Rail Critic Calls HART’s Financial Recovery Plan Shallow

Quoted in KITV report by Catherine Cruz on HART's "recovery plan" report to the FTA.

"It's the same people trying to make the soup, and nobody's a chef, " said University of Hawaii Engineering Chairman Panos Prevedouros.

The outspoken rail critic poured over the financial rail recover plan as it was released online Monday.

He essentially concluded its another recipe for disaster.

He called the revised plan "shallow," lacking real meaningful data.

"There are not major updates, there is no information about how to make things better. Value engineering, mistakes we made, how we are going to fix those mistakes we made? Everything is dispatched in four pages. This is not really a sincere effort," Prevedouros said.

Prevedouros was also disappointed the report didn't include updated ridership numbers.

He isn't assured the new CEO Andrew Robbins who he called a train sales man is the right choice to complete the most complicated leg of the rail route.

"What does he know about multiple construction projects with big geo-technical problems, real estate problems and all kinds of issues of doing big construction in a very dense urbanized area?  Nothing!” said Prevadouros.

At last week’s HART meeting, Robbins praised the changes made in the last year under interim CEO Krishniah Murthy.

He did also acknowledge the risks in this last and most complicated leg of the 20-mile route and the expectation that HART will watch every penny given the directive from the state.

"We have to step up our game and perform we have been given this additional funding and we have to perform on that budget and that schedule,” said Robbins.

Prevedouros laments the loss of institutional knowledge following the departure of key HART personnel and isn't sure what to make of the defection of construction point man Brennon Morioka to Hawaiian Electric during this critical path of construction and under grounding of utilities.

It remains to be seen if the plan will pass muster with the Federal Transit Authority, but Prevedouros believes we need to do better to explain how we are going to save not millions, but billions.

"If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are bound to repeat them and they will, Prevedouros said.

The Great Train Robbery

"The now nearly 50-year experiment with transit subsidies has fallen well short of expectations. A more practical result could be obtained by better prioritization of funding to meet the greatest needs in the metropolitan reality as it currently exists. . . . In the cities without legacy cores, and in the suburbs of cities with legacy cores, we should focus on the needs of those unable to provide their own mobility. This is far more socially responsible than adding expensive services such as urban rail that have shown virtually no evidence of reducing driving alone. . . . In the vast majority of markets, transit has not lured drivers from their cars to relieve congestion or improve air quality. And it is wasteful to commit transit funds to achieve purposes other than improved transportation, such as city-building or place-making. Transportation is too important to economic growth and prosperity to be subject to utopian notions."

–Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, "The Great Train Robbery: Urban Transportation in the 21^st Century," Center for Demographics & Policy, Chapman University, 2017

Academic Critical of Overblown Budget on Hawaii Rail Project

Interviewed by Radio New Zealand:

"We should have put aside monies, which is really trivial given the overall scope, and a couple of million dollars at most would have done it, for a national forensic expert on transit systems to come and look at what is really happening here and how come our transit system is two to three times more expensive than other comparable US systems," Panos Prevedouros said.

Tourists to Help Pay for Beleaguered Honolulu Rail

Quoted in this article in Travel Pulse. I had no idea but Google found it for me...

Rail Project Audit Needs to Be Comprehensive, Independent

"Incredibly, the people now asking for another $3 billion without accounting for the first $7 billion, say independent forensic auditors with special expertise in rail engineering and construction would cost too much."

Honolulu Star Advertiser
Island Voices

Rail Project Audit Needs to Be Comprehensive, Independent

By Panos Prevedouros, Randy Roth and Cliff Slater
August 24, 2017

The Hard Reality of Honolulu Rail Costs

Dear Hawaii Senators and Representatives,

I hope that you will find five minutes to read my article on HART costs: The Hard Reality of Honolulu Rail Costs.

The disparity between the actual constructed or bid costs on one hand, and the overall costs presented by HART is way too large.  It is similar to buying a $20,000 vehicle and then the dealer charges you another $30,000 for delivery, fees, docs and taxes.

A major cause of this disparity is waste and fraud. You can't possibly approve more taxes for HART before you control waste and fraud. Otherwise you are more than partners in the waste and fraud; you are the enablers.

