing or fracking for natural gas but geothermal power in Hawaii is less exhaustible than natural gas on the mainland, and once developed its use does not produce greenhouse gasses.

Like in the U.S. natural gas is in shale hundreds of miles away from big metropolitan areas, but a national grid makes electric power transmission feasible, although billions need to be spent to the existing grid if gigawatts are to be transmitted efficiently and reliably.

In Hawaii a cable to connect Oahu, Maui and the Big island may be too expensive, but there are alternatives: Hydrogen, and Ammonia (as a carrier of Hydrogen.) Hawaii can utilize abundant geothermal energy to transform into a hydrogen/electric economy for long term sustainability, instead of blowing Billions in the wind.

In addition to blowing Billions on unreliable power production, I quote from Ridley's article: The wind farm requires eight tonnes of an element called neodymium, which is produced only in Inner Mongolia, by boiling ores in acid leaving lakes of radioactive tailings so toxic no creature goes near them.

California Rail Boondoggle

2011-12-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

Outside Hawaii infrastructure boondoggles are called what they are... boondoggles. Hawaii is too insular and managed by an inner political cast of characters. As a result lies and misrepresentations prevail at all government levels when it comes to billion dollar issues such as Rail, Wind (and other suspicious Renewables), Government Pensions, and Employee Health Coverage.

I quote a brief article from the Wall Street Journal below. Note that:

Congress will ask tough questions about rail projects
Congress will refuse to fund billion dollar shares for rail projects
California's fast rail at over $100 Billion comes to $2,700 per person
Hawaii's elevated rail at over $7 Billion(*) comes to $7,600 per person

(*) You do not believe the Mufi / Carlisle / Toru / Horner / PB co$t e$timates, do you? They are of the same quality as their ridership estimates shown below:

Bullet Train Boondoggle

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee put California's high-speed rail plan on trial last week, asking rail experts and local officials some questions that the project's planners and state lawmakers apparently failed to consider. Like how the state will finance its 500-mile bullet train from Anaheim to San Francisco.

California voters approved a $10 billion bond initiative to fund the project in 2008. At the time, the state's high-speed rail authority, which is responsible for planning the project, estimated that the train would cost only $33 billion and be financed primarily by the federal government and private sector. The authority also promised that the train wouldn't require a subsidy. However, a few months ago the authority released a revised business plan that estimates the rail will cost between $98 billion and $116 billion. The authority expects the federal government to put up $73 billion and the private sector to invest $10 billion. Jerry Brown, the state's Democratic governor, praised the new plan as more "honest."

Investors have refused to finance the bullet train without a subsidy, and Congress isn't appropriating any more money for high-speed rail. Of the $11 billion that Congress has already appropriated, the Obama administration has authorized $3.9 billion for the California project on the condition that the state build the first segment in the Central Valley, presumably because there's less resistance to the train in rural areas than big cities. That may be true, but the train's a losing proposition everywhere. According to a new Field poll, two-thirds of Californians want a referendum on the project. And by a 2-to-1 margin, they'd vote to kill it.

Greg Gatzka, director of the King County Community Development Agency, testified at the hearing that the train would result in "approximately 7,100 acres of severed and/or disrupted" farmland and cost the dairy industry $50 million. It would also interfere with a $67 million broadband infrastructure project. Kings County has sued the rail authority because of the numerous disturbances, as have the cities of Palo Alto and Palmdale.

Even if the rail authority were to settle these legal challenges, a high-speed train wouldn't be operable until the state comes up with an additional $25 billion to complete the segment and electrify the tracks. In the meantime, the authority plans to run Amtrak trains on the tracks, though there may be problems with that plan, too. Elizabeth Alexis, cofounder of the group Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, testified that it's uncertain whether diesel trains could safely run on tracks built for electric trains.

In any event, Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo insisted that $100 billion is a small price to pay for a modern transportation system and that "adding and maintaining transportation capacity in California, while vital, is expensive." For instance, repairing the Bay Bridge will cost roughly $6 billion; a 10-mile expansion of the 405 freeway will run around $1 billion; and the ongoing modernization of Los Angeles's biggest airport is pegged at $4.1 billion.

So why is a state that is already struggling to finance basic infrastructure initiating an exorbitant project that most taxpayers don't want? None of the witnesses had a good answer.

-- Allysia Finley

HOT Lane Transponders, Congestion as an Advantage, Congestion Pricing, Roadbuilding Costs

2011-12-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

A potpourri of interrelated recent articles ...

HOT Lanes are supposed to be free for large carpools, discounted for small carpools and full price for solo drivers. Recall that the purpose of HOT Lanes is twofold: (1) Incentivize Transit and Carpooling and, (2) Have low occupancy vehicles pay congestion insurance (toll). The correct term is not toll but Congestion Insurance because HOT Lanes guarantee over 45 mph speed, whereas common tollways charge a toll and may serve abundant bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The problem is this: HOT Lanes use electronic non-stop no-toll-booth tolling at freeway speeds. So how do large carpools go free, low carpools pay a discounted toll and solo drivers pay the full toll? This article from Orange County shows the electronic solution.

Yogi Berra once said, "nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded." In the article The Case for Congestion, John Norquist who served as mayor of Milwaukee from 1988-2004 proposes that congestion is a positive attribute for a city. It shows that a city is vibrant, dynamic and bustling, as opposed to decaying and lethargic.

However, too much congestion puts a lid on the economic growth and long term sustainability of a city, so congestion reduction techniques are always in demand, particularly when they tend to be popular and relatively inexpensive. In A Blueprint for Beating Traffic, Eric Jaffe summarizes the success of Road Pricing in Stockholm, Sweden. Interestingly, some of the road pricing collections are being used by the Swedeish government to build one of the modern under-city roadway tunnels, Södra Länken, to relieve bottlenecks and to facilitate traffic and the economy of the city.

And when it comes to costs, new U.S. roadways cost much much less that new U.S. rail lines, as Randal O'Toole explains in Highway Cost Overruns.

Jitney Advantages for Transit Service

2011-12-14T11:57:00.001-08:00

A seriously thought out plan for JITNEY service can have many advantages, in addition to those identified in this article focused on poor and disadvantaged populations. They include:

Low government cost, mostly for safety and health inspections
Scalable, from trunk arterial routes to ridges and valleys
Flexible to reroute as needed by time of day, day of the week, special events
Congestion reduction by offering fast and competitive service,
Cost savings to the poorest especially,
Cost savings to government to target bus routes on high demand routes only
Creation of a new industry with very low entry costs for self employed.

Google Atlantic City Jitney to read more about one successful deployment of jitneys in the US:

Jitneys are Atlantic City's most convenient and chief mode of affordable transportation around town. The Jitney Association is comprised of 190 individual owner-operated vehicles.

17 Miles in just 78 Minutes!

2011-12-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

Humor has an advantage in exposing reality. Here is a story by Reason Foundation on LA's "light" rail.

Pay attention to the factual pop-ups and note that all this inconvenience cost him $5 and another $22 to the taxpayer (for just one 17 mile trip!)

Honolulu Rail is a White Elephant in the Jungle of Transportation Infrastructure

2011-12-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

This slideshow explains why the proposed rail is a white elephant in the jungle of transportation infrastructure. Here is a short list of reasons:

Honolulu has a severe traffic congestion problem, not a transit problem
Honolulu is the most lane deficient medium/large metro area in the U.S.
Honolulu's bus is good but is becoming increasingly unproductive due to added low density routes
Voters with a tiny 50.6% "yes" margin approved light rail costing well under $5 Billion, not heavy rail costing well above $5 Billion
Successful rail systems are networks in multimillion population cities not 20 miles of single line on a corridor of less than 600,000 people
Proposed rail has an exorbitant cost per mile, per resident and per passenger... 2 to 3 times more than the hugely expensive Washington D.C. metro
Ridership forecasts are outright ridiculous and of course the majority of the projected riders are current bus riders; also about one fifth of the riders projected for year 2030 have not been born yet
Due to its huge construction costs, the proposed rail will absorb transportation funds for decades causing accumulated deterioration to the already mediocre roads and bus operations
For the price of rail and its foreign and environmentally intrusive technology Honolulu can build enough congestion relieving infrastructure to achieve 20-minute commutes for 75% of its population
95% of Honolulu electric power comes from fossil fuel and thanks to utopian sun and wind policies dependence on oil for power will stay there for a long time
Reversible express HOT Lanes is clearly the best solution for Honolulu given the prevailing high Bus and Carpool use rates, and huge AM and PM commuting demand peaks; small trains with a capacity of 300 will do very little to demand peaks and even less off peak
The path to sustainability for Oahu requires HOT Lanes, Bus Rapid Transit, institutionalized TeleCommuting and expanded Bikeways but none of these are active projects
Independent macroeconomic analysis has confirmed that the proposed rail has a huge negative surplus (benefits minus costs) over a 40+ year horizon
Rail is unsustainable as a tax and energy black hole; Oahu has a $40 Billion funding liability and rail is the only discretionary project
Adding insult to injury, it is so ugly ... (see slide 21)

Jones Act Hurts Alaska and Hawaii

2011-12-11T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here is an example of how the Jones Act endangered a community in Alaska. Even in a critical situation like this, the Russian ice breaker could not load oil from an Alaska port and take it to Nome, Alaska, but it had to backtrack to Korea to get the oil and back to Nome, Alaska.

Russian Icebreaker to Make History in Alaska

While Jones Act in general protects the shipping interests of the United States, it has huge implications for states that are dependent heavily on marine transportation, Alaska and Hawaii, and particularly the later. Special shipping interests must be protected even when the health and safety of populations are in jeopardy.

Hawaii's Congressional delegation has been fully unwilling to entertain any modifications to the Jones Act for Hawaii.

Infrastructure projects to fix the economy? Don’t bank on it.

2011-12-11T14:39:00.000-08:00

Many good points in this Washington Post guest opinion:

Even if federal agencies calculate the numbers properly, members of Congress often push ahead with "trash" projects anyway.
As Morgan noted in his 1971 book, these big projects have often damaged both taxpayers and ecology.
Taxpayers are double losers from all this infrastructure. They paid to build it, and now they are paying to clean up the environmental damage.
When the federal government "thinks big," it often makes big mistakes.
When the federal government is paying for infrastructure, state officials and members of Congress fight for their shares of the funding, without worrying too much about efficiency, environmental issues or other longer-term factors.
The recent infrastructure debate has focused on job creation, and whether projects are "shovel ready." The more important question is who is holding the shovel.
The federal government subsidizes the construction of urban light-rail systems, for example, which has caused these systems to spring up across the country. But urban rail systems are generally less efficient and flexible than bus systems, and they saddle cities with higher operating and maintenance costs down the road.

If You Let Them, PB Will Recommend the Right Solution...

2011-12-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

... For both transportation and the local economy.

Quote from Washington Post article titled Busway — not light rail — would bring more jobs, money to upper Montgomery, analysis finds: A $772 million light-rail line would generate a total “economic impact” of $1.3 billion between 2014 and 2050, while a $491 million bus rapid transit line would spur $2.2 billion, according to the study by consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Notice that PB is the current consultant for Honolulu. In 2005 Parsons Brinckerhoff were asked by Mayor Hannemann to prove rail is right. Six years earlier the same consultant under much less pressure from Mayor Harris had recommenced Bus Rapid Transit for Honolulu!

Recall that all along I have been saying that HOT Lanes for express buses would solve Honolulu's traffic congestion and construction jobs issues for 1/4 the cost of rail and less than 1/4 the permanent cost later on for operation and maintenance.

Traffic Congestion, APEC, Hurricanes, Tourism, Energy. How Will Rail and HOT Lanes Do for Honolulu?

2011-12-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

Here is the LINK to a 2-page handout to inform yourself and your friends about the relative advantages of Rail and HOT Lanes for Honolulu.

Uncertain Funding and Injuctions Are Guaranteed

2011-12-02T16:00:00.001-08:00

Meanwhile Senator Inouye expressed doubts to Civil Beat.

At best by 2016 when the senator's term expires rail will be about a quarter done assuming that all efforts to stop it fail. He will be 92 years old.

I doubt that the good senator will be able to provide more than $100 Million per year between now and 2016. This would cover less than 10% of the project's cost. I am surprised that he is copying so much from President Obama who he did not support in 2008. Senator Inouye's audacity of expecting over $1,800 Million of federal support for Honolulu Rail and hope that he will be a senator past age 100 to see them through is quite surprising.

At $100 Million per year starting in 2012 it will take until 2030 for Honolulu to receive a total of $1,800 year-of-expenditure federal funds. At that time Senator Inouye will be 106.

What Would Rail Do for APEC?

2011-11-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

The Asia-Pacific Economic Council or APEC 2011 was recently completed at various venues on Oahu. About 20 top leaders attended including the Presidents of US and China and the Prime Ministers of Japan and Australia. It was an important and crowded event. Oahu’s experienced hospitality industry proved that they can handle major visitation challenges.

Oahu’s transportation system was no problem for the “prime” visitors because security forces blocked it off for their exclusive usage. Oahu’s citizens and visitors were inconvenienced from mildly to tremendously because of the lack of redundant routes given that Honolulu is the most lane deficient metro area in the nation.

So a fair question is this: If rail was already present, what would have it done for APEC? What would rail do for future major conventions?

Nothing! Remember that the rail dead-ends at Ala Moana Center. (More on this later.)

Meanwhile, APEC dignitaries and visitors would be appalled by the ghastly superstructure that blighted the waterfront and Ala Moana. Those more akamai would ask: Why did you build something so big for your modest city? Why are your roads so congested and the trains are almost empty?

The answer is that rail was built big to create as many temporary jobs as possible. It’s not well used because the bulk of its ridership comes from deleted bus lines, along with a few thousand white collar workers who soon enough will ask the public to pay more money to put WiFi in the rail cars.

Rail dead ends at Ala Moana Center. Over one billion dollars will be needed to backtrack to Kapiolani Boulevard to get to Waikiki. Rail will permanently blight the Convention Center and the spine of Waikiki: With the elevated rail and stations, sun will barely reach Kuhio Avenue.

Recall that the federal judges signed a letter of objection to the city: They do not want rail to use Halekauwila Street because they consider it a security breech to the nearby federal building. How can rail go by the Convention Center? If it does, Hawaii won't be able to use it for any high-security event such as APEC, ADB, UN and other top level political and business meetings. Or it could, if we installed airport-style security at all 21 stations. Sounds ridiculous? Considering that the powers that be are pushing a $6 Billion rail system on a less than 600,000 population corridor, very little else can top this for ridiculous.

Obviously we need a different and better solution for transportation. What if we had HOT Lanes instead, that is, elevated HOT Lanes between the H1/H2 merge and Iwilei with exits at Aloha Stadium, airport, Kalihi and downtown?

With HOT Lanes, during APEC we would have problem-free travel between the H1/H2 merge and downtown regardless of freeway closures. There would be no visible blight because HOT Lanes run mostly next to H1 freeway and terminate one half mile before Honolulu’s prime waterfront.

As a bonus, HOT lanes have no part in the destruction of Aloun Farms and the prime agricultural land that is slated as a 12,000 - 15,000 residential unit Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the Ewa plains.

Five Myths about US Gasoline Taxes

2011-11-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

A good summary article by Shin-pei Tsay and Deborah Gordon. CNN, November 19, 2011.

There is no doubt that federal gasoline and diesel tax should go to 40 cents per gallon and none of it should be used to fund transit and rail projects.

Honolulu Rail is a Rube Goldberg

2011-11-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Now that the comedy of Honolulu Rail is in full swing I finally found a good metaphor for it. It's a Rube Goldberg. A Rube Goldberg is (by definition) a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation or minimal work!

I must apologize to Rube Godberg's memory because Honolulu Rail also involves copious amounts of sleaze, deceit, corruption and stupidity. Politicians and professionals continue to fail the island constituencies who they are supposed to serve, and they do so for their own enrichment.

Why Does Carlisle / Hamayasu / Horner Stick with Ansaldo while Under so Much Fire?

2011-11-28T12:17:00.000-08:00

Edit: Mid. January 2012 u p d a t e.

Samples of recent "fire" from rail advocates:

Leave no stone unturned before passing rail's point of no return

Council Chair recommends for rail contract rebid

Ten ways to transform Italy Number 4, sell off Finmeccanica, parent of Ansaldo Honolulu (My comment... who wants a losing dinosaur?)

Perhaps Carlisle / Hamayasu / Horner are stubborn (or worse...) but their vices alone are hard to justify their glaring lack of responsibility for a $1.4 Billion public contract that they officiate over. There must be something else and it probably has to do with money and corruption.

