2023's Greenest Cities in America

 My commentary in WalletHub's ranking of US green cities.

Honolulu ranked 2nd out of 100. Reno did well at 33.

Should cities invest in going green? What are the benefits?

Environmental and transportation solutions need to be tailored to an area's specific characteristics. Solutions for Tokyo are likely less suitable for Chicago. Cities with acute pollution issues should focus on smart city mitigations targeting pollution, such as electrification of bus fleets and incentives for EVs. Cities with acute traffic congestion should focus on smart city congestion mitigation, such as adaptive traffic signal management and intelligent time-dependent road pricing.

What policies or investments offer the biggest bang for the buck?

Smart traffic management for both arterial streets and freeways is the most common low-hanging fruit with moderate costs and substantial congestion and pollution reduction. Priority lanes and traffic signal preemption for Bus Rapid Transit are cost-effective smart city improvements for public transport.

How can state and local authorities attract renewable energy companies and other green businesses?

By incentivizing the electrification of transportation, substantial new demand is generated which creates a need for power supply, which in turn, makes the establishment of new renewable energy suppliers welcome. A conducive framework for power purchasing agreements needs to be in place.

What are some easy ways individuals can go green without much cost or effort?

Several smart home solutions are affordable and effective in reducing power and fuel consumption. Hybrid light-duty vehicles are presently the most cost-effective choice for commuting and highway travel. Unfortunately, recycling is more of a feel-good initiative than an effective green option given that less than 10% of what is put into recycling collections is actually recycled, reused, or repurposed.

In evaluating the greenest cities, what are the top five indicators?

A generic list may serve as a guideline, but each city needs to focus on its most acute issues and deploy smart solutions that its taxpayers can afford, for mitigations.

In Defense of Plant Based Meat

My Letter to the Editor

Reno Gazette Journal

January 12, 2022

"No Future in Manufactured Meat" by Jim Hightower (RGJ 1/2/22) will be one of the most erroneous editorial opinions this year. The article is peppered with scientific jargon to scare the reader about substances in plant-based meat. But these substances can be found in many foods consumed routinely. Hightower states a hyperbolic past cost, but today a 4oz plant-based meat hamburger putty is about $2 at Costco. 

Hightower asks, “who needs a meatless burger?” Everyone who likes meat does! The cattle industry is the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gasses worldwide, a major source of climate change that affects everyone. In June 2020, UC-Davis research estimated that livestock are responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gasses. 

Based on a large US-based study by the Harvard School of Public Health, in 2012 the National Institutes of Health informed that red meat is linked to increased risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers: “one additional serving per day of unprocessed red meat over the course of the study raised the risk of total mortality by 13%”. 

Last month, the White House stated that high meat prices are caused by four monopolists in the US meat-processing controlling 85% of the market: Beef prices in November were up 21% from a year ago and climbing. 

Other benefits of increased substitution of red meat by plant-based meat include the reduction of animal slaughter, the reduction of water and land pollution from massive amounts of animal waste, and reduced handling, transportation and energy consumption because plant-based products are produced closer to the consumer.

Feels Good to Be Ahead of Fellow Researchers

This 2019 paper concluded as follows:

"HEVs are rapidly emerging as a potential alternative to the existing state of transportation due to their lower petroleum consumption and toxic emission. Strict CO2 emission laws and increased public awareness will propel HEVs to be the future of road transportation." (Singh, K.V., Bansal, H.O. & Singh, D. J. Mod. Transport, Springer (2019) 27: 77, doi.org/10.1007/s40534-019-0184-3)

We reached a similar conclusion and for the same reasons four years earlier!

The HEV has the second lowest societal and consumer LCC compared with all other six vehicle types. Its ranking makes it a strong candidate as a transitional technology. Its low LCC resulted from the low emission impact cost, the improved fuel efficiency and the low manufacturing cost. In the short term, there are no barriers that should be overcome to increase the penetration of HEV in the market.  (Mitropoulos, L. and P. D. Prevedouros, Emissions and Cost Model for Urban Light Duty Vehicles. Transp. Res. Part D: Transport and Environment, Elsevier (2015) 41: 147-159, doi: 10.1016/j.trd.2015.09.024.

Dramatic Oil Based Sea Level Rise Is Not Possible

A major article on climate change published in the science journal NATURE concluded as follows:

"The study concludes that a moderate amount of warming, on the order of 2°C, or 3.6°F, sustained for millennia, would cause significant melting of the interior ice that lies below sea level in this region [Antarctica], raising global sea levels by 3-4 meters, or up to 13 feet."

However, there will be no oil and fossil fuels left to burn a few hundred years from now. See graph of oil reserves from The Economist, below. In addition, technology moves fast towards cleaner options, and heavy polluters like China and India cannot afford to burn coal uncontrollably because their large cities are already suffocating; more on this at The Future of Oil. 

Therefore, oil based global warming over millennia is not possible!

Hybrid Cars Do Well in Assessments of the Environmental Impact of Urban Vehicles

This is my contributing brief as the newest member of the invitation-only Scholars Strategy Network.

Transportation uses vast amounts of energy and has a major environmental impact. As a result, rigorous assessments of the sustainability of various modes of moving people and goods are critically important.