Aloha,
Panos

HART Pays to Pave Prison Parking

From the bottomless pit of enough is enough that is HART comes this story in Hawaii News Now by Rick Daysog.

Repaving the Oahu Community Correctional Center’s parking lot, widening nearby Kamehameha Highway and other related work will cost about $650,000.

"It's clearly unnecessary in two ways. Why are we doing this in 2017? There is no rail project anywhere near that site,” said rail critic and University of Hawaii Civil Engineering Prof. Panos Prevedouros.

“Second, what has HART to do with OCCC?”

But facing a shortfall of about $2 billion, HART only has enough money to build to Middle Street. Prevedouros noted that OCCC is several hundred yards beyond Middle Street.

"If they had done construction and put some pilings into OCCC obviously they would have to do some finishing work around it.  But right now there is nothing happening anywhere near there,” he said.

He said the paving work makes even less sense because the prison will eventually be knocked down and relocated.

But other says it will be years before OCCC is moved and that the parking lot needs to be resurfaced in the meantime.

"We absolutely have seen no plans by the state of moving OCCC in the near future, within the next one or two years,” said City Councilmember Trevor Ozawa.

Ozawa , a rail skeptic, was the swing vote when the City Council voted to approve $350 million bonds for the rail project. He voted for the plan only after HART and city officials assured him that none of the bond money would be spent on heavy construction beyond Middle Street.

Ozawa said he's okay with the OCCC expenditures because it doesn't involved heavy construction, such as the elevated guideways.

Meanwhile, Prevedouros said the repaving project underscores a need for a forensic audit of HART's construction work.

CITYLAB: Honolulu's Rapid Transit Crisis

National publication CITYLAB which used to be Atlantic Cities covered the Honolulu rail boondoggle in Honolulu's Rapid Transit Crisis.

Despite a famously laid-back culture, Honolulu’s traffic is about as bad as it gets. In a bid to unsnarl its highways a bit in 2011, the city embarked on a $5.2 billion Honolulu Rail Transit Project. At the time, the planned 20-mile elevated electric train line was expected to ease traffic congestion on Hawaii’s most densely populated island by 18 percent, with the first trips planned for 2017.

Fast forward six years and the still-sputtering project looks very different. The city now estimates that the rail will cost $10 billion—almost five times the city’s annual budget and twice the original project cost estimate—while civil engineering specialists forecast a price tag closer to $13 billion.

Per capita, the Honolulu rail could become the most expensive transit project in U.S. history, according to the conservative public policy think tank Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. What’s more, the funding source of at least $3 billion in projected costs remains unseen. Meanwhile, the city’s traffic problems have worsened and state lawmakers are left divided and scrambling to craft a plan to pay for the cash-strapped project. All told, 75 percent of the contracts needed to bring the project to completion have been awarded, and the first planned trips along the full track are no longer expected to run before 2025.

So when is it too late to quit a major public-infrastructure project gone awry?

“The project is objectively terrible,” says Panos D. Prevedouros, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii, whose two failed campaigns for mayor embraced an anti-rail platform. “It reminds me of some proclamations that Trump makes with the beautiful wall he wants to build. Well, in this case, it’s the beautiful train. But it is not beautiful. It’s useless for our population.”

Read the Full Article at CITYLAB.

Professor Randall Roth: HART Blames Massive Cost Overruns on Lawsuits to Stop Rail. It’s a Lie.

There were two lawsuits. The one in federal court briefly affected the City’s ability to buy land in the downtown segment, but had no impact on rail construction or construction bidding.

The other lawsuit was brought in state court by Paulette Kaleikini. She sued because the City had started construction without first completing an archaeological study, as is required by law. A unanimous state Supreme Court ordered construction stopped until the City completed the study, which took 13 months. Blaming Ms. Kaleikini is comparable to blaming an abuse victim for seeking legal protection. The City and its contractors simply ignored the law (and the law's purpose) in their rush to get construction beyond a point of no return. The dollar impact of the state lawsuit was slightly more than $39 million, according to HART.

While the federal lawsuit did not stop or even slow down rail construction, it did provide access to FTA’s internal email that referred to the City’s “lousy practices of public manipulation,” use of “inaccurate statements,” culture of “never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over,” the observation that the City had put itself in a “pickle” by setting unrealistic start dates for construction, and concern about the City’s “casual treatment of burials.”