Another thing that should make us suspicious is that City, HART and Ansaldo plan to sign this contract between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that is, during the time period that the public pays little attention to the news and the media tends to cover "holiday spirit" stories. This is exactly when the Alternatives Analysis was approved in 2006 which cemented the City's choice of "elevated rail" as the Locally Preferred Alternative.

There is no reason for selecting an inferior rail manufacturer that belongs to a troubled company (that wants to sell off its rail business), located in Italy, a country with possibly insurmountable debt problems. With so many qualified and reliable rail manufacturers, why are Carlisle/Hamayasu/Horner sticking with Ansaldo, the most troubled one, and one one of the most complaint-prone? Why would Hawaii source a train in Italy instead of Japan, China or Korea?

Of course FTA's "Buy America" requirement is nothing short of a joke because there is no comparable US manufacturer for passenger trains and rail cars. All of them are wholly owned subsidiaries of foreign manufacturers.

Note that when I wrote the piece on Don Horner copied below, Finmeccanica's stock had crashed to $5. Yesterday it closed down to $3.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Is HART Chair Don Horner Shamelessly Dishonest?
Date:	Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:07:26 -1000
From:	Panos D. Prevedouros

Why would he say this?

Pacific Business News reported:

Don Horner, chairman of HART’s finance committee and CEO of First Hawaiian Bank, said he was satisfied that Ansaldo’s finances are in order and the city can proceed with negotiating a contract with the firm. He said he it also gave him “strong comfort” to hear Finmeccanica’s commitment to the project.

“Overall, and I can speak as a banker, I was very impressed with the substantial amount of profitability, the liquidity, the history, and the commitment from the parent company,” Horner said. “I am very pleased with the progress that we made today.”

When the truth is this:
http://www.economist.com/node/21525409

WHEN Finmeccanica announced bad results on July 27th, investors strafed its share price, cutting it down by 28% in four days (see chart). In the first half of 2011, excluding a gain from the sale of one of its businesses, the firm made barely any profit: €13m ($18.2m) on revenues of €8.4 billion. Shareholders are spitting fire.

The Italian government holds a 32% stake. That prevents the company from sensibly quitting unprofitable businesses. Meshed together from a ragbag of defence and technology businesses formerly owned by the state’s IRI and EFIM holding companies, Finmeccanica has everything from helicopters to trains to gas turbines. Its former boss, Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, tried to simplify the group down to three areas: aeronautics, helicopters and defence. But the group still owns several businesses that do not fit.

Its biggest problem is AnsaldoBreda, a maker of trains and trams, which has lost more than €1 billion. The government’s unwillingness to allow job cuts makes a solution impossible. Politicians from AnsaldoBreda’s home region in Tuscany objected loudly this week after Finmeccanica’s new boss, Giuseppe Orsi, talked about selling the division. Some 60% of Finmeccanica’s employees are Italian, though the domestic market yields just a fifth of its revenues.

Finmeccanica is used as a dumping-ground for unwanted state assets. In 2008, when the government finally found a solution for Alitalia, the country’s loss-making airline, private investors gobbled up its profitable flight division but curled their lips at its maintenance business, so in 2009 it was sold to another group of Italian firms, with Finmeccanica taking 10%. Politicians have long pushed for a merger with Fincantieri, a troubled shipbuilder also under the government’s thumb. Last September Mr Guarguaglini was obliged to point out that Fincantieri’s activities have little to do with Finmeccanica’s.

....

Horner is Chair of HART
HART has an $1.1 Billion contract with Ansaldo
Ansaldo is owned by Finmeccanica
Finmeccanica has large debts to BNP Paribas (2nd largest French Bank)
BNP Paribas owns 1st Hawaiian Bank
Horner is CEO of 1st Hawaiian Bank

Thanks to Ian Lind for bringing this up: http://ilind.net/2011/09/15/potential-conflict-in-review-of-rail-contractor/

Lessons from US Mainland on How to Ease Congestion and Build Infrastructure

2011-11-28T11:36:00.000-08:00

GOAL: Ease traffic congestion that cripples economy and quality of life

SOLUTION: Deliver lanes and tunnels as quickly as possible

LESSONS: US mainland success stories involve private financing and tolls so that infrastructure can actually be done instead of squeezing local taxpayers and depending on broke state and federal coffers.

EXAMPLES
(1) There is plenty monies in private funds: Pension Fund Invests in Florida Toll Project. One of America’s largest pension funds—Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA) has purchased a 50% stake in Florida’s I-595 concession project, a complete reconstruction of this major freeway, including the addition of three reversible express toll lanes. TIAA purchased the stake from developer/operator ACS Infrastructure Development, which holds a 35-year concession to develop and operate the highway, which is now under construction.
Honolulu application: The level of traffic demand between H-1/H-2 merge and downtown easily justifies a tolled HOT Lanes and mainland investors as well as local pension funds will be attracted to it. (Note that none of them will invest a dime in the rail project.)

(2) Use Public Private Partnerships or PPP: A well-researched and fairly comprehensive overview of long-term concession toll projects appeared in the Oct. 22nd issue of The Washington Post. Written by Cezary Podkul, formerly of Infrastructure Investor, the article discusses a number of recent projects, both large-scale investment in new highways and bridges and the leasing of existing toll roads. It includes the growing involvement of pension funds as investors, and also discusses who won and who lost when a recent start-up toll road filed Chapter 11. (Note: at press time, this piece was available on the Post’s website, but with a very long URL. It’s simpler to just Google the title: “With U.S. Infrastructure Ailing, Public Funds Scant, More Projects Going Private.”)
Honolulu application: State of Hawaii does not have a suitable PPP yet.

(3) Deliver network short-cuts with tunneling: Tunnel Boring Begins for Port of Miami Tunnel. The huge (41-ft. diameter) tunnel boring machine from Germany began digging the first of two parallel tubes for the new Port of Miami Tunnel on Nov. 4, 2011. Each of the two tubes is expected to take six months to drill and line with concrete panels. The $1 billion project is being procured by Florida DOT under a 35-year concession awarded to a team led by France-based Meridiam Infrastructure Partners and Bouygues Travaux Publics.
Honolulu application: A toll tunnel from Iroquois Point to Lagoon drive will save leeward Oahu commuters to town over 30 minutes one way.

(4) Use Congestion Pricing to spread traffic demand: Higher peak-period tolls, and charging half-price (instead of zero) to carpools have reduced congestion and increased speeds on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, according to UC Berkeley research commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The biggest impact was that more than half the traffic formerly in the carpool lanes disappeared; officials speculate that some shifted to BART and some changed the time of their commute, and many were probably cheaters who now drive in the regular lanes. The overall reduction in AM peak traffic was about 4%, and time savings varied greatly depending on which approach road people use to get to the bridge and the time (within the peak period) that they travel.
Honolulu application: Both tolls and bus fares need to have peak and off-peak pricing. Use of inexpensive passes should not be allowed for 3-4 peak hours during normal workdays.

Thanks to Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation for these recent examples.

Real and Affordable Green or Misguideded Dream?

2011-11-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School. I trust his analyses much more than the "data free" propaganda of the Sierra Club and the Blue Plant Foundation of Hawaii. Here is a summary in his words of his latest assessment titled Seeming Green.

Danish politicians – like politicians elsewhere – claim that a green economy will cost nothing, or may even be a source of new growth. Unfortunately, this is not true. Globally, there is a clear correlation between higher growth rates and higher CO2 emissions. Furthermore, nearly every green energy source is still more expensive than fossil fuels, even when calculating pollution costs. We do not burn fossil fuels simply to annoy environmentalists. We burn them because fossil fuels have facilitated virtually all of the material advances that civilization has achieved over the last few hundred years.
Politicians in Denmark and elsewhere argue as if this were no longer true: a transition to a green economy will create millions of new “green jobs.” But, while green-energy subsidies generate more jobs in green-energy sectors, they also displace similar numbers of jobs elsewhere.
Many politicians are drawn to photo opportunities and lofty rhetoric about “building a green economy.” Unfortunately, the green-energy policies currently being pursued are not helping the environment or the economy. More likely, they will lead to greater emissions in China, more outsourcing to India, and lower growth rates for the well-intentioned “green” countries.

APEC 2011 in Honolulu Ended. Was there a Result?

2011-11-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, although we did not get much information about it in Hawaii. In general, coverage of APEC 2011 in the international press was limited and mostly focused on countries other than the US. There was little or no mention of Honolulu, Hawaii other than as a reference to the location of the meeting. The lack of leis and aloha shirts in official pictures made the exposure of Aloha even more minimal.

The APEC 2011 accomplishment “headline” was the formal initiation of a possible free trade agreement among Pacific nations, which is referred to as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This, in turn, put Japan squarely in the middle of the issue and pinned China in a defensive position.

President Obama made even bigger headlines ... in Australia where he announced that WE ARE BACK!

The Economist’s summaries of “We are Back” and of the TPP are informative. See below. We should be following these developments closely because along with expedited visas for tourists from China these have strong implications for Hawaii.

America in the Asia-Pacific - We’re back
America reaches a pivot point in Asia

Nov 19th 2011 | SYDNEY AND WASHINGTON, DC

BORN in Hawaii, raised for some of his childhood in Indonesia, Barack Obama has since his election wanted to be known as America’s first “Pacific President”. Until recently, he has not done much to earn the title. That, Mr. Obama declares, is now changing.

Allies in Asia have complained about only intermittent American attention to their region. But in a speech to Australia’s parliament on November 17th Mr Obama announced that America is back. “Let there be no doubt: in the Asia-Pacific in the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.” It was, he said, a “deliberate and strategic decision”: America was “here to stay”.

Senior administration officials back up the president. They talk of a new “pivot” in foreign policy towards Asia. America will be around to ensure that China’s “peaceful rise” remains just that.

Free trade in the Pacific - A small reason to be cheerful
An inspiring idea to liberalize transpacific trade hinges on the courage of America and, especially, Japan
Nov 19th 2011 | from the print edition

WITH thunderclouds looming over the trans-Atlantic economy, it was easy to miss a bright piece of news last weekend from the other crucible of world trade, the Pacific Rim. In Honolulu, where Barack Obama hosted a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, Canada, Japan and Mexico expressed interest in joining nine countries (America, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam) in discussing a free-trade pact. Altogether, the possible members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) produce 40% of world GDP—far more than the European Union.

The creation of a wider TPP is still some way off. For it to come into being its architects—Mr Obama, who faces a tough election battle next year, and Japan’s Yoshihiko Noda, who faces crony politics laced with passionate protectionism—need to show more leadership.

Opening up the Pacific
Nov 12th 2011 | TOKYO

MOST Americans have not heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade area of countries dotted around the Pacific Ocean. They will soon. The news has electrified the summit of Asia-Pacific Exporting Countries (APEC) convening in Honolulu this weekend. President Barack Obama, who acts as the meeting’s host, hopes the TPP will be the cornerstone of an APEC-wide free-trade area.

There are, however, huge hurdles to overcome in the meantime. Mr Noda’s decision was delayed by a day because of the extent of opposition to trade liberalization within his own Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), let alone the opposition.

Asia-Pacific trade initiatives - Dreams and realities
A battle over American-led free trade brews in Asia
Nov 12th 2011 | SEOUL AND TOKYO

THE American president is bringing a new—or at least re-warmed—cause to the Asia-Pacific region: free trade. Barack Obama recently signed a ground-breaking free-trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea, after years of Washington foot-dragging. He signed FTAs with Colombia and Panama on the same day. On November 12th-13th the president hosts an Asia-Pacific trade jamboree in Honolulu which, he seems to hope, will give momentum to the idea of a remarkably ambitious free-trade zone at just the time when global trade talks are going nowhere.

Mr Noda will need to convince his counterparts that he has enough domestic support to negotiate in good faith. If he can achieve that, Japan might start a long-overdue push to reform and revitalize its economy. And then the TPP might become more than just another Asia-Pacific acronym that only wonks have heard of.

Mortgage Deduction On the Chopping Block - Big Deal?

2011-11-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

The headline reads as follows: Proposal to Limit or Eliminate Tax Deduction for Homes Is Unpopular, Could Raise Billions

There is no doubt that this headline is true on both counts: Unpopular and a Tax Loss for the government. On the opposite side, the mortgage interest tax deduction is Popular with homeowners but is it a big deal?

I set out to answer this for myself in detail using my records. I file separately as head of household with one dependent and I carry a large mortgage in its second year (in 2010), so the effect of a mortgage deduction elimination would be "as big as it gets" in my case.

In the process of estimating all taxes I paid in 2010 I discovered so many hidden charges such as tire disposal fees, and chemical and pollution fees. I do not travel a lot but taxes on hotels, car rentals and airlines are so heavy that they show up clearly.

Also, 2010 was an election year and I run a campaign. My dry clean bill was substantial and I discovered that the actual tax was 10.3% because of the chemical and pollution fees that government has added to the cleaners. The 10.3% includes Honolulu/Hawaii 4.67% general excise tax (GET). So a visit to the cleaners cleans both clothes and wallet!

Utility bills and car fees are vehicles for tax collection and the two of them combined are just as bad as Hawaii's GET which I went at length to calculate from a pile of receipts and statements.

Long story short, my aggregated breakdown of taxes in percentages is shown below, for the actual case with my mortgage and for an estimated case where my $36,000 deduction in mortgage interest was taken away.

It is quite clear that given my total income A, with mortgage deduction in 2101 I paid 0.311A in taxes. If I could no longer deduct mortgage interest then my total tax would have been 0.375A. The difference between the two is substantial and is roughly equal to my 3-year-old's annual day care cost. That's a big deal!

The bottom line is that being in Hawaii without a mortgage interest tax reduction would make me feel quite European. (EU is infamous about its high taxes due to the extensive socialist policies.) Nearly 40% of my middle class income would be lost to taxation.

While the elimination of this deduction may have a small impact in low cost residential markets, it's effects at regions with median housing prices over $300,000 would be significant to the housing and real estate markets, to the taxpayers of those areas and by extension to the general economies of those regions. It would be devastating for the handful of regions with median housing prices over $500,000, and Honolulu is one of them.

Greece Elects a Non-politician as its Savior Prime Minister

2011-11-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

Dr. Lukas Papadimos became Greece's Prime Minister on November 11, 2011 through a consensus process that included the ruling socialist party, the opposition conservative party and the President of the Republic.

A member of no political party, Dr. Papdimos is a wise and unusual choice. A physicist and electrical engineer with a doctorate in economics, all from MIT, and professor of economics at Columbia University and the University of Athens. An academic and a numbers man.

Furthermore, Dr. Papadimos has had extensive experience in national banking affairs. Between 1980 and 1985 he worked at the US Federal Bank in Boston. Between 1993 and 2002 he was manager at The Bank of Greece. This was followed by the vice-presidency at the Central Bank of Europe until 2010 when he became financial adviser to the prime minister.

It appears that Dr. Papadimos is "what the doctor ordered" for Greece with its huge banking and debt financing crises. It remains to be seen whether the members of the Greek Parliament will re-orient their thinking around the goal of saving the country as opposed to their petty politicking, service to special interests, and focus on pet regional projects and re-election ambitions. (This may be too much to ask of parliamentarians who consistently did wrong for the country for decades.**)

I can only wish Dr. Papadimos the best of luck, and congratulate him for his bravery to pilot a half-sank ship in the middle of a hurricane.

=======================
(**) As an outside observer with a bit of knowledge of politics I am alarmed by the similarities among the Greek Parliament, the US Congress, and the Hawaii Legislature. Simply put, they keep making the wrong choices time and again, and driving the debt to the Billions and Trillions.

Like in Greece's past, all political "change" in the US and Hawaii has been fake. Until the knife reached the citizens' bones (as it has in Greece.) Although I hope for a big improvement, it may be too late and too painful to return Greece (and the US and Hawaii) to fiscal health and prosperity within a generation.

OCCUPY'd by APEC 2011

2011-11-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

Latest update: 11/19/11

Big events are critical for obscure regions because "they put them on the map." Everyone knew Greece quite well before the 2004 Summer Olympics. The Olympics were a success. What did Greece gain in tourism? A minor temporary bump, if any. (And a whopping debt from infrastructure preparations.)

Mature tourist destinations do not have much to gain from large media exposure. At least the Olympics was a long sports event and many people watched it here and there. Do you think people in China, Russia, Australia and the US paid much attention to APEC politicians?

Despite what hyperbola Abercrombie and Schatz serve for APEC, there will be very little gain for Hawaii from APEC. The tourist growth market for us hinges on visa rule relaxation for Chinese, Russians, etc. But that can be done only with prolonged bilateral negotiations.

So what did APEC 2011 do for the 99.9% of us?

