A Student's 3 Good Questions About Honolulu Rail

I receive about a dozen requests for interviews from students in Hawaii, mostly from the Univ. of Hawaii, working on papers or presentations about Honolulu's rail. Some of them are pure "make work" for me as the student lists 10 to 20 questions and expect me to write their paper for them. This recent inquiry from a high schooler was brief and on point. His request and my response below.

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Dear Mr. Prevedouros,

I am a student at ‘Iolani School and would like to ask questions and gather information about the Hawaii rail system and its impact on traffic congestion. I read the transcript of your interview with Mr. Akina and read the article you wrote about the rail, and wanted to understand more about your perspective on the Hawaii rail system. Below are a few questions I would appreciate your insight on:

1. As many people know, you were opposed to the rail. You mentioned many red flags that you believed were going to be problematic. Now that the rail has opened, what are the top three indicators that proved you were right? 
2. Do you know where I can find data that shows whether or not the rail has succeeded in diminishing traffic as was promised? I haven’t been able to locate any statistics that prove the money was well-spent or that the investment was worth it for tax-payers (if that is possible)?
3. Considering your past criticisms on the rail, do you see any potential for the rail to become successful in the long run? And if so, what changes would be necessary to achieve that goal?

Thank you for taking the time to read and answer my questions!

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Here are brief answers to your important questions, but first, I should clarify that as a conscientious engineer, I oppose stupid infrastructure proposals, not rail as a mode for metropolitan transportation. In fact, in my textbook, I recommend metro rail for dense communities over 5 million people; and high speed rail for connecting large urban centers located 100 to 500 miles apart.

1. Exorbitant costs for what it is (length and capacity) and very low ridership. The costs shouldn't have exceeded $6.4 billion but it'll exceed $12 billion (double or more than my high estimate of $6.4; at the time Oahu voted for it, its cost was stated at $4.6 billion). I also estimated that, when completed, rail won't carry the 105,000 daily riders forecast by the city-paid consultants, but up to 50,000. Post-Covid, 30,000 looks like the new maximum. So... the cost per passenger will be almost 6 times higher than originally planned!
2. Presently the rail carries 3,000 person trips (riders) a day. Its daily productivity is equivalent to 6 to 10 city buses, so its effect on traffic is minuscule and imperceptible. Recall that the city's EIS stated that the weekday number of trips on Oahu exceed 4 million. If you divide my estimate of rail trips by that you get... 30000/4000000=0.75%... that's less than 1% of Oahu's trips served by the rail, so even when rail is completed, its effect on traffic congestion will be practically zero.
3. Only after pigs fly! Unfortunately, until it is demolished or replaced, it will be a constant and major drag for Oahu's economy, i.e., a constant loss of taxpayer money to keep it going. Fares, at best, will cover 10% of its operating expenses and none of its construction and replacement or renovation costs that come due every 20 years or so.  After 30 years of operation, the delayed refurbishment of BART cost nearly $15 billion!

Archegos -Theranos - Honolulu Rail: The Price of Lying

What do these three multi billion dollar failures have in common?

The repeated intentional lying about the workings and costs of each project.

Archegos (AXIOS)

The March 2021 implosion of the hedge fund-like Archegos was one for the ages, eventually costing banks like Morgan Stanley, Nomura and Credit Suisse billions of dollars.

Archegos' responses to questions were often "deceptive, false and misleading.”

It's interesting to see the banks portrayed as the victims in the saga, especially since several of them saw red flags around Archegos that made them nervous — but they stuck with him all the way down.

Theranos (Wikipedia)

By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. The credibility of Theranos was attributed in part to Holmes's personal connections and ability to recruit the support of influential people, including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Jim Mattis, and Betsy DeVos, all of whom had served or would go on to serve as U.S. presidential cabinet officials.

The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's technology claims and whether Holmes had misled investors and the government. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Theranos and Holmes with deceiving investors by "massive fraud" through false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of the company's blood-testing technology.

Honolulu Rail

The project started by Mayor Mufi Hannemann as a 34 mile, $3 billion proposal in 2006 and settled into a 20 mile, $4.6 billion elevated steel-on-steel “light rail” in 2008, to be completed in 2019. At the present time, Honolulu Rail is an incomplete, underfunded 18-20 mile construction project with a year 2031 projected completion at a cost of well over $11 billion.