The federal lawsuit took longer than it needed to take because the City’s lawyers used every trick in the book to drag it out. They wanted our legal costs to soar, which they did. Raising the money simply to see that lawsuit to a conclusion was like crawling over a constantly expanding field of broken glass. The City spent more than $3 million on lawyers and expert witnesses, and the delay increased costs by another $3.3 million.

According to HART, the lawsuit delay costs come to about $46 million, see figure above, which is only 0.46% of the current cost of HART rail. Rail's final cost before it started construction was proclaimed to be $5.17 Billion, by mayor Carlisle. Rail's current cost was stated at $10 Billion by mayor Caldwell. HART current cost overrun is 93.4%, of which 1% is due to the two lawsuits.

HART Rail: Local Cost 34 Times More than H-3

I'd like to thank the Honolulu Star Advertiser for publishing my article with Cliff, originally titled HART Rail: Local Cost 34 Times More than H-3.

Rail will never be as practical as roadways
By Panos Prevedouros and Cliff Slater
July 11, 2017

Oahu’s H-3 freeway endured political controversy and major engineering challenges, such as the boring of two miles of tunnels through solid rock of the Koolau mountains and erecting 160-foot columns for the windward viaduct. Even so, the rail’s construction cost is exorbitant compared with the H-3’s — and that cost to local taxpayers, as explained below, shows how poor the rail choice was and how irrational it would be to continue.

If Mayor Kirk Caldwell is to be believed, the 20-mile elevated rail system will cost $10 billion from Kualakai Parkway to Ala Moana Center, minus $1.55 billion (hopefully) covered by the Federal Transit Administration; and about 15 percent paid by Oahu’s unsuspecting tourists. The rail guideway could instead be used to run buses, providing one traffic lane per direction for a total of two lanes. So its cost to the local taxpayer is $180 million per lane-mile.

The H-3 has two lanes per direction, four lanes total. Because the federal government provided 90 percent of its funding, the cost to local taxpayers was only $5 million per lane-mile, after being adjusted to 2017 using the Price Trends for Federal-Aid Highway Construction Index. Therefore, the lane-mile cost of rail to local taxpayers will be 34 times greater than the cost of the H-3.

The long-term cost difference is actually much greater when operating and maintenance costs are considered. Keeping the trains running will require an annual subsidy of $130 million, according to the city. This is dramatically higher than the annual cost of maintaining the H-3. This would be a new annual cost for Oahu, and it is roughly equal to the $150 million that the state Department of Transportation receives annually from the federal government.

But what about the benefits?

Unlike rail, H-3 connects to existing networks to provide door-to-door transportation options, which most residents and visitors require. Unlike rail, the H-3 directly benefits the military, emergency responders, police, commercial service providers, and public health officials.

The H-3 and other highways also facilitate public transportation by buses, taxi companies, ride-hailing services, and stand ready to serve the future dominance of autonomous, on-call vehicles. The vehicle fleet could be mostly electric in a few decades, which diminish the rail’s “green power” advantage claimed by its proponents.

Last but not least is the economy: Without roads, our economy is dead. Without rail, the economy is better off: That’s according to University of Hawaii economist James Roumasset, who explained that a project with benefits lower than its costs shrinks the economy and thereby shrinks employment. He also has pointed out how rail’s astronomical costs freeze out funding for the adoption of many sensible solutions to Oahu’s traffic congestion problem.

Efforts to continue rail past the intermodal transit center at Middle Street is wasteful and irresponsible public policy. No additional funds should be appropriated for rail. HART’s sole effort should be to bring the project to its end at Middle Street with the funds available, and use city funds for any shortage.

After the acceptance of the system for revenue service, HART should be dissolved; Oahu Transit Services should run all public transit so that good transportation service is provided islandwide. This would mitigate the problem experienced in other cities where the high costs of rail operations have resulted in major cuts of bus routes and service. (The rail’s final environmental impact statement states that 24 routes of The Bus will be eliminated or terminated at the nearest rail station.)

The costs of rail clearly show the massive present and future fiscal impact to Oahu and the state. The brave choice is to convert the project to an automated bus operation — but such bravery, imagination and public-duty responsibility are absent.