Cabbies were given hospitality training and told them to expect lots of fares. Hawaii News Now reported that they got much less than a regular day!
The APEC name for Wai-kiki: Barrier-kiki or Fence-kiki.
The beach was fenced off. Thankfully without barb wire.
Congestion and security closures.

And loss of business. Several small stores closed during APEC due to loss of access to them. Either the workers could not get to the store, or the customers were on the other side of the barricades.
And now, a week after APEC, several small businesses plan to file claims and/or a lawsuit for significant business losses for a week. Of course one week or 1/52nd means very little to a callous politician. (Gov. and LG statements come to mind.) But that 2% annual loss is a big part of the profit margin for some businesses.
And reallocation of emergency services.
And political visitors who do NOT pay the hotel tax.
And tremendous loss of tourism because agents did not book Waikiki for their clients.
And lost bookings from the 11/11/11 wedding extravaganza.
And mounting bills for security and other detail paid by local taxpayer.
And all those APEC shirts, last minute beatifications, free tickets for the "in crowd," etc.
And the top two of Honolulu's parks are police and security depots: Ala Moana and Kapiolani Parks.
And one APEC-related murder. Auwe!

Sample UH alert below...

.ALERT!

Find alternative routes/options if you were traveling or planning to travel on

UH Mānoa East West Road or near the APEC – Hawai‘i Convention Center.

THERE IS A LOCK OUT IN THESE AREAS FOR APEC SECURITY.

1 Army Humvee, 2 motorcycle Honolulu Police officers and 100s of motorists caught in a jam...

APEC 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii -- Embarrassments 1, 2, 3 and 4

2011-11-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

Honolulu made a late, sketchily planned and underfunded effort to host the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in 2011. APEC 2011 was largely forced on Honolulu by President Obama in 2009. Another beltway unfunded federal mandate, as usual.

This series is a partial tally of embarrassments during APEC 2011 (November 6 to 13).

1. SOPOGY at APEC's "See It" Exhibit at the Hawaii Convention Center. What an embarrassment! Not only they are not making energy at a cost effective rate they are a technological dead end as well given the 2011 dive in photovoltaic pricing.

2. Terrible road pavement on Ward Avenue between Kinau and King Streets, and the same on Beretania Street in front of our Police main station. What an embarrassment! Last month George, Esther, Francis, Katherine and other low traffic streets in Kaimuki got done. By George! This speaks volumes about messed up priorities.

3. The traffic lights on Kapahulu Avenue and McCully Street are out of sync. These are the only connections of Waikiki with the H-1 freeway. What an embarassment! We can't use computers to actuate green lights along arterials for motorcades so we spend thousands of dollars on police to block the flow of cross streets. I guess we might tell them that we apply third world-friendly traffic management.

4. Obviously the City has messed with the traffic lights. Now for no reason whatsoever Ward Avenue is gridlocked from the top of the hill to Beretania Street. Unbelievable mess this morning. See the 8:30 am snapshot below.

The Scariest Halloween Story: The Debt per Hawaii Resident

2011-11-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

I am particularly jittery with the financial maelstrom in Greece, but our own back yard in Hawaii seems to be in a very bad financial condition.

Take a look at this article: Hawaii State Liabilities Climb by 60 Percent in Two Years; Expert Calls the News 'Shocking'

So the Hawaii State Health Fund liability comes to ... "a total of $14.0 Billion. (These numbers are for July 1, 2009)" and likely much higher right now. The article does not cover the government employee pensions liability which takes this total to over $23 Billion.

Budget & Finance Director Kalbert Young: "Credit downgrades impact taxpayers because they translate to higher interest rates and borrowing costs. As a result, taxpayers will have to pay more for government or they will have to accept a larger portion of their taxes going towards debt."

Actually his statement sounds like a single blow although it is really a quadruple blow to us:

We need to pay more taxes so we'll have less take-home income.
More of our taxes must go to pay down the debt and less will go to services and infrastructure maintenance and expansion.
The lower bond rating and the corresponding higher finance charge means that the same infrastructure projects will cost more.
In addition to their direct impact, points 1, 2 and 3 combined mean fewer jobs because we will have less to spend as individuals and families, have less to spend on projects, and less to pay for services.

To sum it up, the two major state liabilities combined (that is, health and pension which are constitutionally promised to government workers) mean that each person in Hawaii now owes more than $50,000. Then there is the federal debt which is approaching 15 trillion dollars. Simply divide by 330 million for your own share of $45,500.

But wait! The City and County of Honolulu has signed a Consent Decree with the EPA to fix its sewers and provide Secondary Sewage Treatment. The cost is no less than $4,500 per person on Oahu.

I bet you did not know that today you carry a "mortgage" in the amount of $100,000 (and climbing). But in reality only about a third of people pay substantial taxes and it is these same people that will shoulder this burden. A household with two high income earners (say a combined income of about $150,000) and two kids should face a "mortgage" of roughly one half million dollars. Lucky, you now "own" a second unit in Hawaii!

Right now in Hawaii, the only uku-billion project that is discretionary and deletable is the rail. If rail gets into construction, it will cost well more than seven billion dollars and open a hole to sink tens of millions of dollars for annual operations. And don't forget this: Given how tough things are going to get for us, a dollar spent on rail is a dollar not spent on a number of other far more critical needs.

Trick or Treat?
Kaboom!

(I am five days late relative to Halloween, but that shouldn't be a big problem. This scare will last our lifetimes.)

John Pritchett's Hawaii's Unfunded Liabilities cartoon:

Honolulu Vehicle Registrations -- Taken for a Ride

2011-10-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

The increase in the cost for vehicle registrations in Hawaii has been staggering. Although the consumer price index would justify roughly a 40% increase, the cost of registration has increased by 140%!

Councilman Tom Berg has listed all the recent state laws and city ordinances that caused all the increases in vehicle registration fees but it's hard to assess the cumulative effect of them by reading the legalese and the corresponding vehicle weights.

Thankfully, my 1999 Mazda Miata is still around so I can use past receipts for an annual accounting of the changes. The Miata is one of the lightest light duty vehicles out there so it basically represents the minimum registration fee in Hawaii. While we are at it, let's compare the registration increases in 11 years with the corresponding insurance coverage which has remained constant. Of course the value of the Miata has dropped substantially in 11 years, but the biggest portion of car insurance is liability. Despite its age, the Miata can cause the same liability in 2011 as it could in 1999.

Here are the numbers for my car along with Honolulu's Consumer Price Index, or CPI. CPI is an approximation of inflation and it basically says that something cost $100 in Honolulu in 2000, and the exact same thing would cost $136 in 2011.

I write these while the Occupy movement is in full swing… Occupy gives a perspective of the "poor little guy" versus the "insatiable corporate interests."

Interestingly, the multinational corporate insurance gave this little guy a net 68 percent break in insurance cost in the past 11 years. This despite two claims totaling about $10,000 in damages due to other motorist errors.

On the other hand, the left-leaning Honolulu government of Democrats that proclaim to take care of this little guy gave him a net 100 percent higher cost for car registration. And thousands of potholes that these fees are supposed to fix.

Did Commuting Patterns Change in the First Decade of the Millenium? Only a Little.

2011-10-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

A New Geography article summarized the commuting data and results revealed by the 2010 Census. The winner was Telecommuting and the loser was Carpooling. Despite higher prices and huge media hype over shifts to public transit, the big surprise was the continued growth over the last decade in driving alone to work.

In summary,there has been no major change in commuting, even with the huge gas price increases. As the shift to personal mobility continues, the largest increases will like take place in telecommuting, which is the most energy-efficient form of transportation. Gains in transit have been minimal and should be expected to stay at around 5% on the mainland and around 7% in Honolulu.

Clearly these numbers indicate that a city like Honolulu with 950,000 people investing on a $6,000,000,000 heavy rail system is nothing short of ridiculous.

International Award on Sustainability Research

2011-10-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I am very pleased to have received this international award along with my research collaborators.

Out of 2,000 scientific papers submitted for the 2011 international conference of the World Road Association (also known as PIARC), 620 were selected to be presented at the conference and 8 received awards. One of the 8 was ours!

Lambros Mitropoulos is one of my doctorate students; he will be graduating at the end of 2011. Professor Teti Nathanail of Thessaly University spent summers 2009 and 2010 at UH-Manoa. Another paper with Dr. Nathanail was published the U.S. Transportation Research Board: "Risk Assessment for the Transportation of Hazardous Materials through Tunnels." (Transportation Research Record, No. 2162: 98-106, 2010.)

The full paper is titled: LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT THROUGH A COMPREHENSIVE SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK: A CASE STUDY OF URBAN TRANSPORTATION VEHICLES

Honolulu Heavy Rail Is an Energy Black Hole

2011-10-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

Energy and Honolulu rail is an angle that I did not have time to look at in detail, until last week when my students did some energy analysis of Honolulu’s proposed rail. They discovered this June 2008 article by Sean Hao: Rail's use of energy subject of debate in the Honolulu Advertiser.

Of note is that the rail will consume about 20 MW of energy which is about 20% of the capacity of HECO’s new palm oil plant. Unfortunately peak rail travel coincides with peak demand for electricity around 6 PM, which means that rail will stress HECO’s generators.

Now if you believe the city’s numbers which are based on incredible ridership projections and substantial bus route eliminations, Table 4-21 of the Final EIS shows that the rail project will save 2,440 million British thermal units (BTU) of energy each day, or about 610,000 million BTU per year.

Hao correctly added that: “Any evaluation of the energy savings generated by rail also needs to consider the massive amount of energy required during construction. For example, construction of the fixed guideway will require between 3.7 trillion and 4.9 trillion BTU of energy, according to Parsons Brinckerhoff.”

This quote reveals two startling facts:

First the unnamed Parsons Brinkerhoff source clearly lied to Hao by stating roughly half the correct amount of BTU. The 2008 Draft EIS, Table 4-34 on page 4-159, shows that the rail’s Airport alignment will require 7,480,000 MBTU. That’s 7.5 trillion BTU, not 3.7 trillion.

Second, by dividing 7,480,000 by 610,000 we get 12.2. That’s how many years it will take to make up the construction energy loss by the purported energy savings. But in reality these 12 years are an understatement because Hawaii's vehicle fleet is much smaller in engine size (more economical) than mainland fleet and the adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles is vastly bigger on Oahu. In addition the national averages are based on low vehicle occupancy, whereas Oahu has among the highest transit and carpooling rates, so BTU per passenger mile is way lower than mainland.

The City's BTU savings estimate may be wrong by a factor of 3 or larger, so it will take so many years for rail to "make up" its construction energy waste that before break-even is reached, rail will need multiple component replacements, repairs and refurbishments. So an energy black hole it is!

On the other hand, our 2008 simulation estimates using the DEIS traffic numbers show that rail is a net energy loser without even counting the huge energy consumption during construction. In comparison, a properly designed and operated HOT lane system will save energy (motor fuel and oil.)

Fuel Consumption for One Peak Hour (in US gallons) Change from Base of ~97,000 gallons
ALTERNATIVE	Motor Fuel	Motor Fuel plus Diesel at HECO for Rail
Rail: 6.5% traffic reduction	-2.6%	-0.3%
Rail: 3.25% traffic reduction	-0.4%	1.9%
HOT Lanes and Four Underpasses	-40.5%	-40.5%

Volt, Prius or CRV? Numbers Make the Choice Obvious.

2011-10-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

The fully worded question is: How does the extended-range GM Volt Electric Vehicle compare with Toyota’s fourth generation hybrid Prius and Honda’s popular compact SUV the CRV?

I was not inclined to immediately dismiss the GM Volt as an expensive failure, (e.g., Chevy Volt is Automotive Version of Solyndra) and the October 2011 issue of Consumer Reports (CR) encouraged me to look into this different car.

Although CR did not award the Volt its coveted Recommended status, some of its critique is excellent for a compact car with unconventional technology:

“Responsive steering makes the Volt feel fairly nimble in turns.”
“The Volt was secure at its handling limits.”
“The ride feels solid and firm yet compliant.”
“Braking distance was very good overall.” And this one:
“The Volt is amazingly inexpensive to run on short trips.”

The last one has twice the significance for Honolulu. Because of the compactness of the land, we make many more short trips in Honolulu than motorists in spread out mainland cities with about one million population. But our electricity cost is roughly three times higher than mainland US.

Does a Volt make a good choice? We can arrive at an answer by comparing it to two popular choices in Honolulu like the Toyota Prius and the Honda CRV. (1)

CR compared their $43,000 Volt to a $26,500 Toyota Prius and a $18,500 Hyundai Elantra. It excluded the purchase cost. Based on gasoline and kilowatt-hour costs, CR found that Volt is cheapest for 30 mile trips, is similar to hybrids for 70 mile trips, and loses its advantage as trips get longer.

To get to a better answer I used both Honolulu and US mainland prices for fuel and electricity, 30 mile and 70 mile trips, an 8 year/100,000 mile horizon (that’s when Volt's battery warranty expires), US and Hawaii tax incentives, and resale value at the end of 8 years. One component that remains uncertain in these half life-cycle cost estimations is maintenance.

In 8 years, Prius and CRV will make extensive use of their internal combustion engine. They would need about 20 oil changes and a few component replacements which should cost $1,000 to $2,000. Also both of them may require transmission repairs which are not applicable to the Volt. Both Volt and Prius have regenerative braking so they may not need brake pads before 100,000 miles but the CRV will likely need two sets of front brake pads and rotor resurfacing. Brake costs for the CRV for 8 years and 100,000 miles may come close to $1,000. Maintenance and repairs play a role in life cycle cost.

Insurance, finance charges, license, annual registration and safety inspections were not included because they are similar for all three cars for the same driver at a given location, e.g., registration and insurance rates vary widely by state. (As of this writing I am not certain that Volt is subject to Smog Test where applicable.) These costs do not affect the bottom line choice.

Discounted parking and other perks for EVs were not included. Currently EV perks in Hawaii are as follows:

Special electric vehicle license plates.
Free parking at State and County facilities including meters.
Free parking at UH parking structure.
Exemptions from high occupancy vehicle lanes.

For some users these perks may amount to more than $1,000 per year, at taxpayer expense (e.g., a stall occupied by an EV cannot be occupied by a fee-paying vehicle, so EV user gains amount X and taxpayer loses parking revenue X.)

A big unknown is the durability and replacement cost of Volt's battery. GM's warranty is for 8 years and 100,000 miles. Note that California requires 10 years/150,000 miles. As a result, Volt buyers will not receive California's $5,000 incentive. This limitation is not applicable to Hawaii.

The Prius' entire hybrid system (which includes the hybrid battery pack) is warranted for 8 years/100,000 miles. A battery replacement with a new one at a dealership costs roughly $4,000. There are lower cost options such as Re-Involt Technologies in North Carolina: “...batteries for the Prius 2001-2010 are $1675.00 plus shipping and your old battery.”

The table above details my estimates for the usage of these three cars in Honolulu using monthly gasoline prices and my own electricity bills to determine the actual bottom line cost of HECO’s price to the household. This price was then reduced by 6 cents, a discount that HECO offers if the EV is charged at home overnight. I assumed that this preferential treatment will last for the 8 year horizon in my analysis. HECO installation of a appropriate meter, purchase and installation of a 240V charger add over $2,500. There is a $750 incentive for the 240V charger.

Despite Honolulu’s expensive electricity, use of the Volt exclusively for short trips is much cheaper than its competitors. Honolulu Volt owner’s running cost comes to $595; the same cost at an average U.S. mainland city is $283.

Then I used a mix of 5 trips of 30 miles each and 2 trips of 70 miles each, per week, to arrive at my bottom line estimates. With such usage, the Volt, Prius and CRV will cost $1,150, $992 and $2,044, respectively, to run for 12,500 miles per year in Honolulu, and $698, $843 and $1,738, respectively, to run for 12,500 miles per year at an average mainland city.

Volt is the cheapest to operate on short and medium trips on the mainland, and Prius is the cheapest to operate on short and medium trips in Honolulu; about $150 cheaper than the Volt and more than $1,000 cheaper than the CRV. HECO’s high price per kilowatt-hour takes a toll on Volt.

Using Edmunds.com’s True Market Value(2), a flat documentation fee, 4.5% tax (GET in Hawaii, 8% sales tax on mainland) and applicable incentives, I arrived at the following cost estimates:

CRV has a purchase price of about $26,000 and Prius is about $29,500. Volt is $31,500 after $7,500 in federal incentives and $4,500 in Hawaii incentives have been deducted. These prices include destination charges and regional adjustments of about $750 (an add-on to car cost in Hawaii.) Due to lower state incentives and higher sales taxes, the Volt is about $3,000 more expensive on the US mainland. The other two are about the same as in Hawaii.