The project is under investigation by the US Department of Justice. There have been several allegations and instances of fraud and gross errors; two samples from 2016 and 2019:

• Change.org petition: Investigate the political corruption, fraud, and abuse involving the Honolulu Rail project.
• Suggesting that fraud may be the cause of cost overruns, City Council newcomer Heidi Tsuneyoshi is demanding a forensic audit of contracts tied to a plan to build a transit system for Honolulu. (A forensic audit was never approved by public officials.)

Similar to the multi-year lying and defrauding at Archegos and Theranos, the fraud (i.e., the irresponsible wasting of billions of taxpayer dollars) at Honolulu Rail continues unabated: “Inside the ‘frantic’ push to shorten rail and keep its federal funding -- Project officials stress that they’re still fully committed to getting rail to Ala Moana, but it’s still not clear financially how that would happen. Rail leaders are presenting a “truncated project scope” to the Federal Transit Administration in order to secure rail’s remaining federal dollars. Project officials stress that they’re still fully committed to getting rail to Ala Moana, but it’s still not clear financially how that would happen.” (Honolulu Civil Beat, April 28, 2022)

 

 

 

Honolulu Rail Critic Pushes for Middle Street Endpoint

"Longtime Honolulu rail critic Panos Prevedouros advocated that the project should hit pause, finish the line to Middle Street and the route should be reassessed. A city councilmember introduced a resolution this week with a similar stance.

A vocal critic of the Honolulu rail project, UH Manoa civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros has never held back on his opinion of the decision to build the mass transit system.

"I'm totally exhausted about the inability of our decision-makers to do the right thing, after all the proof they have in front of them," he said. "These are crazy numbers by any standard of infrastructure project delivery."

I said so on May 11, 2021 in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio. 

Then on August 3 came devastating confirmation from a respected FTA agent. The retired FTA director, who evaluated every rail project for 30 years, said:

“The Honolulu project is way beyond anything that I’ve observed….I’m shocked. … Whenever I see the costs going up, I’m personally flabbergasted. It is way beyond and unmatched by anything that I have observed. Of the projects we’ve done in the last few decades, there’s nothing that even approaches that cost overrun. It’s extra­ordinary by any measure…. Because the shortfall’s so dramatic, there are questions about where should we stop the project… this project can no longer proceed."

More details of his opinion were published on August 9:

"One former, longtime FTA official who helped launch Honolulu rail more than a decade ago said the dramatic cost overruns that have plagued the project ever since construction started are worse than anything he’s seen. 

“I’ve never seen anything close,” Ron Fisher, former director of the FTA Office of Project Planning, said of rail’s persistent and growing budget woes."

Fisher, meanwhile, said that rail is in an unusual situation among the nation’s transit projects because it’s woefully short on cash and essentially has been pushed back into a planning phase. 

Local transportation officials should pause the project, he said, in order to study different endpoints to the line as well as their impacts to ridership, rail operations and the surrounding environment. 

That study of the various costs and benefits of stopping at different places should involve credible experts, and it should include legitimate public input and participation, Fisher added."

Inspections Discover Cracks in Rail Line Tracks

 Rick Daysog: Inspections discover cracks in rail line tracks. Also mirrored at Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren.

HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - During a recent inspection, rail officials discovered cracks in several crossover tracks along the line that could cause further delays for the embattled project.

According to Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation documents, the manufacturer of the crossovers ― called frogs ― was responsible for the casting flaws.

Recent inspections also found that some of the welds and surfaces on other parts of the tracks didn’t meet the specifications set under contract.

“Before we have an operating system, we have cracks and failures,” said rail critic and University of Hawaii Civil and Environmental Engineering Prof. Panos Prevedouros.

“That is really extremely disappointing. I don’t now how else to describe it. ... We’ve been had.”

Prevedouros said the rail system’s steel-on-steel technology was supposed to last for decades but can’t even last several hundred practice runs without cracking.

“We selected rail because supposedly it was bullet proof,” he said. “You build it out of steel and you’re done.”

How long the project is delayed will depend on how many of the cracked frogs need to be replaced and how long it takes to manufacture and install them.

Hawaii News Now asked HART spokesman Joey Manahan how many of these devices are damaged and how much of a delay replacing them will cause.