Marjorie Morgan: Riding the Rail Means an Endless Parade of Buses

On July 4, 2017, the Honolulu Star Advertiser published this humorous and poignant account of rail usage in Honolulu in 2030 (maybe):

My family can hardly wait. We can see how rail will change our lives forever.

First thing each weekday, we’ll walk from our home to the shuttle bus stop. It will take only 10 minutes, and the weather will probably be accommodating.

We will patiently wait for the bus, and hope it comes within 10 or 15 minutes. Sooner or later it will take us to the nearest train station, where within minutes we will be on our way to town.

The 20 stops will be humbug, but we will dependably reach the Ala Moana train station not much more than an hour after leaving our home.

Unfortunately, that won’t be the end of our commute. From the Ala Moana rail station, Mommy will then take bus No. 1 to work. Daddy will take bus No. 2 to work. Mikey will take bus No. 3 to Saint Louis School. Sally will take bus No. 4 to Saint Francis School. And baby will take bus No. 5 to preschool.

Oh wait, baby can’t go on the bus alone. I guess Mommy will take baby on bus No. 5 to the preschool. After dropping baby off, Mommy will patiently wait for a bus No. 6 that is headed back to the rail station. From there, Mommy will transfer to bus No. 1.

After work, Daddy will walk back to the bus stop closest to his office, which in his case is only a half-mile and partially protected from the elements. After waiting there for 10 to 15 minutes, Daddy will take bus No. 5 to within a quarter-mile of Mikey’s baseball game. Sally’s walk from her school to her bus station will take only 10 minutes, and the wait for her bus only another 15 to 20 minutes, but her bus stop will be only 5 to 10 minutes from the ballpark where she will join Daddy at Mikey’s game.

When her workday ends, Mommy will take bus No. 1, transfer to bus No. 6, pick up baby, wait for a bus No. 6 headed in the opposite direction, eventually transfer to bus No. 5, so that she and baby can meet the rest of the family at the game.

Afterward, the family will walk to, and wait for, bus No. 8 … transfer to bus No. 9 … and eventually reach the downtown rail station where everyone can enjoy a wonderful dinner.

Oh wait, too expensive. Instead, we’ll just ride the train back to the west side, find seats as riders start getting off at 20 stations, walk to our bus stop where we will eventually take bus No. 10 to within a 10-minute walk of our home.

Unless something unexpected happens, we will enjoy the walk and be home by the kids’ bedtime.

Oh, wait. I forgot about dinner … and working out tomorrow’s transportation plan. Except for Sally’s swim meet at a cross-town school, baby’s doctor’s appointment at Queen’s, and Mikey’s soccer practice, it will be a lot like today’s terrific schedule.

Oh wait, what about stopping off at grandma’s place to wish her a happy birthday? That could be a problem. We don’t expect to have money in the budget for an occasional side trip by taxi once the city raises our property taxes to pay for rail operations.

And to pay payments on all the rail bonds as they come due, the city will need to cut many corners, but that’s OK. I’m pretty sure my kids will get used to not having air-conditioning, clean seats, or any form of security in or around the rail stations.

The trains may be dilapidating, cement guideways crumbling, steel rusting, and escalators stalling, but at least my family will have rail.

Passenger Train Evacuation on Elevated Guideways

Following a major subway derailment in New York City, Michelle Matsuo asked many questions on a transit forum. I answered them below.

In Honolulu, if a train derails, will it hurtle off the guideway?  

Normally it will not and HART route alignment, unlike Chicago's L for example, does not have 90 degree turns. While unlikely, under extreme conditions a HART train can jump the tracks and fall off the guideway.

If there is a malfunction somewhere on the track, will a train get stuck between stations?

If a train breaks down, then it will be stuck. A following train may be commanded to push the broken down train to the nearest station.

If there is grid power loss, then nearby stations have generators to provide enough power to pull the train to the nearest station.

Do the windows open?  If they do, is it enough to keep people from cooking in the train?  

Typically windows do not open. There may be vents that can be opened.  Unless there's loss of grid power, the train may break down mechanically, but the a/c should still be functional. If the a/c dies, then people will need to be removed within a few minutes during hot conditions.

If they open, then will people be tempted to walk along the guideway, and will they get electrocuted by the third rail? 