The bottom half of the table above is the bottom line. I arrived there by estimating today’s resale value of the three vehicles for 8 years in the future, using Edmunds.com. Both CRV and Prius have an over 10 year history on the market so their used car value is reliable. There are no estimates for the year-old Volt, so I assumed that it will have a resale value equal to the Prius.

Bottom line is that in Honolulu over 8 years and 100,000 miles the CRV will have a total cost of $33,775, the Prius will cost $27,888 and Volt comes in the middle with a total cost of $31,080. Mainland estimates are in the same order with only the CRV costing about $1,500 less than Hawaii due to the cheaper gasoline price.

With analysis like this, one can run “what if” scenarios quickly. What if average gasoline price for the next 8 years increases by a whopping 50% over the 18-month average I used? This would take Honolulu’s average gas price to $5.43 per gallon. In this case, the bottom line for the three cars will be as follows: the CRV will have a total cost of $41,963, the Prius will cost $31,861 and Volt would come in the middle at $32,589 (... plus registration, insurance, maintenance, parking and other applicable fees ... and the charger for the Volt.)

But over 75% of Oahu’s electricity comes from oil and this is not likely to change by much in the next 8 years. So if gasoline goes up by 50%, then electricity will go up by at least 30%. This increases Volt’s bottom line cost to $34,394. So even with very expensive gasoline Prius is cheaper than the Volt by $2,500.

All estimates indicate that Volt is a losing proposition to its buyer and it is certainly a losing proposition to the taxpayer because tax incentives of $12,000 are involved in the sale of every Volt in Hawaii. A Volt buyer could have gotten a much lower priced hybrid car and $12,000 of taxpayer monies could have gone to far more worthy causes. Parking incentives and the tax credit for the home charger may also add several thousand dollars of taxpayer subsidies.

Even the most extreme of “green” advocates cannot argue that the environmental benefits of each Volt over a Prius are worth $10,000 to $20,000 depending on location and taxpayer subsidized perks.

The Volt is a huge “miss” for GM, a manufacturer that could least afford a costly “miss,” and the total financial blunder from this vehicle is attributable to misguided policies (of the familiar liberal type.) Billions more will be spent on mandated EV chargers at parking lots, and on government fleet purchases of Volts.

Postcripts: (1) What about the all electric Nissan Leaf? Look for my updated coverage that will include the Leaf once reliable data become available, most likely early next year. (2) Edmunds.com is a reliable publication that I also used in my doctorate dissertation to determine car values in the late 1980s. It includes a “True Cost to Own” estimator that takes into account most of the life-cycle categories mentioned in my article. It has no estimates for Leaf and Volt.

Where Are the Rail Construction Crews?

2011-10-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

Gone racing!

A friend sent me several pictures and this note: "I was stuck in traffic for almost an hour at 12 noon in Waipahu on Farrington Highway on Friday going to lunch and back with the staff. Took a picture of the construction area -- not a soul was there. What a charade."

I have already covered the effects of debilitating construction that will be caused by the rail project. What we are observing now is pre-construction for soils testing and relocation of utilities. The nightmare will begin once elevated construction begins. But where are the crews?

As I said, gone racing. See for yourself:

News Behind the News: Honolulu Rail on the Ropes

2011-10-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

An update of the Honolulu Rail Project, and the Rail Lawsuit by UH professors Randy Roth (Law School) and Panos Prevedouros (College of Engineering.)

Rail Construction Delays Will Take Decades to Counterbalance

2011-09-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

One thing that the public has not understood and the City has never explained or quantified is this: The impact of construction on daily traffic flow for 6 to 12 years.

Let's say that all attempts to stop the proposed heavy rail for Honolulu fail and the rail as shown in the picture above is going to full implementation. There will be 21 approximately football sized stations 40 ft. or higher in the air.

This will require extensive lane closures and in make cases long term full road closures. In addition to the stations there will be 20 miles of guideways in the middle of major arterial streets such as Farrington Hwy., Kam Hwy., Dillingham Blvd., Queen St. Their traffic will have to divert to other (already congested) parallel roads. Congestion will be paralyzing for a decade.

The congestion due to rail construction will be so bad in total, that rail's tiny traffic relief after it opens won't balance it out for over 50 years.

Let's work out a quick and rough estimate.

Call "A" the amount of traffic congestion today from the general Ewa/Makakilo/Kapolei area to town.
Say rail will take 10 years to be built and congestion on that corridor will be 50% worse on the average. So rail will make 5A of additional congestion.
Now let's say that rail will reduce congestion by a (very large) 10%, so every year thereafter rail will be saving the same folks 0.1A of congestion. (The real traffic congestion reduction will be 2% to 5% at best.)
How many years will it take to balance the additional 5A of congestion they suffered while rail was built?
5A divided by 0.1A gives 50
50 years
Two generations with zero benefit.

As I have mentioned to folks in Kapolei: The best day for their to Honolulu ... was yesterday. Rail or not, congestion will get worse. (That is, until real congestion solutions are implemented.)

Jade Moon Wants Louder Support for Her Train to Ruin

2011-09-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

Jade used her MidWeek column, plenty of emotion and wrong information to paint a favorable picture for Honolulu’s proposed elevated rail which she wants and supports. (Read it here.)

Jade issued a call to action because the pro-railers are not being heard. “I think it’s time for rail supporters to come back out and make a little noise. Make yourselves heard again.”

At the same time, the City shamelessly uses tax monies to produce, print and mail hundreds of thousands of gloss fliers to households monthly, it produces TV programs including a regular spot on O’lelo, it gives rail propaganda shows with food and music at high schools and colleges, and Inouye, mayor or HART have at least one press release or pro-rail event every week.

Moreover, the Star-Advertiser routinely rejects anti-rail letters and MidWeek has refused my multiple offers to print my articles. Councilman Tom Berg is being shadowed by Go-Rail-Go every time he arranges a townhall meeting with rail on the agenda. Pro-rail unions flooded the Land Use Commission hearings on Ho’opili recently. But none of this is enough for Jade. She wants to make sure that anti-rail voices are swamped.

“Our future demands that we protect our environment, that we have viable transportation choices. Clean mass transit must be one of the options on the menu” she claims.

The energy required just to build the foundations, columns, structures and trains involved is enough to give an energy consumption and pollution stroke to anyone willing to quantify it. National statistics clearly show that hybrid cars are less energy demanding and polluting than heavy rail, and 4-cylinder cars are not far behind the hybrids. That’s by mainland standards which include substantial nuclear and hydro (clean) power and less than 3% oil. In contrast, over 90% of Oahu’s electricity comes from oil with little end in sight. It is the dirtiest electricity in the U.S.

Remember that a parked car does not pollute. A train runs less than half full most the time. Plus station lights, elevators, escalators, ticket machines, controllers, air-conditioners are on all the time. What a waste of resources!

Here is a green transportation alternative for Jade: Telecommuting. Since the turn of the millennium, more Americans telecommute than take trains. Also two years before the 2008 “rail referendum” on Oahu there was another one about bikeways and a whopping 72% were in favor. What did Mufi I (Hannemann) and Mufi II (Carlisle) do about bikeways? Where is Jade’s outrage for this green mode? Perhaps bikes are ignored because they aren’t HECO customers.

“It would revitalize the construction industry…” No, it’ll keep some of them busy for a few years. Then what? Megaprojects are not sustainable. All they do is create “bubbles” of temporary growth. This point is too myopic to discuss any further.

“…stimulate business and economic development and provide opportunities for employment.” Maybe, but correctly spent, six billion dollars can go way further for Oahu. Here is a suggestion: A $6 Billion Plan for Hawaii's Long-term Prosperity.

“Listen to the voices of the people who are tired of traffic hell.” I’d agree that by local standards the Kapolei to town commute is what Jade calls “traffic hell.” But Oahu’s congestion ranking is between 49 and 52 worse in the US according to the Texas Transportation Institute congestion index estimations: Mobility Data for Honolulu (2004 to 2009.)

“My biggest fear for rail is that it will somehow stumble into a legal no man’s land.” Jade got this right. Even if the Cayetano, et al. suit fails, even if the Bombardier complaints fail, there will be dozens of eminent domain and other suits. Big projects typically get stuck. One heiau in Halawa did it for H-3 Freeway. How’s several football field sized stations in Waipahu, Kalihi, Kakaako 40 ft. up in the air?

Rail for Oahu has been, is and will be a losing proposition. Manini traffic relief, huge visual and environmental impact, colossal cost to implement, and ridiculous traffic and court tie-ups once real construction begins.

Los Angeles ponders extending yellow-light times

2011-09-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles ponders extending yellow-light times

Did Mishandling Cause the Death and Injuries of HPD Officers?

2011-09-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

Did Mishandling Cause the Death and Injuries of HPD Officers?

Hawaii Solar Technology Choice

2011-09-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Q: Will the consumer gain or lose?
A: Lose big if a proposal gets approval

The technology battle is between Concentrated Solar Panel (CSP) and Photo-voltaic (PV). Here are the facts:

Why should Hawaii pay more for electricity generated from CSP than it does from PV? Hawaii’s leaders have proposed that HECO pay CSP developers up to 60% more than it pays PV developers for the same power. Even a modest size CSP facility will cost Hawaii 10’s of millions of dollars more in tax credits and electricity purchases. CSP (also known as Solar Thermal) is the most expensive of all energy options, as shown in the figure below. Choosing an obvious and unnecessary waste of money.

PV wins the Solar Technology Battle: Government and industry analysts say that CSP (also known as “solar thermal” technology) is losing the solar energy cost battle and is doomed (1,2.) The project developers are cancelling numerous CSP projects or converting them to PV (3.)

Hawaii’s Experience with CSP is even worse. Hawaii’s first CSP facility cost approximately $20 million dollars to build and has a capacity of 100 kW (4,5,6.) The cost to build that CSP facility is approximately $200/watt while PV is less than $7/watt. Actual electrical output from the facility has not been made public.

Outrageous cost! HECO buys renewable energy produced by geothermal, wind, PV, and biomass local suppliers at 12 to 22 cents per KWh. With the proposed CSP rate, HECO will be forced to buy solar energy at 31.6 cents per KWh. Such discriminatory favoritism is unjustified and insulting to electric power customers. For reference, the average price of electricity sold to mainland households is 11 cents per KWh. HECO’s rate is approximately three (3) times higher. Bottom Line: Hawaii should not subsidize an expensive and unproven CSP technology when proven and less expensive PV options readily exist.

Call to Action: The Governor and the PUC are preparing to approve a “highway robbery” deal with Sopogy for a multi-million dollar CSP deployment at Kalaeloa on Oahu. This deployment must not be approved. Call the Governor and the PUC and ask them to step away from this very costly proposal.

Note: Sent to Governor, Lt. Governor, the Public Utilities Commission and all Hawaii Legislators on Sept. 13, 2011.

Internet in China. Not Much is Accessible.

2011-09-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

I spent nearly two weeks in five cities in China, Shanghai, Nanjing, Harbin, Chanchung and Beijing in August. It was a great tour of China's developing might and physical beauty which I describe elsewhere. One of the low spots was Internet access. Here is a pictorial testament of my experience.
No access to Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo ...

Taxis Are Flexible and High Tech Public Transportation

2011-09-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Cities rely on taxis to serve business people, tourists, the handicapped, the auto-less and people who cannot drive, and all those with urgent and important trips. In Honolulu for example, about one fifth of a taxi's night customers are restaurant, bar and medical facility workers many of whom can't afford high parking fees or do not drive -- given that bus routes shut down by 8 or 9 pm.

Throughout the world, taxis are common carriers, which means that they serve everyone without preference or discrimination. They typically provide 24x7 service, and improve public safety by transporting intoxicated drivers home. Taxis provide essential intermodal connections at airports, harbors, rail and mass transit stations.

The taxi is a privately owned and operated public transportation service.
As an industry, taxis provide thousands of jobs in an urban area for drivers, dispatchers, managers and other vehicle-related jobs. A typical taxi “clocks” approximately 32,500 miles per year in Honolulu and close to 47,000 miles in New York City: A taxi vehicle is used roughly three times more than the average private vehicle in Honolulu and NYC. This in turn generates more business for others: Gas stations, service stations, car repair shops and auto sellers. And lots of fees and taxes paid to government at all levels.

The taxi industry tends to be heavily regulated which may be tolerable during positive economic times but is burdensome during economic downturns and fuel crises. The cyclically revised tariffs per mile and minute do not take into account fluctuations either in the prices of vehicles and fuels or in the value of time. Other disadvantages of the taxi industry are the constant exposure to traffic congestion and traffic accident risk.

Managing a fleet of hundreds of taxis over thousands of miles of a large city network is a daunting task. Done wrong, there can be tremendous waste of driver time and fuel on empty hauls, or long waits at the wrong location. This is where Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) come in with the combination of computerized optimization, automated vehicle location (AVL), global positioning systems (GPS), and fast mobile network based communications between fleet and dispatch center. Fuel savings and more revenue trips per shift pay for the technology and improve the taxi operator’s bottom line.

With an integrated system, the right customer is paired with the right available taxi within seconds resulting in superior customer service and minimized down times and wasted fuel. On the aggregate, thousands of taxis (e.g., Honolulu has nearly 2,000) conducting optimal trips can save a lot of congestion and emissions for the whole city.

Mentor Engineering of Canada recently installed its IntelliFleet ITS system for taxis to Honolulu’s oldest taxi company Charley’s Taxi which manages over 200 cabs on Oahu. While Oahu has several ITS components, they tend to operate in bits-and-pieces by city or state departments. The Charley’s Taxi/Mentor Engineering/Sprint/Verizon system is a fully integrated one with additional features for safety and convenience of both the driver and the passengers. A news story by Hawaii News Now can be seen here.

Taxi is arguably the best mode for urban transportation and this is evidenced by its worldwide success. It is car-based so it is fast, convenient, private, clean, and provides door-to-door service. The customer is free to be productive during the trip, and at the end of the trip there is no need to look for and pay for parking.

Indeed, taxi is one of the most basic modes of urban transportation which along with taxis include car, car-pool or van-pool, bus, walk, bicycle, moped or motorcycle, and telecommuting. Some cities have express bus service or bus rapid transit (BRT), light or heavy rail, jitneys, ferries, funiculars and other specialized modes. Taxi service is public transportation and is an essential mode of metropolitan transportation throughout the world.

Could taxis solve the Ewa plains to town congestion problem on Oahu? This is only a half-serious question, but given how government wastes money, it’s worth looking into. Federal and local government wasted $6 Million on TheBoat. It carried roughly 300 people per day for about two (2) years. The same subsidy to 100 taxis would have carried the same people for 6.5 years!

Ten Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Necessary For Another 50-Years

2011-09-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

Today I attended an interesting presentation on the merits of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) and fusion with heavy ions (HIF). Fusion is the “miracle” no-radiation, no noxious waste energy concept that for the past 50 years it’s been “20-years in the future.” There are no fusion power plants in existence, in part because of the giant size they require, and the giant budget that comes with it: $50 Billion for one installation which, in turn, would be enough to supply all of California with fuels and electricity. But $50 Billion for the first-of-its-kind installation is a proposition that no private company or politician has put forth.

What we have available today is the much more scalable and affordable fission process of nuclear reactors. So I summarized below ten key reasons why nuclear energy is necessary for areas that anticipate growth in one million people increments. Many cities in Asia and Africa fit this growth profile.

1) Growth: World population was 3 Billion in 1960, 6 Billion in 1999 and expected to be 9 Billion in 2046. Population growth and improving standard of living globally demand increasing amounts of energy. Energy production must roughly double in the next 30 years to accommodate demand.

2) Fossil fuel depletion: Fossil fuels are being depleted, are not renewable and carbon taxes or pollution limits incentivize low carbon power production alternatives, one of which is nuclear.

3) Plant aging: The post WWII rapid growth of 1st world countries was facilitated in large part by electric power plants of various types and sizes. Many of them are past 50 years of age and need replacement.

4) China alone is growing very fast and a major bottleneck of its growth may become the supply of electric power. Mopeds are electric in its large cities and BYD and CODA are selling full-featured electric vehicles.*

5) Uranium as a fuel has advantages: It is relatively abundant, it does not cost much, not a lot of it is needed to fuel nuclear reactors, and supply comes from stable countries such as Australia and Canada. It is only mildly radioactive and its alpha radiation does not penetrate the skin. Uranium metal is commonly handled with gloves as a sufficient precaution.

6) Modern nuclear power plants provide large amount of power, typically over 1 GW which is 1,000 megawatts. One 1.5 GW plant can cover the needs of a 1st world city of about one million population. Its impact on land and other earth resources is very small compared to many other clean energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind.