He declined to answer, saying that the rail authority planned to respond at its board meeting Thursday.

Prevedouros believes the initial opening of service between Kapolei and Aloha Stadium, which was scheduled for June, will now be delayed several months because HART won’t be able test their trains at normal speeds and under normal conditions.

HART Rail Cost Grows Past $12 Billion

 In January 2016, I projected that the cost to complete HART's rail will be $11 Billion (stated by HART as $6.9B at that time). Once again, that was the good news.

It's pretty clear that the people in charge need to do something about destroying the city's and state's finances while pursuing a largely useless, outdated and very expensive to run transportation "alternative."

We have great alternatives already... TheBus, Uber, Zoom, bikeways and soon enough, robotaxis. Plus people leaving Hawaii by the thousands

Rail’s Completion Takes Construction to 2033!

Even the rail project’s harshest critics think the mayor’s 2033 completion date estimate is overly pessimistic.

“He pushed it all the way to 2033. That’s 13 years. It’s like we’re restarting the project from scratch,” said University of Hawaii Civil Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros.

Under the city’s estimates, contractors would be building the remaining four miles of the guideway and the rail stations at a rate of about 1/3 a mile each year, which is very slow by most standards.

“Inch by inch, foot by foot ― yes,” Prevedouros joked.

But he also believes that both the city’s and HART’s cost estimates are overly optimistic.

“My anticipated total costs for this total project will be in the order of $13 billion,” he said.

Panos’ Estimates Rail Cost to Reach at Least $13 Billion

In fact $13 billion is a rock bottom estimate of total costs from project inception in 2006 to project completion and full commissioning into revenue service in 2026 (or later.)

If HART rail were to start operations today, it would get about 20% of the expected opening day forecast ridership.

Unlike a large metropolis with huge demand for commuting trips (where rail makes sense), HART rail will be a costly and environmental disaster for decades.

The only "solution" is to cut it short. Complete 16 miles to the Middle Street intermodal center and stop the bleeding there.

Many thanks to Dr. Keli'i Akina and the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii for the ThinkTech interview.

Belated Praise from Bob Jones!

Praise from Bob Jones? It's 2020 after all! Mahalo for the acknowledgement. When it's all said and done, I'll be 3x correct. Plus one. The first three were cost, complexity of delivery, and low ridership (~50% off TheBus.) The plus one is the new normal: Zoom and telecommuting, distancing requirements, shrinkage of services, and Uber and automated vehicles/robotaxis.

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Covid-19 is, understandably, #1 on the news cycle in Honolulu these days. But we have a Primary election coming Saturday and I wonder if everyone will forget and forgive about the train cost and delay.

The local gadfly Panos Prevadouros — who’s probably a much better civil engineer and professor than a would-be politician — got some of it strikingly right in his long fight against the elevated train project.

When the cost was just $5 billion, he showed that even if it served 7% of Oahu travelers (the City figure) it would be an irresponsible expenditure.

Little did we guess that the final cost might be $10 billion and the finish date so far in the future that we might all be traveling by air cars or rocket packs by then!

And to think that we embarked on this project with just 50.6% of those who voted saying yes to it. Not exactly a resounding huzzah.

Picking Your Candidates? Don’t Forget The Train, The Train, The Train, The Train

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Date for Rail to Be up and Running Pushed Back

KITV interview

I note that City DTS Director Frycztaki provided a lie instead of an applicable reason for the delay. He said the delay is due to the PPP bid deadline being moved due to Covid-19, but the PPP affects the final segment of the rail. The opening of the rail is for the "completed" segment from Kapolei to the airport...

Honolulu Rail Is a Massive Failure. It Will Be Public Health Enemy No. 1

Dear Elected Officials, Journalists and Media Experts,

After the Covid-19 scare and the face masks go away, the fear of infection will linger for a long while. And the threat of another type of infection in a few years is very real... SARS, MERS, H1N1, Covid-19... all came in the last 20 years. 

A major question is this: How many people will be willing to use a mode of transportation where others breathe, sneeze and cough 2-3 feet from their face, and should they?

•  US Reliance On Mass Transit Explains A Big Part Of The Epidemic. (UH, April 14)
•  The Subways Seeded the Massive Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City.  (MIT, April 13)

 The information above should give you pause.  Honolulu Rail has been a massive failure. Continuing it makes it public health enemy number one.