There is an emergency walkway in the middle as shown in the picture below. In an emergency with smoke, extreme heat or other need to abandon the cab, people should be advised to exit on the narrow walkway, walk a short distance away from danger, then sit down and wait for rescue. In such extreme conditions, walking on the track may be necessary and can be safe as long as people stay well clear of the third rail (see gray line on the left side of the picture.) Given the design of HART guideway, if evacuation of the passengers is needed along the guideway, then the situation will be risky for several reasons.

What is the repair protocol for the trains and the tracks?

At frequent intervals there are switches (see sample train track switch below) so trains can go from the left track to the right track (and vice versa) and in effect "overtake" the disabled train. Eventually the control room has to decide the best time and method to deal with the problem, such as sending crew for on-site repair or pulling the broken down train to the yard.  A disablement that cannot be fixed quickly on site will cause delays to the operations.

The tracks should be inspected and maintained on a schedule so that they do not generate failures during operations. These are usually done off peak or at night.

If the track is neglected, as at the Washington Metro, then multi-day closures of the line may be needed if the condition is deemed unsafe or difficult to fix at night. It may be still be possible for HART to run trains on a single track while the other track is being repaired, but intervals between trains will be long.

Apparently this is an area that is lacking sufficient attention, as federal guidelines seem to date back to 1985: Recommended Emergency Preparedness Guidelines for Rail Transit Systems.

A 2014 technical article A new approach for modelling passenger trains evacuation

procedures states: "In most emergency situations, a successful evacuation and rescue can mean the difference between life and death. In passenger trains, the crew are responsible for passenger safety." HART trains have no crew on board.

April 2017 Poll: No More Willingness to Pay for HART Rail.

Middle Street Rail Station Will Be Built Over Water

Hawaii News Now reporter Rick Daysog investigated the odd choice of building the Middle Street station of HART rail over the flood prone Kalihi stream. I opined as follows:

• “At a minimum, the foundation problem will double in cost. And I'm talking minimum compared to dry land,” said rail critic and University of Hawaii civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros.
• Prevedouros said he expects the costs to be in the $60 to $70 million range due to the complexity of building over water.
• He said HART could have located the station further east on what is now a parking lot at First Hawaiian Bank's data center, but chose not to.
• First Hawaiian's former CEO was chairman of HART for years. Prevedouros and community activists question whether that influenced the decision to leave most of the First Hawaiian parking alone.
• "I don't know if it's taking care of their own or some other sensitivity to the property. Or it could be some malfeasance there,” Prevedouros said.
• Prevedouros and other rail critics said that a proposed forensic audit of HART’s operations would have shed more light on HART's decision to build the Middle Street station at its current location.
• Prevedouros and other rail critics said that a proposed forensic audit of HART’s operations would have shed more light on HART's decision to build the Middle Street station at its current location.
• “People who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. If you don’t learn from your mistake, how can you possibly improve in the future,” Prevedouros said.

Amid Funding Woes, Rail Officials Say Cost of Killing Project Could Be $3B

Quoted in Rick Daysog's story about HART rail not having enough funding.

Rail critics don't dispute the $3 billion shutdown costs – they just say completing the project will cost much more than that [the $3 billion suggested by HART.]

"That's really where the math begins to fall apart," said University of Hawaii Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros.

"You would need $7 billion to $10 billion to get to Ala Moana. ... Even in the worst-case scenario of abandoning the trains, the fixed guideway could still be used for a bus rapid transit system."

Off camera I offered this commentary:

We need to ignore the drama by mayor Caldwell and the hysteria of council member Pine. The rail has GET funding to 2027 and the ability to float bonds for emergency cash. They are crying wolf to take advantage of the fact that the local economy is booming.

What do you mean they need to satisfy the FTA? The FTA is co-responsible for this massive failure. They need to be sued, not appeased.

Dumb and Dumber: Why Honolulu Should Abandon Rail

Quoted in Dr. Randy Roth's and Cliff Slater's opinion in Honolulu Civil Beat: Dumb and Dumber: Why Honolulu Should Abandon Rail.

The city tells us that rail can be taken all the way to Ala Moana Center for $10 billion. Panos Prevedouros, chairman of the University of Hawaii Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, forecasts $13 billion.