7) Familiarity: By 2010 there were 440 nuclear power plants in 31 countries supplying about 15% of the world electric power. Also, there are hundreds of naval vessels with compact nuclear reactors.

8) Vinod Koshla told The Economist that Earth is on an unsustainable energy trajectory and the development of affordable new energy is essential for the billions of peoples on the planet and particularly in fast growing China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria.** Until a feasible and affordable breakthrough is achieved in the energy field, nuclear energy is a major option for large populations because of its cost per MW, safety and near zero carbon footprint.

9) Normal safety: Current nuclear plant designs have many more safety features than the 1950s-era power plants that exhibited critical problems in Pennsylvania, Russia and Japan. Here is an example of a late 1980s nuclear reactor that shut down recently because it auto-detected some equipment failure.

10) Catastrophe scenario: The Fukushima, Japan Daiischi nuclear power plant failure is a great example of resilience. Whereas nature’s force and infrastructure failures in the 9 R earthquake on March 11, 2011 (Tōhoku earthquake) claimed over 30,000 lives, this major nuclear power plant accident had no fatalities. The plant designed with 1950s technology and built for an 8 R earthquake actually withstood an earthquake that was 10 times stronger. Flood water from the powerful tsunami jumped over the 25 ft. protective sea-walls and drowned the external diesel generators used to circulate water and cool the reactors. Because of the surrounding catastrophe, nobody was able to fix this external power system. After the 8-hour backup batteries ran out, cooling stopped and partial meltdown commenced. The September 1, 2011 press release of TEPCO Power Company reads in part: “By bringing the reactors and spent fuel pools to a stable cooling condition and mitigating the release of radioactive materials, we will make every effort to enable evacuees to return to their homes and for all citizens to be able to secure a sound life.”

Power is the key ingredient for prosperity. Without adequate and affordable power, our life-style, health and well-being cannot be maintained. Power fundamentally affects our basic needs such as water distribution, sanitation, food production and transportation for covering essential needs. Once it is understood that every 750,000 population requires approximately 1,000 MW per day, the production of affordable energy by existing solar and wind technologies appears only on the lists of severely math (and reality) incompetent individuals.

Unfortunately “environmentalists” and self-appointed “public protectors” are most effective in blocking nuclear power plants for communities with the best engineering, strict safety standards and political stability (e.g., Germany, Japan and U.S. locales.) At the same time, gigawatts of nuclear power are shifting to less secure environs, such as developing ex-soviet and ex-communist countries. This may be an unwelcome transfer of risk for the planet as a whole.

Notes
(*) China is one of a few nations with no apparent hesitation for the deployment of nuclear energy. I show a sample collage below. The approximately 10 million population city of Harbin in northern China has two large nuclear reactors as part of the cityscape. They were within a 30 minute walk from my hotel where I took the picture shown below in late August 2011. A week earlier I was sitting on the left side of the bus from Nanjing to Shanghai, a 160 mile trip. I saw and photographed three large nuclear power plants shown at the bottom of the picture; one every 50 miles!

(**) Add the U.S. (~500 million) and the Philippines (~200 million) to those four and their combined population projection for 2100 reaches 4 Billion!

Another Prediction for What's in Store with Honolulu's Rail

2011-08-25T18:45:00.000-07:00

I am optimistic about the outcome of the lawsuit against Honolulu Rail in federal court. There was no such suit against the Silver Line addition to the Washington DC Metro. So the line is now under construction. These two excerpts from a recent article in New Geography are important:

While rail might seem like the most obvious solution, it is also by far the most expensive and slowest option. The price tag is staggering, and the rail extension will take years to construct. The better option would have been to make use of the existing roadways, and implement an expansive bus rapid transit system (BRT).
The 23 mile extension of the Washington Metro rapid transit system is forecast to cost $6.8 billion dollars; roughly $296 million per mile. The constant scramble to finance the over-budget project has resulted in more than one construction setback.

What's important is that this system is about the same length as Honolulu's, and it is heavy rail like Honolulu's. So despite the fact that its construction is relatively easy (in the middle of an existing toll road) compared to the nightmare of shoehorning elevated stations and guideways in densely populated Honolulu the cost is staggering and it will likely surpass $7 Billion.

Remember that the financial analysis report conducted for Governor Lingle said that the likely cost of Honolulu Rail will be $7.2 Billion.

So when mayor candidate Carlisle promised that he will "get Honolulu's financial house in order" what did he mean? The answer is clear: "Adding several Billions of new debt onto Honolulu's financial house."

I strongly suggest that you read the rest of the article linked above as it presents a most suitable solution for the Dulles connection and for Honolulu: Bus Rapid Transit on HOT lanes. Much better results are a much lower cost.

A $6 Billion Plan for Hawaii's Long-term Prosperity

2011-08-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

Dr. Martin Wachs recently wrote an important article on public investment for transportation and jobs. (See blog post below.) He observed that Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, rural and urban elected officials—all seek funding for roads and transit projects in their districts, asserting repeatedly that these expenditures will create jobs. He correctly asserts that construction jobs do not inherently have higher economic impact than other new jobs. Construction may generate construction jobs but it also is a huge cost item in and of itself and puts a lot of stress on city and state budgets. (All states except North Dacota have deficits.) Finally Wachs says that a shovel-ready project in no way assures that it will have long-term net economic benefits.

Given Wachs’ sound, detailed and impartial assessment, you now can make your own decision between Plan A and Plan B for Honolulu, Hawaii.

For about six billion dollars you can choose either A or B defined as follows.

Plan A

Mufi Hannemann's 20 mile, 21 station elevated heavy rail with 3 park-and-ride facilities and no power plant. All of it is a taxpayer subsidized project.

Plan B

11 miles of reversible HOT lanes that will improve the Central Oahu-to-town tidal traffic problem by over 30%.
3 Superferry vessels to connect our islands and provide a resiliency backbone when an island is hit by a disaster.
A small Hawaii-based international airline with round-trips to Beijing, Shanghai, Osaka, Moscow, Dubai, Singapore, Sao Paolo and Frankfurt, e.g., Aloha Worldwide.
A coal power-plant that will reduce Oahu's oil dependency by 15%. All these can be done as incentivized private projects, or public-private partnerships.

Which plan is best for Hawaii's long term economic prosperity and which one is best for short term political pork?

You know that the correct answer is Plan B. Why are about 75% of Hawaii's politicians choosing Plan A? Because they care about themselves, because doing the same thing again and again is less work, and because they are told what to do by special interests (their party, big money supporters, and unions.)

UCLA/RAND Expert on Transportation, Jobs and Economic Growth

2011-08-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Dr. Martin Wachs [1] recently wrote important article on public investment in transportation, and jobs. It dispels the sweet sounding myths promoted by politicians, contractors and unions. The full article can be found here [2]. Key excerpts are given below.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, rural and urban elected officials—all seek funding for roads and transit projects in their districts, asserting repeatedly that these expenditures will create jobs. President Obama vigorously sought to create jobs through transportation spending in the recent economic stimulus package. This seemed familiar: in 1991, when signing the historic Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), President George H.W. Bush stated that the value of the bill “is summed up by three words: jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Transportation projects are not all equally effective at creating jobs or stimulating economic growth. Sound transportation investments lower the costs of moving people and goods. Short-term job creation, while vitally important to economic recovery, should not cause us to ignore the longer-term view.

Transportation dollars should be spent on programs that most enhance long-term economic productivity. ... For example, building an ill-advised rail line might give a local economy a short-term boost in employment, only to saddle taxpayers with large operating deficits in the future.

Building the Interstate Highway System created many construction jobs, but it would be a huge mistake to interpret that employment as the system’s contribution to the economy. Workers who drew salaries from the construction program benefitted, but far less than the travelers and shippers of goods who have used those facilities every day for six decades.

By building an effective transportation network, government transportation spending draws jobs to those industries that benefit from the investment. At the same time, this moves jobs away from activities that would have been financed in the absence of the transportation investment. So while transportation investment can “create jobs,” it can also destroy them.

Public officials often mention that each billion dollars of transportation infrastructure investment will create over 30,000 new jobs. This estimate relies on what is called the “multiplier effect.” Construction workers spend their income to buy hamburgers, television sets, and automobile insurance, so a given dollar of construction expenditure ends up having more than a dollar’s worth of impact, thus “multiplying” the effect of the expenditure. Unfortunately, asserting that any expenditure will create a specific number of jobs is not well supported by evidence. Actually, in the short term, construction jobs and expenditures on steel and concrete are economic costs [that weigh heavily on the budget.]

To create or preserve jobs in the short term, it might be more effective to use federal dollars to subsidize the operations and maintenance of transportation systems. Dollars spent on operating bus lines, for example, are spent largely on labor and thus quickly recirculate in the local economy. By contrast, dollars spent on capital or construction projects may include costly expenditures on concrete and steel imported from outside the US. Construction jobs do not inherently have higher multipliers than jobs driving buses.

Identifying a project as shovel-ready in no way assures that it will produce long-term net economic benefits. Simply equating any transportation investment with jobs and gains for the economy cannot remain a sound basis for public policy. America needs to do a better job of systematically evaluating alternative investments.

One way to judge a public investment is to determine whether or not it generates a rate of return to society that exceeds the return earned on other investments in the private or public sectors.

NOTES

[1] Martin Wachs is Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering and City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and of the University of California Transportation Center. He is also former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He is currently a Senior Research Associate at the RAND Corporation (wachs@rand.org).

[2] TRANSPORTATION, JOBS, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, Access, No. 38, University of California, 2011

Hawaii Energy Cost: Double U.S. Average and Likely to Stay There

2011-08-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

Another disadvantageous first for Hawaii, and most of it due to our price of electricity.* We are hooked on oil and the future does not bode well for us because actually it may be cheaper to stay with oil.

Notably crude oil pricing today is at $80. Oil prices may decline further to around $50/barrel (in year 2000 constant dollars) for more than a decade because:

China, India and Germany are focusing on coal. Brazil on ethanol.
The success of fracking and other unconventional methods for extracting natural gas (see below.)
The expected reduction in the political turmoil of oil producing countries.
The localized success of electric vehicles and the continues improvements in vehicle MPG.
The modest introduction of additional large nuclear plants, wind and solar installations.

There is great attention focused on natural gas, worldwide. According to The Economist, August 9, 2011 existing and potential assets (in parentheses) of natural gas for a half dozen countries are as follows, in trillion cubic meters. These are truly vast energy deposits:

Argentina 0.4 (21.9)
Australia 3.1 (11.2)
Canada 1.8 (11.0)
China 3.0 (36.1)
Poland 0.2 (5.3)
USA 7.7 (24.4)

As a result of all these, the likelihood of large price drops in the development of renewable technology is less rosy. This is a major loss for Hawaii which is too tiny to absorb the costs of developing technology.

(*) ENERGY COST INDEX 2011: RANKING THE STATES, August 2011.

Data Sources for the chart with data from SBEC: Gas price index from gas prices provided by the AAA’s website www.fuelgaugereport.com accessed on July 22, 2011, and electricity cost index is an index of state’s average revenue per kilowatt-hour for electricity utilities (data for 2011 through April from the U.S. Energy Information Administration).

It's August 6 in Hiroshima, and 1945 in Detroit.

2011-08-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

Image 1: Man-made devastation (1945) ...
Image 2: ... and spectacular recovery (2010) in Hiroshima, Japan.
Image 3: One hopes the same for Detroit and other decimated American cities.
But the happenings in Washington, D.C. give no such hope.

Trains Helped Kill the Greek Economy – They’ll Kill Hawaii’s too

2011-08-01T14:36:00.000-07:00

“Some years back a Greek finance minister, fed up with his country's waste and extravagance claimed that he could save money by shutting down the national railway and driving around its passengers in taxis.” [1]

Too bad he didn't execute his plan for the closure of the railways. In 2009 the Greek railways collected $250 million in fares and posted a net loss of $1.4 Billion. A Billion wasted here, and a Billion wasted there … the rest is history for the Greek economy. Greece is now in a debt crisis.

In 2000 a Greek colleague and I conducted research on Greek railroads and we developed models which predicted that the rail freight service would soon carry nothing [2]. No way, they said. Four years later the freight operations of Greek shut down for good. Unfortunately, investment on Obama-like medium-speed rail passenger service continued unabated in Greece. So the budget hole got even bigger.

The lesson here is that public investment in non-performing infrastructure will eventually swamp the budget and saddle current and future generations with a heavy debt burden. Non-performing is any infrastructure in constant need of subsidy whose contribution to the economy is less than its true cost. Roads cost a lot, but contribute much more to the economy, health and safety of the population. Trains cost even more, but offer much much less.

What do you think the future holds for our tiny island that "wants" a five to seven Billion dollar train?

What do you think the future holds for the car-dependent, and highway and airport vested state of California which still plans for a $35 Billion “high speed rail”? A lot of good answers can be found in the article: High Speed Rail and Social Equity. Basically, the only high speed rail that makes sense (and money) is the 340-mile Shinkansen. All the rest, including California's, are A Fast Track to Nowhere.

The lessons about trains "modern" trains can be summarized by three common sense idioms, as follows.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Trains went obsolete for a reason. You can’t solve 21st century mobility problems with 19th century technology. There are always a few exceptions, but Greece, California and Hawaii trains have nothing exceptional.

Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense. One can write a book on this but I will mention only three rail related “math” of Honolulu mayor Peter Carlisle: (1) Get Honolulu’s financial house in order ... by spending over five billion on rail, (2) HART will cost us nothing, and (3) The Ansaldo contract will save Honolulu tens of millions in rail costs. All of them pure nonsense.

They are taking Honolulu for a (train) ride. Biased politicians, biased government officials and their paid consultants deceive the public in order to get elected, become chief of a new division and make millions, respectively.

[1] The Economist, July 2, 2011, p.8.
[2] Paravantis, John A. and Panos D. Prevedouros, Railroads in Greece: History, Characteristics and Forecasts. Transportation Research Record, No. 1742: 34-44, 2001.

Honolulu Rail in Illegal Pact with Local Unions

2011-07-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

UCLA Urban Planning Professor Brian Taylor sent me this brief but informative article about California's proposed High Speed Rail: High Speed Rail and Social Equity.

It contains a lot of interesting points and many of them such as construction cost, jobs, "green" transportation and equity apply to Honolulu's proposed heavy rail. However, one passage caught my attention:

"Since the federal regulations currently applicable to transportation infrastructure construction prohibit local hiring preferences, it is unlikely that there will be many jobs for low income people and people of color." No jobs for locals and Hawaiians?

True! The Code of Federal Regulations 23 CFR. §635.117 part (b) reads as follows: “No procedures or requirement shall be imposed by any State which will operate to discriminate against the employment of labor from any other State, possession or territory of the United States, in the construction of a Federal-aid project.” The rail project is clearly a Federal-aid project.

Contrast the facts above this fact from the recent past: Labor Unions Sign Rail Agreement with Honolulu City Officials. The goals of the RTSA include utilizing local labor for high quality work, on time and on budget. The mayor also stated that the agreement will avoid slowdowns and work stoppages.

This “partnership is a working relationship,” said Mayor Hanneman beside labor union leaders, in a conference room packed with reporters and laborers alike. In attendance were signatories to the agreement including: Ronald Taketa of the Hawaii Carpenters Local 745, Joe O’Donnell of the International Brotherhood of Ironworkers Local 625, Peter Iriarte of the International Union of Bricklayers & Allied Craft Workers Local 1, Vaughn Chong of the International Union of Painters & Allied Craft Workers Local 1791, Peter Gamban of the Operative Plasterers’ & Cement Masons’ International Association Local 630 , and William Mahoe of the Operating Engineers Local 3.

And all of it is illegal!

Solar Power Plant on Oahu Does not Pass Muster

2011-07-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

A five megawatt facility with solar thermal collectors is planned on DHHL lands. The provider and contractor is a local firm that has a smaller deployment on the Big Island.

The Big Island facility has used millions of taxpayer money in the form of technology credits to provide basically a tiny amount of usable energy, if any. As shown in the list below, depending on the source, the Big Island facility is mentioned as being able to generate 2000 KW (2 MW), 500 KW or 100 KW and to be feeding power to HELCO, the Big Island utility. The watt (W) is a measurement of electric power; KW is kilowatt and is equal to 1,000 watts; MW is megawatt and is equal to one million watts.