Aloha,
Panos

More Reasons to End HART Rail at Middle Street

City Leaders: Plans For Rail Work Along Dillingham ‘Not Acceptable’

My take is as follows. There are three choices.

Plan A.  Proceed as planned with terrible inconvenience for Kalihi, much more congestion for daily commuters, and financial ruin of many Kalihi stores. Also going to Costco, Home Depot and Best Buy will be a challenge with huge congestion effects on Nimitz. Hwy.

Plan B.  Tiptoe around the neighborhood which will extend project delivery time and cost a lot more. This option is likely not feasible. Can't build a quarter billion of elevated infrastructure without closures and major disruptions. This will wind up being like choice A, but with a higher cost.

Plan C.  End rail at Middle Street. This is the only reasonable choice. The rail project is largely useless and it keeps generating pains and costs. Ending it at the city's Middle Street Inter-modal Center is workable.

Plan C is an imperative, in light of these two headlines.

1. Next mayor will have mountains of problems, but mere molehill of money to pay for them. Yet, somebody has to do it. Hopefully he or she will make the hole a little smaller. (Not likely, based on past history.) I'm not interested. I was in 2008 and 2010 when the rail and homelessness holes were treatable. Now they are ever expanding craters...
2. This article relates to the fleecing of the taxpayer for the Public Private Partnership to complete the 4 miles between Middle Street and Ala Moana Center: City leaders playing hide-the-pea in rail financing scheme. "Few believe the city will complete Oahu rail to Ala Moana Center for the $9.2 billion total it projects, and we hear much speculation about the real final construction tab. $10 billion? $12 billion? $15 billion?" [David Shapiro's Volcanic Ash commentary.]

Self-Driving Cars Another Nail In Rail’s Coffin

Quoted in the article "Self-Driving Cars Another Nail In Rail’s Coffin "by Josh Mason

Panos Prevedouros, chairman of the UH civil and environmental engineering department, said at a Grassroot Institute of Hawaii panel on May 3 that the rail system is already obsolete because the share of public transit nationwide has already halved over the past few years that Uber and Lyft have grown exponentially.

There’s Still No Word On How Much Honolulu Rail Will Cost —To Ride

Critics Renew Calls To Stop Honolulu Rail At Middle Street

One point I made that Marcel Honore did not include in his story is this: Express bus from Middle Street to UH will be faster (most of the time) than rail from Middle Street to Ala Moana and bus from Ala Moana to UH.

"Panos Prevedouros, a longtime rail opponent who chairs the UH engineering department, estimates ridership on the full Ala Moana line would be closer to 60,000 daily boardings. If the ridership is already that low, then stopping at Middle Street wouldn’t push it much lower, he said.

“I don’t know that the ridership would be dramatically different if you’re getting people beyond the choke points at Middle Street,” Prevedouros said Monday.

To Prevedouros and Roth, getting past the H1-H2 and Middle Street freeway merges are the best thing that rail could accomplish for commuters. Its value, they say, diminishes past that point, and it makes more sense to put passengers on buses from there, which many would transfer to from Ala Moana Center anyway."

2016: Caldwell and Hanabusa Agree to Stop Rail at Middle Street.

Back in 2016, Caldwell and Hanabusa were sensible, as quoted in Star Advertiser's Mayor recommends halting the rail route at Middle Street by Marcel Honore.

“I wish we could go all the way to Ala Moana now. That’s for another day,” Mayor Kirk Caldwell told [HART Board].


“It’s not a perfect-world situation,” HART board Chairwoman Colleen Hana­busa said at the Thursday meeting. “But … we don’t have the money.”


Fast forward two years ... Rail is nowhere near Middle Street, yet utility work past Middle Street has been authorized: HART awards $400 million contract to relocate utilities to make way for Honolulu rail

So the fleecing of the taxpayer continues:

"In 2012 HART estimated it would cost about $528 million to build rail’s final four miles. In March it estimated it would cost $866 million. Now [June 2016] it estimates it could cost as much as $1.5 billion to complete that same stretch."

But in May 2018 the utility relocation contract alone is $400M. Can they build a 4 mile bridge with 8 stations, etc. for $1.1B?  I say $3B at least!