If you believe the city, that additional cost of not stopping now would be $6 billion.  If you believe Dr. Prevedouros, it would be $9 billion. All to get a 1 percent traffic reduction?

I like their conclusion:

It is dumb to be out of pocket $4 billion and have nothing worthwhile to show for it. It is even dumber to spend another $6 billion to $9 billion for a 1 percent improvement in traffic at an annual financial cost of $130 million and permanent harm to our environment. That’s really dumb.

In this episode of Moving Hawaii Forward, Tim Apicella welcomes Dr. Panos Prevedouros, Professor of Transportation and Chairman of the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Hawaii (UH Manoa), to cover a variety of topics ranging from the Honolulu rail boondoggle, Hoopili traffic impacts, smart city street intersections and rapid transit.

Being Hyptonized by HART? Transportation Insights with Panos Prevedouros

HART on Fox News

I was included in the Fox News story featured today (March 17, 2017) about Honolulu's rail project.

"Honolulu's rail transit project is years behind schedule and billions over budget;" William La Jeunesse reports from Hawaii...

Troubled transit project a taxpayer boondoggle in paradise?

There is another, longer version that includes Pres. Trump:

How your tax dollars are being wasted on a railway in Hawaii

2017 Honolulu Rail: Advice to the Legislature

As the Hawaii Legislature is debating yet another round of requests by the "on time and on budget but no accountability in sight" mayor of Honolulu to extend the General Excise Tax Surcharge for rail, I offer these comments:

• The best option since the expected costs for rail's construction surpassed $7 billion was to stop and demolish it. But that's a political non starter for the current regime.

• The second best option to avoid a $10+ billion dollar hole is to stop the rail at Middle Street. This should be doable at a cost of about $8 billion. The Middle St. station is at the intermodal center of Honolulu, thus rail can seamlessly connect to a BRT circulator (Kalihi, Chinatown, downtown), and express buses to UH and Waikiki.

• The recently floated Middle Street to UH on-street light rail option will get us past a $15 billion cost and will result in heavy in-town congestion and many accidents. In some places, the lane loss will be severe because of the need for space for stations. Honolulu is the most lane deficient city over one million population in the U.S. (e.g., lane miles per capita).

• A rail system cannot operate without a rail yard. Mayor Mufi Hannemann started the rail out west because he could not find space for an in-town rail yard. Where's the space for a light rail yard anywhere between Middle St. and UH? We can't put it at Middle Street because the revised sea level rise and tsunami exposure maps have placed it inside an inundation zone.

• Very few commuters will choose the proposed on-street light rail in town because car, taxi and Uber is door to door service and over twice as fast. Note that the rail EIS clearly states that in year 2030 with rail, all trips between Aiea and Ala Moana  will be faster by car than by rail. I should add that there is nothing that light rail will do in town that BRT would not do better with more flexibility, and cheaper.

The Legislature should not approve any extensions of the GET and it should pass a bill directing the city to handle current and future deficits with its own resources. This offers hope for some accountability and cost containment. The Legislature should also reduce the state share of the GET from 10% to 2%. These are the only reasonable actions by politicians who claim that care for the people.

Honolulu Rail: From $4.6 B to $8.6 B In Eight Years. Now What?

My article "Honolulu Rail: From $4.6 B to $8.6 B In Eight Years. Now What?" with Cliff Slater and Randall Roth was published in New Geography, a national urban issues and news website.

With its official cost now having risen to $8.6 billion and a funding gap of $1.8 billion, both of which are certain to rise, Honolulu’s rail project will run out of money before construction reaches the downtown area, perhaps even before it reaches Middle Street.

The Federal Transit Administration says it will demand a return of all federal money if rail does not reach Ala Moana Center, which is possible only if the state Legislature or Honolulu City Council increase taxes dramatically:  An average family of five would have to pay more than $1,000 per year just to complete rail, according to the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. Once completed, the annual cost of operating and maintaining a safe and reliable rail system would require comparable tax payments each year for the lifetime of the rail system.

State and city lawmakers are reluctant to raise taxes so dramatically, but abandoning the project at this late date would make those who had been supporting it look like idiots.  They must be asking themselves, “How did we get ourselves into this mess?”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE in NEW GEOGRAPHY. Mahalo!