Source (1) says that the power purchasing agreement started in January 2010 for 2 MW.
A description of the same Big Island facility specifies 2 MW for $20 million invested using 1,008 solar concentrating panels on 4 acres of land; see source (2). That's $10 Million per MW which is expensive. It comes to $10 per watt whereas rooftop photovoltaic (PV) panel system costs about $5 per watt (See note 1).
The company’s CEO said to me in person —and in source (3) cited below—that the facility produces 500 KW. That's $40 Million per MW which is absurdly expensive because now the cost is $40 per watt.
The Nevada based electric generator manufacturer who sold the Green Machines that presently operate on the Big Island facility in question specifies two 50 KW generators. So the 4 acre site has a maximum power generation of just 100 KW; source (4). The CEO of the Big Island facility is quoted saying this: “The delivery and performance of the Green Machines have allowed us to fully utilize our solar field…” This means that indeed all that this facility can do on a sunny day without clouds is 100 KW. Now the cost per MW is clearly in the stratosphere at $200 Million per MW or $200 per watt.

The reduction from all this information is that 1,008 panels and 4 acres are required to produce 0.1 MW which is mostly used internally and none of it is sold to HELCO. Unlike a PV system, this concentrated solar panel system requires a lot of electricity to operate pumps, valves, and sun-tracking motors. This means that the amount of electricity sent to the grid is less than the 100 KW stated above, which further increases the cost per MW.

Oahu's daily needs exceed 1,200 MW. If this technology were to power Oahu it would require 48,000 acres and zero cloud cover over the panels 365 days a year. In addition a very large quantity of water would be needed to cool down the generators.

It appears that this locally developed technology of micro solar collectors (sun tracking troughs) can physically produce a small amount of electric power, but it does so at an exorbitant cost, especially when compared to other environmentally benign renewables such as PV.

Given all these facts, now I have several questions:

Were 1,008 solar troughs, that cost millions of dollars in high technology tax credits, installed for HECO TV commercials, politician photo ops, and investor enrichment?
Does HECO and the PUC have any idea as to what works, what doesn't and at what cost?
How can a solar plant with 1,008 collectors produce 2 MW per day and have zero sales to the utility? My home solar panels produce 0.0016 MWh per day and HECO knows all about it.
Have we legislated mandates that promote unreasonable ratepayer charges? Right now Hawaii power customers pay over 250% more for electricity than the mainland. Why do we develop policies and select options that make this premium go even higher?
One of the five stated purposes of Hawaii's PUC is to "Foster and encourage competition or other alternatives where reasonably feasible in an effort to provide consumers with meaningful choices for services at lower rates that are just and reasonable." Purchasing power from a power generating facility at a cost exceeding 22 cents per KWh is very expensive. Why does the PUC entertain rates higher than 25 cents per KWh specifically for “Concentrating Solar Power” as stated in the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) rates?
This preferential rate for a single technology is twice the baseline FIT rate of 13.8 cents per KWh for other renewable energy technologies. Why?
Such a discriminatory pricing begs another question: Is Hawaii so desperate for a local success story that we waste millions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars in uncompetitive overpriced technologies?

My questions point to a lack of due diligence or breach of fiduciary duty on the part of the utility industry in Hawaii, its regulators and our legislators. The governor must obtain an understanding of the realities of the renewable energy game in Hawaii. Or perhaps the governor is the problem – I mention it as a possibility, but I suspect that he's never received an unbiased briefing.

Hawaii’s energy arena needs clear metrics and performance based contracting, not fake promises and preferential treatment. Hawaii needs fact-based energy leadership, not rhetoric and commercials!

LINKS CITED: Source (1), Source (2), Source (3), Source (4), Note (1): A Price Point for Rooftop Solar Panels

Traffic Accident Investigation on Oahu: Stuck in the 1980s.

2011-07-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

Civil Beat's Alia Wong has aired the festering problem of Honolulu Shutting Freeways Longer Than Other Cities which is indicative of Oahu's multilayered traffic mismanagement.

As far back as 1998 I wrote this opinion in the Star Bulletin: It takes too long on Oahu to investigate accidents.

Although the HPD is usually confronted with traffic crashes that are "manini" compared to those on the mainland, where jack-knifed trucks get mangled with several other vehicles, it takes hours instead of minutes to deal with incidents.

An incident on Kalanianaole Highway on Dec. 12 prompted me to write this letter. It was reported that at about 1:30 p.m. a car veered into a moped about half a mile east of Aina Koa Street.

At 2:30 p.m. I joined the queue, which had extended for more than a mile on H-1 freeway. It took 28 minutes to drive 1.5 miles. At the crash site, I saw a smashed moped, a car on the shoulder and at least six police vehicles.

Most streets around Kahala Mall were jammed. Waialae Avenue was gridlocked and the off-ramp was overflowing onto the freeway, creating a hazardous situation. At 4:30 p.m., police were still investigating and the queue on H-1 had reached Kokohead Avenue.

I estimate that this three-hour traffic "management" incident trapped more than 9,000 vehicles and more than 12,000 motorists. It caused more than 6,000 people hours of delay, increased the risk for secondary accidents, and resulted in more than 1,500 gallons of additional fuel consumption.

The mayor and the chief of police must remove the archaic and inefficient procedures for incident management and give our officers the education and training needed to get in step with contemporary national practice.

I am subcommittee chair of the Freeway Operations committee of the U.S. Transportation Research Board and I have assisted Attica Tollway in several operational issues. Some of my work on Freeway Incident Management has been published in professional, refereed venues, as follows:

Incident Management Simulation on a Two Freeway Corridor in Honolulu. Proceedings of the 6th ITS World Congress, Toronto, November 1999.
Video Incident Detection Tests in Freeway Tunnels. Transportation Research Record, No. 1959: 130-139, 2006.
Automated Incident Detection and Automated O-D Generation for Freeways, Panel Session 539 on NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR FREEWAY OPERATIONS, Annual Meeting of TRB, Washington, D.C., 2006.
Freeway Incidents – US, UK and Attica Tollway: Characteristics, Available Capacity and Models, Transportation Research Record, No. 2047: 57-65, 2008.

In all these years I have never been consulted by the city or state departments of transportation, or the traffic division of HPD. Apparently, all of them know all there is to know. And the results are obvious.

MEGA RAIL IN A MICRO CITY

2011-07-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Article published in New Geography. Also appeared in the Washington Examiner, NCPA, Hawaii Reporter and elsewhere.

An exorbitantly costly rapid transit heavy rail project has been proposed for the small Hawaiian island of Oahu, where the leading metropolis, Honolulu, ranks 53rd in population among U.S. cities, with less than 950,000 people. If the project moves forward it will be the world's only elevated heavy rail in a metro area with a population of under four million.

Nothing about this 20-mile long rail project makes sense, except for its politics and its cronyism. It is projected to cost $5.3 billion according to the financial analysis of the city, or $7.2 billion, according to the state. For comparison, the Blue Line between Los Angeles and Long Beach that opened in 1990 has the same length and would cost roughly $1.5 billion to build now.

Cities worldwide and in the U.S. have shown a clear preference for light rail. The only rapid transit (heavy rail) system built in the US since 1990 is the one in Los Angeles in 1993; another was constructed in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2004. In the same period, 19 light rail systems were installed.

Big Projects in Hawaii - Why Are They Stuck?

2011-06-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

Big projects are complex. So the question why big projects get stuck can generate enormously complex responses. However, the answer boils down to a simple bottom line: Because they don't make the grade!

There are 10 basic dimensions that account for the reasons that big projects succeed or fail. Each project has its own complex set of technical, legal, institutional and financial requirements but 10 basic reasons cover the fundamental requirements.

A project needs to fulfill a major need (or mitigate a major problem), at a low cost, with a large share of it paid by outsiders, and with minimal environmental impacts and implementation risks. It is also important that a project has a strong local advocacy and a weak opposition, and some political support at all levels. A project has a better chance if it utilizes advance technology or is ahead of its time based on proven engineering (e.g., maglev trains, fiber based structural components, etc.) A sound business plan means that a scenario of reasonable adversity keeps the project's balance sheet solvent and subsidies are kept to a minimum even for government projects.

Table 1 presents the 10 fundamental requirements and theoretical scores using a scale where 5 is best and 1 is worst. As a result, a project that garners 50 points is “excellent” and would likely be built at a breakneck speed. Thirty or more points are needed for a project to be deemed “good,” therefore worthy of serious consideration for implementation. Projects with less than 30 points are deemed to be fair or bad and should be avoided.

There have been many high scoring projects such as the successful establishment of Costco and Wal-Mart in Hawaii in less than 10 years, the H-Power and AES power plants on Oahu, the 10 miles of Tampa’s reversible toll lanes built in less than 7 years for less than $400 Million, and the I-35W bridge replacement in the Twin Cities costing $234 Million (completed 3 months early and is Light Rail-ready,) just to mention a few.

Job creation is not a factor. While privately funded projects typically generate new jobs, several taxpayer funded projects tend to be make-work projects. In addition, the job creation aspect is partly accounted for by the Local Advocacy and Political Push factors.

Table 2 presents a sample of 8 big projects in Hawaii and their scores for the 10 basic requirements based on my ratings. Three local projects made it because they deserved it, two failed because they deserved it, and three big ones are predicted to fail. Other experts may assign different scores but the average scores of a handful of unbiased assessors with knowledge of all facets of a project should yield a reliable overall score for a proposed project.

Both the H-3 freeway and the grand expansion of the Honolulu International Airport (HIA) including its controversial reef runway had major cost and environmental problems, but their superior payoff (by providing needed roadway and runway capacity), sound business plan (by paying for themselves in the long run), and generous federal cost sharing garnered them a good score. They got done and work well.

Similarly the Hawaii Convention Center had a lot going for it. The main issue was its location. Once this was resolved, the project was built expeditiously. Its business plan was and still is weak.

Two recent project failures in Hawaii are unique. Both are water transportation projects, and both were implemented and then failed. Both should never have been started. This is particularly true for TheBoat that never had a credible business plan or solved a problem. It removed the equivalent of 2 to 4 buses from the road at a cost of $32 per commuter trip. The (sometimes nauceous) commuter paid only $2; all the rest was public tax subsidy.

The SuperFerry was a fitting transportation addition in the island state of Hawaii but it needed a super-sized investment in order to succeed; roughly four times what was actually available. It needed three fully debugged vessels with no need for custom docking platforms, and it needed media campaign and political greasing similar to the 2006-2008 pro-rail blitzkriegs. Given these requirements, it is questionable that a marine company can make a profit at the level of investment needed for establishing a competitive service. There have been several attempts since before statehood, all leading to losses and closures.

At least three large projects are currently "on the table" in Hawaii: The city's rail project, B.R.Horton's Hoopili project in Ewa (over 12,000 residential units), and the Big Wind project where wind turbines on Molokai and Lanai will generate 400 MW of electric power to be used on Oahu via submerged cables.

None of these projects make the grade. This does not mean that they will not be built. But it does mean that building them is not a good idea and that the monies should have been better spent on other projects and opportunities. Here is why.

Both Rail and Big Wind fulfill a major need but with archaic or problematic technology. Their project proponents have greased the wheels well and they enjoy strong political support, but both projects are very expensive for what they offer and the cost share by outsiders is small or nil. They have large impacts mostly borne by non-users. Both have strong local advocacy and opposition so that's a wash.

Hoopili and Big Wind have credible business plans but their externalities are not accounted for, e.g., Hoopili and surrounding developments require their own freeway lane to/from town, but none is being built. As a result, over 100,000 existing residents will suffer much worse congestion upon Hoopili’s completion and occupancy (even assuming rail is there.) In addition, both the rail and Hoopili obliterate a large portion of prime agricultural land in central Oahu.

A major externality of rail and Hoopili that is not accounted for in their direct costs is the loss of a major portion of prime agricultural land on Oahu. This is a huge loss for an overpopulated remote island.

The 20 mile rail should be replaced by 11 miles of High Occupancy and Toll (HOT) lanes and point-to-point express buses. Hoopili's 12,000 units should be replaced with 12,000 units in Kalihi and Kakaako. Big Wind should be replaced with geothermal power plants on Maui and Big Island, and coal, solar and biomass on Oahu.

The scores for HOT Lanes and Better Energy are shown in Table 3 below. These are good projects that should get done!

Note 1: Those who desire a better understanding on why big projects get or don’t get done may read articles on Megaprojects by Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg, and Utah University's study on Bootleggers, Baptists and Enterprising Politicians, that is, the alliance of profit-driven interests, groups of uncompensated advocates, and opportunist politicians that form the tripartite support alliances needed for a big project to muddle through the project development process.

Note 2: On June 23rd at the Plaza Club, HVCA and ThinkTech present Big Projects in Hawaii - Why are they stuck? Contact: Jay Fidell, ThinkTech Hawaii, jay@fidell.com, (808) 780-9254 for information.

A Price Point for Rooftop Solar Panels

2011-06-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

With a flurry of proposals being floated around for renewable and other forms of energy, it is good to establish practical and realistic reference costs or price points.

In June 2011 COSTCO Wholesale through Costco.com offered for the first time a home or small business rooftop photovoltaic system with a maximum power of 5060 Watt for a cost of $18,000, which includes shipping and handling.

Such a large and involved system requires a city permit for installation and an inspection by the utility. A licensed electrician is strongly recommended for the installation. All inclusive, this system installed would cost about $25,000 or just under $5 per Watt. (This does not include Federal and State tax credits which in Hawaii would total roughly $9,000.)

The system's literature states that it will generate between 462kWh and 924kWh of electricity per month depending on placement, longitude, latitude and hours of sun exposure. By Hawaii standards, this system is big. For example, my home which houses 3 adults and 2 children consumed 420 KWh in 32 days, based on an April 2011 HECO bill. That's why I have a 1,600 Watt PV system on the roof. My system cost $13,000 or $8 per Watt installed about a year ago. Indeed PV prices are coming down fast.

Remember this figure: $5 per Watt installed. Next time a politician, legislator, salesman or contractor makes you an offer that is substantially higher either for a residential installation or as part of a utility Power Purchasing Agreement, then you are likely being taken for a ride as a customer, taxpayer or ratepayer.(1)

It should be added that the system referenced above is not the least expensive one. One can find solar panels of Asian manufacture that are sold by the palette at an even lower cost.

UPDATE: Google creates $280-million solar power fund, Los Angeles Times, 6.14.2011.

Note(1): We need to be mindful of special circumstances such as shipping and labor costs in Hawaii, specific solar exposure at each location, etc. Careful design is needed and PV is sensitive to proper orientation and as little cloud cover as possible. Given Hawaii's cost premium "substantially higher" in Hawaii (for residential installations under 4 KW) is over $7 per watt, assuming an easy installation; see note below.

Note(2): The low cost pricing assumes an easy installation and minimal safety risk for the installation crew; i.e., one floor high roof. Installations can be problematic, thus expensive.

Wind Power Misrepresentations and Lessons for Hawaii

2011-06-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

Wind Power Generation: From the UK to NY State provide ample evidence that even a 27% capacity factor is high.

Wind power’s actual contribution to the UK’s energy supply: The findings, based on real-time energy production from Nov 2008 to December 2010–26 months–were sobering. Wind generated at substantially below the 27% capacity factor, and low wind events (defined as output falling below 10% of capacity) occurred over one third of the time.

Much like Hawaii (1) New York state conducted a pre-deployment study: The study concluded that New York could support a 10% penetration of wind into its grid system with turbines reliably operating at 30% average capacity factor or better.

Then NY state installed over 1,200 MW of wind power, which is coincidentally the amount of daily power needed for Oahu. So... what happened?

No wind project in New York achieved a 30% capacity factor, and most are operating at well below this figure including Maple Ridge 1 and 2 touted by wind proponents as a premier wind site. Maple Ridge was forecasted to have a capacity factor of 34% prior to construction but has consistently operated around 25% — a significant performance reduction.

Noble Environmental’s projects produced at even lower levels. When the company sought community acceptance of its projects in upstate New York, the founder of Noble insisted their projects would operate at 30-35% capacity. In the tax agreement signed with Clinton County, NY, Noble went so far as to sweeten the deal by offering to pay a bonus of $1000/MW every time the annual capacity factor of any of their projects exceeded 35%. Result: Noble’s upstate projects operated with a 20% to 22% capacity factor in 2010.

Companies will misrepresent to get the public contracts. As we will see in the future, this happens in Hawaii as well.

Finally the article clearly describes the future in Hawaii as forecast by NY state, if Big Wind materializes:

NY ratepayers who are subsidizing wind development in the State are also receiving considerably less than promised. Square miles of New York’s most rural areas have been transformed into industrial power plants.

Hawaii version:

Hawaii ratepayers are subsidizing large wind farms in the State are also receiving considerably less than promised. Square miles of Hawaii’s most rural areas in Kahuku, on Molokai and Lanai have been or will be transformed into industrial power plants totaling about 500 MW (in theory, of course.)

Note (1) Take a look at my article: Wind Energy for Hawaii: Great for Profits, Not so Great for Power

Renewable Energy and Hybrid Cars. Still Only at 1%.