Uncertainty surrounds $8B Honolulu rail project

National professional news outlet Construction Dive looked into HART in the article Uncertainty surrounds $8B Honolulu rail project after reviewing the Honolulu Civil Beat article What Honolulu Rail Officials Know They Don’t Know.

• The total cost of the project is in question. Panos Prevedouros, chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, estimates that it will cost at least $13* billion. The price tag for the mostly elevated rail line could rise as crews move into the city and navigate unmapped utilities, encounter various types of subsoil, come across potential native burial sites, and possibly damage existing structures as they excavate nearby. In order to provide the public with a rapid rail option and stay within the budget, officials could opt to shorten the system

• Polls suggest a majority of the public wants to finish rail and stay within the existing budget. Both can be achieved only by finishing rail at the Middle Street Transit Center, where riders can transfer to coordinated options such as pooled ride-hailing and high-tech versions of Honolulu’s award-winning bus service.

• Prevedouros believes such a plan would give taxpayers substantial value for their money already spent on rail, by getting people beyond both the H-1 and H-2 and the Middle Street merges while avoiding untold billions in construction costs and freeing up any saved construction financing to pay for operations and maintenance.

• Most rail commuters will need to transfer at least once in any event. Consider this example: If rail were built to Ala Moana Center, it would take 12 minutes to get there from Middle Street by rail, and then another 16 minutes by bus to University of Hawaii Manoa — a total of 28 minutes. But if rail terminates at Middle Street, a UH student can get to Manoa by express bus in about 20 minutes.

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(*) Back in 2009, FTA's consultant Jacobs of Dallas, TX conducted a risk analysis on HART's budget (actually Honolulu rail became the HART project after 2010) and showed a 10% chance of the project costing $10.5 billion. During the Legislative session of spring 2017, Mayor Caldwell mentioned that for all practical purposes the cost of the project is $10 billion. See "Mayor Kirk Caldwell and City Council Chairman Ron Menor think Oahu taxpayers are so rich we can pay not only for a $10 billion rail system that’s $5 billion over budget and climbing, but also for road projects on the neighbor islands."

As of 2018, the project is at least 6 years late (and likely to have further schedule slippages).

• Taking the Jacobs $10.5 B projection and compounding it by 4% over 6 years gives a year of expenditure (YoE) cost of $13.29 Billion.
• Taking the Mayor's $10.0 B projection and compounding it by 5% over 6 years gives a YoE cost of $13.40 Billion.
• If you dislike compounding inflation and prefer the simple inflation of costs, then the corresponding numbers are $13.02 B and $13.00 B.

Honolulu Rail Creates One Tenth of Jobs Promissed

Quoted in Marcel Honore's article in the Honolulu Civil Beat Rail Promised Lots Of Jobs But There’s No Sure Count Of What It’s Delivering.

• “It’s not the kind of project that lends itself to a huge amount of workers working at the same time,” said Panos Prevedouros, a longtime rail critic and one-time mayoral candidate who chairs the University of Hawaii’s Civil Engineering Department. “The way they did it, it’s much simpler to manage. It takes a longer time, but it keeps the (job) count quite low.”

By "the way they did it," I explained to Marcel that HART rail is being built one segment at a time by a single builder, instead of having, say 4 builders building 5 miles each, simultaneously.

• Prevedouros said the city should keep better track of the actual jobs that rail is generating since that was such a strong part of the pitch years earlier to build the project.  “What was presented and promised, it was all rhetoric around the Great Recession we had. So it was a big selling point,” he said.  “Really, 1,000 jobs doesn’t make or break anything.” [in Honolulu]

It wasn't difficult for me and unbiased economists to see the lies in the jobs numbers. Back on April 14, 2010, I exposed this in my article Proposed Rail Creates 1,000 Local Jobs and Destroys 4,000 Jobs.

See Scott Ishikawa serving city propaganda for the 10,000 jobs... and an interesting comment underneath.

On March 23, 2012 I simply wrote that HART's Job Estimates Are Wrong.

So, let's recap... So far I was right about the cost of rail will be much higher than advertised, the delivery of rail would be much longer than advertised, and that the advertised job numbers were fake.  There are two big ones left: Reliability and Ridership.

Reliability may be better that mediocre now that Hitachi has put its name on the Ansaldo trains. Ridership will be, at best, one half of what the city proclaimed in the EIS (see my estimate.)