2011-06-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

The emphasis on renewable energy sources for the generation of electricity has a number of similarities with light duty hybrid vehicles (hybrid cars) for transportation.

Flash back to the late 1990s when hybrid vehicles where known to automotive engineers, car aficionados and some environmentalists. The odd looking 4-door Toyota Prius and the rain drop looking 2-door Honda Insight where oddities among mass produced cars. Similarly at the same time there were wind mills and solar panels worldwide, and the Puna Geothermal plant in Hawaii among other renewable energy applications.

Since then both hybrid cars and renewables had an exponential growth, at surprisingly similar pace and for substantially different reasons. Unlike renewable energy mandates, hybrid cars won their market on their merits such as quiet operation, lower maintenance and substantially higher fuel efficiency. To date their worldwide market share is about 1% among light duty vehicle fleets, and in approximate terms, 60% of hybrids are in the US, 18% in Japan, and 8% in Europe. (These change depending on the year of reference.)

Renewable energy power plants on the other hand could not develop a profitable case because of the much lower cost per watt of electricity produced by coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants. Extensive wind (Germany, Denmark) and solar (Spain) developments required major subsidies. Various studies have indicated that they actually caused losses in total national employment (e.g., King Juan Carlos university estimated that each green job cost 2.2 jobs in Spain,) and caused electricity rates to go up. This is a lose-lose outcome.

Recent data, as shown below, indicate that renewables are the fastest growing among energy sources.

Nuclear energy suffered a setback due to the catastrophe in Japan in March 2011. All countries with plans for expansion of nuclear plants will continue except for Germany. Germany has set a goal of de-nuclearization by 2020. The loss in energy generation will be replaced mostly by coal and renewables. This is another lose-lose outcome due to added pollution and the heavy use of new resources to create machines to produce power that was produced by existing nuclear power plants.

Despite governmental mandates for renewables, if their electricity production is converted to equivalent tons of oil, then their share is, much like the hybrid cars, only 1.3% in 2010, as shown below.

Given the high cost of power plants and the even higher sunk cost of the existing power infrastructure, it is likely that renewable energy will take many years to provide substantial global energy generation. China’s, India’s and Germany’s focus on coal, and US’ focus on natural gas do not support a vast expansion of the global renewable share any time soon.

Exceptions will be isolated locations such as Hawaii and Iceland (geothermal), Brazil (biomass and biofuels) and others, based on local source availability and other factors.

Source of Data: The Economist, June 11, 2001, p. 78.

Renewable Energy Sources Require Vast Amounts of Natural Resources

2011-06-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

The National Center for Policy Analysis expertly summarized Robert Bryce's "The Gas Is Greener" which appeared in the New York Times on June 7.

In April, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law an ambitious mandate that requires the state to obtain one-third of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now have renewable electricity mandates, and there is also support at the federal level, says Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

But while energy sources like sunlight and wind are free and naturally replenished, converting them into large quantities of electricity requires vast amounts of natural resources -- most notably, land.

Consider California's new mandate.

The state's peak electricity demand is about 52,000 megawatts.
Meeting the one-third target will require (if you oversimplify a bit) about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity.

Let's assume that California will get half of that capacity from solar and half from wind. Most of its large-scale solar electricity production will presumably come from projects like the $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant, which is now under construction in the Mojave Desert in southern California. When completed, Ivanpah, which aims to provide 370 megawatts of solar generation capacity, will cover 3,600 acres -- about five and a half square miles.

The math is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah, covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan.
While there's plenty of land, projects as big as Ivanpah raise environmental concerns.
In April, the federal Bureau of Land Management ordered a halt to construction on part of the facility out of concern for the desert tortoise, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Wind energy projects require even more land -- the Roscoe wind farm in Texas, which has a capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154 square miles.

In the rush to do something -- anything -- to deal with the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental groups and policymakers have determined that renewable energy is the answer. But all energy and power systems exact a toll, says Bryce.

Hawaii's renewable energy mandate is among the nation's most ambitious. Hawaii law requires electric utilities to meet a renewable portfolio of 10%, 15%, 25% and 40% by December 31, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2030, respectively.

The lesson for Hawaii where flat space and any space in general is at a premium is that land-hungry renewable energy options are not likely to be a major part of the solution.

Brookings' Pro-transit Report Gets Slammed by Its Own Data

2011-06-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

One thing stuck with me from the X-Files: The Truth Is Out There!

Like the City's EIS which clearly show that after spending $5.5 Billion the transit share will increase from 5.6% now to 6.6% in 2030, and that congestion with rail in 2030 will be far worse than it is now, other transit reports although word-smithed to tell a pro-transit story, actually reveal how poorly transit does, particularly rail transit.

In May 2011, The Brookings' Institution published the pro-transit report Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America where it made major proclamations like:

The typical metropolitan resident can reach about 30% jobs in their metropolitan area via transit in 90 minutes.

The typical commute in the nation is about 30 minutes and if one has a private vehicle, he or she can reach over two thirds of the jobs in the metropolitan area. But in transit, he or she can reach only an (astounding) 4%, by Brookings' own survey numbers!

Wendell Cox had a good time this study in his Transit: The 4 Percent Solution.

Among the 29 metropolitan areas with a more than 2,000,000 population, the 45 minute job access average was 5.6 percent, ranging from 12.6 percent in Boston to 1.3 percent in Riverside-San Bernardino.

CATO Institute's Randall O'Toole adds this: Simply putting transit close to jobs, however, doesn't mean people will ride it. The Brookings Institution recently ranked San Jose as the second-most transit-accessible urban area in America, while Chicago was ranked 46th. Yet the Census Bureau says only 3.4% San Jose commuters use transit, compared with 13.2% Chicago.

Finally let's not forget that many transit surveys are biased. They exclude, walk, wait and transfer time losses, much like the City's proclamation that Kapolei to downtown will be about 40 minutes. This excludes the access time to the Kapolei station which by itself is at least 15 minutes from the time one leaves home to the time that the train leaves the station. Add at least 5 to 10 minutes to reach the office and he or she more time commuting to work than by car, has no car to run errands or do other things after work, and has to repeat the long commute on the way home.

All this inconvenience for $5 a day leads to the ultimate result: It's a 4% solution indeed!

Price of Rail Environmental Study Doubled

2011-06-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

Hawaii Reporter obtained this major admission from the City: The cost of the EIS doubled from the original $86 Million to $156 Million. This does not include the likely required Supplemental EIS, Preliminary Design and Final Design. All said, soft costs (paperwork, media and other fees and expenses) for the Hannemann/Carlisle boondoggle will reach one half Billion dollars, which is what other cities pay for fully installed light rail systems!

Honolulu rail is now squarely into SCAM territory.

EPA: 946 Pages to Regulate 0.5% of the Problem

2011-05-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued 946 pages of new rules requiring that U.S. power plants sharply reduce their emissions of mercury and other air pollutants.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that while the regulations will cost electricity producers $10.9 billion annually, they will save 17,000 lives and generate up to $140 billion in health benefits. There is no factual basis for these assertions, said Willie Soon, a natural scientist at Harvard, and Paul Driessen, a senior policy adviser for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

America's coal-burning power plants emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year. U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons; Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.

All these emissions enter the global atmospheric system and become part of the U.S. air mass. Since US coal power plants account for less than 0.5% all the mercury in the air, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% our atmosphere.

Source: Willie Soon and Paul Driessen, "The Myth of Killer Mercury," Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2011.

Rail Still Facing Key Hurdles

2011-05-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

Construction crews are working on the rail project near Waipahu High School. Many think that construction for the city’s proposed elevated rail project has started but it’s not true. Read my article the Filipino Chronicle (page 8).

Edinburgh Light Rail Halted. The Usual Suspects. The Usual Results.

2011-05-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

Edinburgh Light Rail called Edinburgh Trams is the second great example of what’s in store for Honolulu. The first one is Tren Urbano in San Juan Puerto Rico where the system was build at twice the original cost and five years after opening it has failed to reach 50% of its opening year ridership forecast.

The “usual suspect” is present in all three projects. Edinburgh, San Juan and Honolulu have the same consultant who prepared the rail project estimates. Here are the results so far in Edinburgh, Scotland:

Project originally scheduled to open in July 2011. Rescheduled to 2014 if at all.
Original cost was $640 million but now it over $1 Billion.
72% of the construction work remains to be done but only 38% of the budget is left.

Read full article in Hawaii Reporter.

Renewable Energy in Hawaii: Dr. Takahashi's Take

2011-05-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Retired UH professor Patrick Takahashi was the creator and past director of Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) at the UH. His books on energy are fundamental readings. One of his most comprehensive posts about renewable energy for Hawaii is linked below.

Will renewable electricity be limited in Hawaii?

I am glad that he and I agree on

the weak potential of wind power ("capacity factor means that a 400 MW wind farm could well only provide 100 MW on average to Oahu")
the good potential of biomass
the vast potential of geothermal power

for Hawaii.

One part that he has not delved into but holds promise for Hawaii if it develops vast amounts of renewable energy is Ammonia, which holds the key to electricity and transportation fuel and food production. See Ammonia as a Transportation Fuel and Fertilizer.

Renewables and Reliability of Power

2011-05-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

After reviewing the 2009 power reliability reports submitted by utilities to the PUC I discovered that:

Oahu power utilizes less than 2% renewables. It has the highest reliability: HECO SAIF in 2009 was 1.1%,
Maui power utilizes about 17% renewables (wind and biomass). It has the middle reliability: MECO SAIF in 2009 was 1.6%,
Hawaii power utilizes about 33% renewables (geothermal, wind, hydro). It has the lowest reliability: HELCO SAIF in 2009 was 3.1%,

where, SAIF is System Average Interruption Frequency (0% is best)

HELCO reported that 20,660 customer interruptions (16% of all interruptions) were related to Independent Power Producer (non-HELCO Generation) sources. In 2009 Hamakua Energy Partners (HEP) and Pakini Nui Windfarm were the non-HELCO generation sources that caused customer interruptions. Geothermal did not have any negative effect on HELCO's SAIF.

The lesson here is that unless the right renewable energy sources are selected, reliability in the provision of power will deteriorate.

AFTER 6 YEARS AND $300 MILLION SPENT, ONLY 49% SUPPORT RAIL

2011-05-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

The Star Advertiser published on Monday, May 16, 2011 results from a recent simple poll conducted by Ward Research. The results are remarkable. They speak volumes of the public's desperation for relief from traffic congestion and since this is the only project on the table, they barely are going for it. If asked, most would tell you that they want rail so that the other people can use it. Less than 5% of commuters will switch to it. However, the survey missed the opportunity to ask about this.

The 50.6% majority of the 2008 elections has been reduced to 49%. Incredibly, the ratio of Yes/No in 2008 was 1.10 and the ratio of Yes/No in the Star Advertiser survey is 1.09! This is devastating for the Honolulu rail lobby.

Compared to 2008, the pro-rail folks got a pro-rail President. They got Oberstar to fly over Oahu on a helicopter and proclaim it a good project. They spent millions in mass media ads and monthly mailers to households. The Council had multiple junkets to rail cities. Senator Inouye, Congresswoman Hirono, US DOT Secretary LaHood and Federal Transit administrator Rogoff descended to Honolulu last month and promised (again) approvals and monies. They got the union and special interests constantly harping rail everywhere including being on the agenda at almost every monthly meeting at Neighborhood Boards. Result?

Any desirable project with such arsenal of weapons would have had over two thirds of the public supporting it. Rail got only 49%. And, from the same survey, only 12% believe the city's cost estimates!

Has the project reached a tipping point? The project is beyond its tipping point to destruction. The tipping point came in 2010. Let me explain: In order to succeed, mega-projects (defined as any project over one half billion dollars) need a major champion with decision making power and a lot of money. In our case the champion was Hannemann and the money was the Congress.
In 2010 Hannemann was trounced, and the TEA party made it widely known that the US is in deep debt. And they helped change the control of Congress from liberal to conservative. Then Abercrombie revealed that the state had a $1.5 Billion debt. Then Congress obliterated President Obama's high speed rail and cut many new infrastructure projects. Rail New Starts were cut by 20% to just $1.6 Billion in FY11. We are well beyond the tipping point when it comes to new rail projects.

The irrelevant person in all this is our one issue mayor who as recently as yesterday issued an announcement proclaiming that everything is dandy.(1) Let's not forget that jokes are his strength.

The only unfortunate thing is that I and all the anti-rail groups never had the funds and media support needed to present our points on a equal basis. It is very satisfying to see that long before a successful lawsuit we are clearly achieving the stoppage of this disastrous project.

Note (1): MAYOR SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON RAIL PROJECT FINANCING
http://www1.honolulu.gov/refs/csd/publiccom/honnews10/mayorsetstherecordstraightonrailprojectfinancing.htm

Honolulu's Special Interests Enrichment

2011-05-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

The price tag for preparation of the Honolulu rapid transit project’s environmental impact statement was originally $86 million but has since bulged to $156 million, a City spokesman confirmed today. The current value is $156,211,000 and it is due to expire July 11 of this year. Read full article in Hawaii Reporter.

This does not include the cost of the Alternatives Analysis which was in the order of $20 Million.

Recall that in 2007 Tampa opened 10 miles of elevated reversible toll lanes ($1.50 toll per trip). Planning, design, and construction were completed in seven years for a total cost of $320 Million. In comparison, the Honolulu Rail Gang will spend $320 Million for planning, design, lobbying and PR, and 90% of it comes from local taxes.

Wind Turbines on Fire

2011-05-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

I doubt that The Blue Planet Foundation would use any of these wind turbine images for its letterhead. Perhaps its advocacy should also be commensurate to the facts.

Electricity Travels at the Speed of Light. State PUC Is Sightly Slower.

2011-05-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

On December 26, 2008, an island-wide outage occurred on Oahu during a severe lightning storm that resulted in a loss of electric service to HECO customers ranging from approximately 7 to 20 hours.

On January 12, 2009, the PUC initiated an investigation of the outage.

In March 2009, HECO submitted an outage report prepared by its expert consultant, which concluded that the island-wide outage was triggered by lightning strikes.

In January 2010, the Consumer Advocate submitted its Statement of Position that HECO could not have anticipated or prevented the outage through reasonable measures and could not have reasonably shortened the outage and restored power more quickly to customers. The Consumer Advocate further stated that penalties should not be assessed for the outage, but recommended that numerous studies be performed with the objective of preventing or minimizing the scope and duration of future power outages.

As of May 9, 2011, the PUC's investigation of the 2008 outage is still open.

Portland's "High Capacity Transit" Success... All 2.3% of It!

2011-05-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Interesting excerpts of an actual evaluation of Portland's MAX light rail in 2011:

High Capacity Transit is desirable when there are large numbers of people moving to geographically constrained destinations within a short period of time – such as commuters traveling to downtown San Francisco or midtown Manhattan. (Nothing in common with Honolulu.)

MAX was supposed to be a “catalyst for transit-oriented development” (TOD) at Cascade Station near the airport, but IKEA, Target and Best Buy are built away from the MAX stop and serviced by large parking lots. RESULT: 2.2% use MAX. (This will happen to the Ewa mall by Bishop Estate, Pearl Highlands, Pearl Ridge and Ala Moana Center.)

Gresham Civic Station is a suburban location that has been intensively planned for more than 25 years, with expectations that this would be a showcase for suburban TOD. The entire area was bare dirt when MAX opened in 1986. Eventually, much of the site was built-out. RESULT: Although there are hundreds of apartments close to the newest MAX station at Gresham Civic Center, only 2.25% the tenants actually use light rail. (This will happen to Ho'opili and other pie in the sky TODs.)

The two-day observations at Cascade Station were perhaps the most revealing in terms of assessing the oft-made claim that light rail is a “catalyst for development.” Light rail is not only irrelevant to the commercial success of Cascade Station, it is a barrier to continued development due to density requirements near rail stations. (Maybe Honolulu developers will wake up to reality.)

Finally, a quote describing real Transit Capacity (which is of course why I have been advocating a managed bus system since 2000):

For comparison, the highest-throughput mass transit facility in America is a simple busway managed by the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey (PANYNJ). On weekdays between 6:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m., PANYNJ operates a 2.5 mi eastbound contra-flow Exclusive Bus Lane (XBL) along westbound Route 495 to Lincoln Tunnel from the New Jersey Turnpike. The XBL carries 1,700 buses and 62,000 passengers each morning, on average, saving about 15-20 minutes in travel time. This averages about 1 bus every 8 seconds for a 4-hour period, with roughly 37 seated passengers per bus.

Full Report -- CASCADE POLICY INSTITUTE: The Myth of High Capacity Transit, May 2011.