It’s Not Too Late to Build Rail Better

Quoted in Honolulu Civil Beat's editorial board opinion about HART.

Honolulu’s prophets of doom for the rail project — Randall Roth, Cliff Slater and Panos Prevedouros — believe they were right all along that the city’s ambitious mass-transit plan is a mess.
...

Roth, Slater and Prevedouros have imagined exactly that. And that is why they’ve accepted the reality that rail is “happening,” as Prevedouros put it in a recent editorial board meeting with Civil Beat. It comes in the wake of the Hawaii Legislature approving a $2.4 billion funding package to continue building the rail line, now pegged at $8.17 billion.

What Roth and Co. are are not accepting, however, is that the city and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation should go ahead and build all of the planned 20 miles and 21 stations. Instead, they want rail to stop at Middle Street.
...

But what Roth, Slater and Prevedouros argue now is that, because Middle Street is home to Oahu Transit Services — home of TheBus, The Handi-Van and the Kalihi-Palama Bus — it can be the future of what they envision as a multimodal hub.

What’s central to this thesis is that transportation technologies and business models are developing faster than once thought possible. Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have altered the way consumers view short trips, while automated buses and cars are already being tested and deployed.
...

Roth and Co. believe the FTA would be open to a new plan. The built guideway could eventually be modified to accommodate shared or automatic transportation systems.

Could Self-Driving Cars and Buses Replace the Last Leg of Rail?

Quoted by Marcel Honore in his article in Honolulu Civil Beat.

It’s been nearly three months since state leaders approved their latest, $2.4 billion funding package to bail out the largest public works project in Hawaii’s history.

But don’t tell Randall Roth, Cliff Slater or Panos Prevedouros that Honolulu rail transit is finally in the clear to reach Ala Moana Center. For the three longtime outspoken rail critics, who’ve previously predicted budget overruns, it’s not a question of “if” the $8.17 billion project will again run out of cash — it’s “when.”

...

Despite the latest influx of cash to move rail forward, Roth, Slater and Prevedouros haven’t given up their efforts. They have adjusted their message, however.

Now, the trio advocates stopping rail at Middle Street and exploring whether the growing popularity of ride-hailing services such as Uber and future self-driving technologies could then get Honolulu commuters from that transit hub further into town.

Prevedouros, a UH civil-engineering professor who previously ran for mayor as an ant–rail candidate, suggested the city could run automated buses along Dillingham Boulevard and Nimitz Highway from the Middle Street transit hub.

The city’s existing road grid could potentially handle more vehicles if they’re self-driving because they would travel more closely together, he added.

However, there’s been no local studies to examine whether this might work, and the idea is only preliminary, he acknowledged.

“This is part of the discussion that hasn’t happened here at all and, it is time that we make that discussion and make that connection to the rail,” Prevedouros said Wednesday.

“What’s the choice of investment? Nineteenth century versus 21st century and this discussion is not even happening in this town. No one is talking autonomous,” or self-driving vehicles, he said.

Slater, meanwhile, pointed to Uber’s recently announced plan to buy 24,000 sports-utility vehicles from Volvo to launch its own self-driving car fleet.

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And I add this to the discussion presented in the Civil Beat article:

In November 2017 Google's Waymo unit specializing on driverless technology posted a video of autonomous vans providing a prototype "suburban service." Now fast forward to 2020 and it's not hard to imagine:

1. A dozen Waymo vans roaming on routes in Kapolei and taking people to/from the rail station. They'll be smart too. Midday they'll park at key spots until they are called; unlike buses that clock many miles mostly empty. This has a number of positives in terms or resource consumption, pollution, and wear and tear.
2. Six to ten automated buses connecting Middle Street with downtown, each one departing a few minutes after a train arrives.

Driverless transportation is a low cost, high tech way out of perpetuating the rail black hole. What a way to get Honolulu ahead of most cities in transportation innovation!

Rail Expansion to Manoa and Waikiki Is Impossible

Quoted in Jim Medoza's story that Rail expansion to Manoa, Waikiki impossible — at least on current route.

UH traffic engineer Panos Prevedouros said the situation is, simply, "poor planning."

He thinks rail planners should scrap any idea of an alternate route.

“They're talking about expansion of a system that we don't have enough funds to complete as it is. It's premature,” he said.