Got Wind? YES. Got Power? NO.

2011-05-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

Press Release by First Wind:

Honolulu, HI—March 24, 2011—First Wind, an independent U.S.-based wind energy company, and Hawaiian Electric Company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony today to mark the commencement of commercial operations of the Kahuku Wind project. State, local and community leaders gathered at the project site on Oahu’s North Shore to recognize the environmental and economic benefits of the 30 MW project, which features an innovative battery storage system and has the capacity to generate enough renewable energy to power up to 7,700 Oahu homes each year.

My investigation five weeks later (April 30, 2011)

A picture is worth a thousand words... watch this:

(Alternate link if this video does not load)

The bottom line is that both HECO and government got it wrong. Even when wind is present, the turbines are doing nothing.

Problems Big and Small. Sensible Solutions for All.

2011-04-25T14:01:00.000-07:00

[This is an enriched version of my TEA 2011 speech at Hawaii Capitol on April 15, 2011]

We got big Problems. So does everybody else… states, the whole country, other countries. What we need is Sensible Solutions. Instead we get more government solutions and more taxes.

Pension accounts for city and state government employees will be broke soon-- they face huge account deficits and Hawaii leads the way in this. Their solution? Tax pensions or bury their head in the sand. The sensible solution is to raise the retirement age to 70 years of age.

Homelessness. Their solution? Build more public housing. The sensible solution is to take care of the homeless needs and provide transitional housing. Transition the homeless back to normal life. Do not warehouse them. Empower, consolidate and better organize non-profits that care for the homeless. Set limits on the benefits that the homeless receive.

Power. We pay the most for electric power. We complain about the price of gasoline but it’s only 15% more expensive than the mainland average. Our electricity is about 300% more expensive. Whose fault is this?

The legislature's with their "green" objectives that put into effect without any cost analysis, the PUC's controls, and HECO's monopoly. The monopoly buys wind and solar power for 15c per KWh and sells it to ratepayers for 30 to 40 cents.

The sensible solution is to deregulate. Within 20 years we can have a competitive energy market with solar, geothermal, coal, OTEC, biomass, algae, etc. distributed power providers.

Planning is a big problem. We have the Oahu Metropolitan Organization (OMPO) that coordinates all transportation plans in the city and county of Honolulu. But the key people on the all-important policy committee are the Transportation Committee chairs of the Senate and the House. For many years they are both from Maui. So the county of Maui decides the transportation plans of the county of Honolulu. This absurdity is going on for a decade now and has lead to gross miss-allocation of funds with Honolulu at the losing end.

Traffic is a big problem. We need roads to move over 90% of the people who use vehicles. Instead government plans to waste 6 billion dollars to help the 1% of people on the rail. And cutback TheBus in the process.

TheHandiVan is a costly service. Its archaic and inflexible booking system requires 1 or 2 day advance reservations. This inconvenience costs $35 per rider. TheHandiVan services can be fully substituted by private modified vans of which there are several on island in private transportation. They provide quick and courteous service, local jobs and a modest profit at about $25 per ride. TheHandiVan is proof that Sensible and Government do not go together.

Waste Management is a problem. Their solution? Business as usual: Landfills and expensive, fake recycling. Best solution? Privatization and incentives for remanufacturing. The private sector can deal with landfill issues, burning and recycling. Or sending trash to mainland or Asia. Leave environmental requirements as is, and let the private sector find the solution set including the remanufacture of recycled paper, plastic, fats, oils and lubricants.

Pavements and potholes. Their solution? Neglect, followed by expensive contracts and sloppy pothole plugging by city crews. The sensible solution is to go on routine pavement maintenance so that our local refineries can plan their asphalt production. (I understand one of them has quit making asphalt because of the unpredictability of demand.) Sign 10 year contracts with quality guarantees and price discounts. Get the City out of the pothole repair business.

Sensible Solutions have these basic ingredients: Less centralization, less taxation, less regulation and greater private sector participation.

Flywheels

2011-04-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Every vehicle on the road has a flywheel. It smooths out the fuel explosions in each cylinder and makes gear change possible.

An over-sized flywheel can propel a light vehicle but due to the constant speed transitions in regular traffic this application is problematic.

A "mega-sized" flywheel can become a formidable energy storage device that can avert blackouts, facilitate the smart grid and even store energy from daytime production (solar) for nighttime consumption.

This Washington Post article... Reinventing the (Fly)Wheel contains a lot of useful development including the first in the nation 20 MW electricity power plant located in Massachusetts.

The New York Times Investigates Hawaii's Big Wind

2011-04-15T18:08:00.000-07:00

I sent this message to my friends in the media today.

I find it a bit ironic that we have to read a newspaper from 5,000 miles away to find out what's going on at our back yard: Hawaii Doubles Down on Big Wind

In it there is this comment: "U.S. EPA, questioned why the state considered only two alternatives." My immediate reaction to this concern? ... Because in Hawaii we plan like dictators: Like Heavy Rail or Nothing!

My thoughtful reaction is here: Wind Energy for Hawaii: Great for Profits, Not so Great for Power (I note that the Star Advertiser did not publish this submission.)

My energy plan in one page is shown below.

A huge part of Hawaii's future rides on its energy plan. I must tell you that I do not like what I see so far. I was at a public forum with the Governor and PUC Chair Mina Morita last night. Their heart is in the right place but they seem to have received tremendously biased information and we'll be spending billions for minor payoff. (Obviously we are developing a tradition on this.)

I look forward to your frequent investigative coverage of Hawaii's energy plan. Please set any green glasses you like to wear aside. Open your minds and your wallets and then look at the issues.

Please remember that next time "global warming" comes up Hawaii's way ahead in the green accomplishment scale because of our ...
... fleet of smaller cars used over shorter distances,
... lack of need for heating oil,
... lack of guzzling heavy industry
... household energy improvements (we're tops or near tops in the nation on sun water heating and photovoltaic panels,)
... use of cold ocean water to cool high rises, etc.

Given that we already pay 230% to 300% more than the U.S. average for electricity (30 cents versus 10 cents for a KW-hour), we need to be extremely careful with expensive and inefficient proposals for renewable energy sources.

Natural Gas for Transportation

2011-04-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

Here is the summary of congressional action from Townhall.com: Last week was the culmination of a process begun years ago. A bill was introduced to Congress that could end American dependence on foreign oil. What is called the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act -- more simply put, the NAT GAS Act -- was introduced to Congress on April 6. It has bipartisan support. It ought to pass and pass promptly. It could be called the Boone Pickens bill.

This article from Center for American Progress provides on the realities of natural gas usage in heavy vehicles as a transitional fuel for the next five to 10 decades. It will not end US dependence on oil but it has a good potential to substantially curb it as shown below.

Pension Congestion? Life is a Freeway. Lift the Limit from 65 to 70.

2011-04-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

In 1940, an American enjoyed 12 years of life upon retirement, on the average. In 2007, an American is expected to enjoy over 17.5 years upon retirement. This long retirement period of 17.5 years is both the good news and the bad news.

The good news is of course that we all wish to live long lives and the outlook is good. The bad news is that retirement systems worldwide cannot support so many retirees living for so long.

This is one area where indeed Hawaii is not alone, but its government employee retirement system is among the five most troublesome in the U.S. George Berish, an expert in the field, has explained this in a series of articles in the Civil Beat.

The critical measure for the future health of a state's or country's overall retirement system health is the Support Ratio. This is the number that shows how many working people support one retiree.

In 1970 the U.S. had 5.3 workers supporting one retiree. In 2010 the number of workers per retiree dropped to 4.6. This is alarming enough but it gets much worse. In 2050 the estimation is that there will be only 2.6 workers per retiree, so over 25% of their earnings will have to go to the retirement fund to support retirees. At that point overall taxation will surpass 60%, and in theory it is best to move to another country.

Not so fast!

Read my full article in HAWAII REPORTER.

Transportation 2050

2011-04-07T19:33:00.000-07:00

In March 2011 the European Commission published a proposed rulemaking for long term transportation standards in Europe titled TRANSPORT 2050. I drafted a similar policy for the US and developed this side by side 2-page presentation.

You may be interested to see the EU's proposed draconian measures against the automobile: Halve the use of gasoline, diesel and LPG fueled cars in cities by 2030 and phase them out in cities by 2050.

While EU's planning for a CO2-free utopia continues unabated, China picks up all the slack: In 2010, China's 18 million vehicle sales far surpassed U.S. light-duty vehicle sales of 12 million, making China the world's largest new car market. From 2003 through 2010, China's vehicle population grew at an annual rate of 18.6%, far faster than even the most ambitious projection.

For Every Green Job, Four Other are Lost

2011-04-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

A few posts below you can read my opinion about Wind Energy for Hawaii
http://fixoahu.blogspot.com/2011/04/wind-energy-for-hawaii-great-for.html

Today I was sent this revealing study done at the UK:

Part of the summary in offshoreWIND.biz reads as follows: A study of renewable energy in Scotland shows that for every job created in the alternative energy sector, almost four jobs are lost in the rest of the economy.

Not only has the sun set on the British Empire, but the promise of wind apparently is deserting it as well. A new study called “Worth The Candle?” by the consulting firm Verso Economics confirms the experience of Spain and other countries: The creation of “green” jobs destroys other jobs through the diversion of resources and the denial of abundant sources of fossil fuel energy.

Here is the full report: “Worth The Candle?”

Board of Water Supply: For Crying Out Loud!

2011-04-05T17:33:00.001-07:00

In 2009 and 2010 the Board of Water Supply tore up the upper half of Pacific Heights Road to upgrade the water lines and meters. The bumpy condition of the road (in part) cost me $800 in replacing the front suspension bushings of my car at 45,000 miles (normal wear should be 100,000 miles or more.) At the end of 2010 MIRA contractor spent over a month paving the road. They did a decent job.

Four months later the same road is marked to be torn up to fix the sewer lines, by the same Board of Water Supply. It really does not get more costly and disruptive than this…. Heavy machinery… Line up in single stack… Off duty police officers at both ends… Etc.

As can be seen in the photos below, the asphalt is dark black; brand new with a likely service span of 15 to 20 years. Actively being destroyed today.

Huge Combustion Efficiencies Are in the Works

2011-04-01T15:59:00.000-07:00

The York Times article Start-Ups Work to Reinvent the Combustion Engine reports that

Pinnacle Engines is working on an engine that "will be up to 50% more efficient than today's power plants,"
EcoMotors, "a Detroit area start-up backed by Khosla Ventures(1) and Bill Gates," and
Achates Power of San Diego

are developing variations on an opposed piston engine...long considered too expensive and unworkable for automobiles. The goal is to reduce the amount of energy "wasted as heat," so as to "to tap more energy to propel a vehicle." Pinnacle says that its current engine is "30% more efficient than current scooter engines." EcoMotors "is also claiming up to a 50% improvement in efficiency for its two-stroke diesel opposed piston engine." Achates Power says that its engine is "15% more efficient than conventional diesel."

In addition I recently read that both the Engine Research Group of University of Wisconsin-Madison is working on dual fuel engines to achieve high efficiencies and low emissions. An example of dual fuel is engine uses 90% gasoline on high load (acceleration), 90% diesel on low load (cruise) and 100% diesel at idle. Fuel efficiency improved 20% to 25% or large engines for trucks and heavy equipment.

At the same time and the Oak Ridge National Lab is conducting similar experiments using 1.9 liter Euro spec GM diesel engines with good results.

These are all positive and telling signs that the "classic" engine and the automobile are nowhere near their "dawn" days.

(1) Vinod Koshla, of Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. His profile in The Economist is worth reading. I liked this quote of his: “ENVIRONMENTALISTS are fiddling while Rome burns. They get in the way with silly stuff like asking people to walk more, drive less. That is an increment of 1-2% change. We need 1,000% change if billions of people in China and India are to enjoy a Western, energy-rich lifestyle.” Forget today’s green technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, solar cells and smart grids. None meets what Mr Khosla calls the “Chindia price.”

Wind Energy for Hawaii: Great for Profits, Not So Great for Power

2011-04-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

Electric power is all about baseload and predictable peaks of usage. Wind is all about unpredictability. Among all major resources for the production of energy, wind is among the least predictable and dependable. Full article published in Hawaii Reporter.

Wind Speed Variability Sample as Reported in a Presentation by Renewable Energy Laboratory:

"Smart Technologies" Could Improve Transportation

2011-03-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

The post below is excerpted from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) daily newsletter. It summarizes an attempt of Congress to improve transportation conditions by employing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

I have been teaching these methods for over a dozen years as part of my CEE 661: Intelligent Transportation Systems graduate course at the UH-Manoa. What is different this time is $1.2 Billion dollars in federal funding over six years for the pilot deployment in six competing cities.

I hope that the bill will go forward and I hope (but do not expect) that Honolulu and State of Hawaii will vie for this ITS initiative. Besides being substantially congested, Honolulu presents an excellent, fully controlled traffic laboratory. By that I mean that 100% of the traffic is local, as opposed to, say, Chicago, that at any time 5% to 15% of its traffic is from neighboring Indiana, Wisconsin and other states, thus its local ITS initiative is diluted by a large number of non-participating vehicles. ===========================================

The Hill (3/30, Laing) reports, "A bipartisan pair of lawmakers on Tuesday announced a bill to create six pilot 'intelligent transportation systems' they say will use technology to ease transit woes in cash-strapped American cities. Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) said their 'Smart Technologies for Communities Act' would make improvements to transportation that federal and state governments could not otherwise afford." Notably, "the bill would create pilot programs in six cities to test whether technologies such as cars with crash sensors, bridges that can sense stress from vehicle weight, electronic toll systems and live updates to commuters improve overall commutes."

The Detroit News (3/30, Shepardson) reports the bill "would provide grants to make 'Intelligent Transportation Systems' a reality." They support "spending $1.2 billion over six years" on the initiative. The News says "the pair will tout their bill along with Intelligent Transportation Society of America CEO Scott Belcher in a press briefing Wednesday." Their bill has the support of "the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and its members, including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC." It would "create a pilot program in up to six communities across the country to serve as model deployment sites for large-scale installation and operation of ITS to improve safety, mobility and the environment on the nation's highways."

Real Energy, Real Jobs

2011-03-29T13:51:00.001-07:00

By looking at the title, for a second I thought that I wrote this article and forgot about it, but the Real Energy, Real Jobs article was written by Robert Bradley Jr., CEO and Founder of the Institute for Energy Research and author, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy.

Indeed Energy is Big Business and critically important for the US, Hawaii and indeed all civilization. For each location, there is an optimum mix of energy options for abundant, affordable energy, energy jobs and energy profits. There are many sub-optimal mixes that may lead to huge profits, short-term jobs, and unreliably and expensive energy. You can read some of these in Bradley's article.

In addition to the points raised in the article Real Energy, Real Jobs, my own research has revealed that:

Denmark: 20% of the electricity is from wind, but much of it is exported at no cost to Norway in return for baseload electricity when the wind does not blow!
Spain: For every 1 green job financed by Spanish taxpayers, 2.2 jobs were lost as an opportunity cost. Since 2000, Spain spent $753,778 per “green job.”
Germany: Green jobs created by government actions disappear as soon as government subsidies end.
Texas: After 30 months, countless TV appearances, and $80 million spent on an extravagant PR campaign, T. Boone Pickens has finally admitted the obvious: The wind energy business isn't a very good one. The Dallas-based entrepreneur, who has relentlessly promoted his Pickens Plan since July 4, 2008, announced that he's abandoning the wind business to focus on natural gas. (Wall Street Journal quote.)

Nuclear Power Plant ... Oxymorons and Solutions

2011-03-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

The Economist has a useful tool for looking up which have nuclear power and how much electricity they produce in a year. The U.S. leads the pack.

One of the oddities of nuclear power is that some countries like Greece are strongly opposed to nuclear power, yet less than 100 miles away their Bulgarian neighbors already have nuclear power plants ... This reminds me of Hawaii with its nuclear power plant constitutional prohibition and the 15 nuclear submarines home ported in Pearl Harbor.

The difficult management of a failing power plant due to major force of nature as witnessed in Japan makes a strong case for locating them on off shore floating platforms (e.g., refurbished decommissioned air carriers.) These platforms, like off shore rigs can be manned as required by helicopter flights but they can be engineered for self power and management by remote control (like the unmanned drones of the air force.)

In the extremely rare care of nuclear reactor failure the floating platform can be de-anchored and de-tethered, and then robotically powered away from populations. This plan offers significant economic, safety and psychological benefits. Perhaps the state of Georgia should look into a floating platform 10-20 miles out in the Atlantic among its alternatives for locating a very large nuclear power plant.