Alternative fuels and electric vehicles are two major developments that can help transportation planners reduce the detrimental environmental impact of transportation. After many studies, it turns out that the highest environmental-friendly scores go to hybrid diesel-electric buses, while the lowest scores go to vehicles reliant on gasoline internal combustion engines. Among all passenger vehicles, fuel cell and hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles have the highest sustainability indexes.

READ MORE

Behaviour of Lithium-Ion Batteries in Electric Vehicles

Hot off the press and pleased to be coauthor of Chapter 5 of the newest book on lithium batteries for transportation. I co-authored this article with my 2011 PhD student Dr. Lambrosw Mitropoulos.

Our chapter is titled Conventional, Battery-Powered, and Other Alternative Fuel Vehicles: Sustainability Assessment.

ABSTRACT:   The substantial impacts of transportation on environment, society, and economy strongly urge the incorporation of sustainability into transportation planning. Major developments that enhance transportation sustainability include alternative fuels, electric drive and other novel technologies for vehicle propulsion. This chapter presents a sustainability framework that enables the assessment of transportation vehicle characteristics. Identified indicators are grouped into five sustainability dimensions (environment, technology, energy, economy, and users). The method joins life cycle impacts and a set of quantified indicators to assess the sustainability performance of seven popular light-duty vehicles and two types of transit buses. The hybrid diesel electric bus received the highest sustainability index and the internal combustion engine vehicle the lowest. Fuel cell and hybrid electric vehicles were found to have the highest sustainability index among all passenger vehicles. The sustainability performance of some new technologies currently suffers from limitations in engine and battery performance, comfort and convenience, and availability of charging stations.

26 UH Engineering Undergrads Achieve Professional Certification

More than two dozen students in the civil and environmental engineering program (CEE) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa became Envision Sustainability Professionals (ENV SPs) before the end of the fall 2017 semester.

All the students were enrolled in the College of Engineering‘s CEE 444 course on infrastructure sustainability.

To become ENV SPs, they passed a comprehensive assessment of sustainability credits that are applicable to any type of infrastructure project, including new projects and expansion or rehabilitation projects.

The exam was developed at Princeton University and is administered by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.

Encouraged by discussions at the National Civil Engineering Department Heads Conference last summer, Civil Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros contacted local ENV SP engineer Jon Young and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design engineer Amber Takenouchi about presenting lectures to his CEE 444 students.

Both had facilitated an envision course in February and were willing to help. They created a 40-question homework assignment and, with Prevedouros, prepared and presented three lectures.

The students were given a choice. If they took the envision exam and passed it by December 12, it would stand in for their final exam. Prevedouros emphasized to the students that this would be a personal decision to build up their own records and not a course requirement (the final exam is 30 percent of the grade in CEE 444).

Nearly all of the students chose to take the exam. Prevedouros was ecstatic at the results.

“I thought that this addition to the course would have been a small success if about a dozen students tried the exam and maybe half of them passed it,” he said. “It would have been a clear success if just ten passed, but 26 of our undergraduates now have a professional certification before they actually have their degrees.”

[Originally posted by University of Hawaii: 26 UH engineering undergrads achieve professional certification, on December 27, 2017.]

Recycle or Incinerate? The Battle of the Blue Bins

Quoted in Honolulu Civil Beat article on Recycling and Waste to Energy issues.

• Panos Prevedouros, chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii Manoa, said burning recyclables would be better for the city’s pocketbook and the environment.
• The way Prevedouros sees it, more trash burned at H-POWER also means less fossil fuel consumed use to produce electricity.
• “We are resource-poor when it comes to generating electricity,” Prevedouros said, adding he thinks Honolulu should even consider importing trash from neighbor islands for incineration.
• Glass could also be crushed and mixed with asphalt to create “glassphalt” for road construction, said Prevedouros.

Hawaii's Coastal Highways

Sea level rise and extreme weather events can wash out portions of coastal highways.  This has happened several times on Oahu and many other locations.  With increasing population and traffic volume, the temporary loss of lanes or entire roadway cross sections becomes a major threat to public health and safety, let alone a threat to daily life and long term economy. Coastal roadway segments must be made more resilient to weather effects and reliable for operations regardless of storm surges.

As I outlined in a report that was the top story on Hawaii News Now (on Feb. 17, 2016--also see note 1) "Long-term solution for erosion along Kamehameha Highway won't come cheap", in general terms, the solution may come in three options, each one more suitable to various coastal highway segments (i.e., not one size fits all.)

1. Maintain the location of the current highway and elevated it by, say, 10 ft. This is a land protection option similar to those in low lying countries such as The Netherlands.
2. Relocate the highway several hundred feet inland and at a higher elevation.
3. Keep the highway largely as is and add jetties, lagoons and breakwaters to widen the coastline and isolate the highway from the forces of the ocean.

The first option requires no transportation work, but it has tremendous impacts by separating the community from the coast and a host of drainage issues. However, this "walling" option may be necessary for the effective protection of property and lives along specific sections, and at locations were current and other ocean forces make the deployment of option 3 impractical.

The second option attempts to develop a new highway in mostly agricultural, Hawaiian homestead or pristine nature areas, all of which are likely to generate insurmountable community and environmental impacts. However, there may be short segments where this option is economical and the impacts are small or moderate. For example a re-alignment of Kam. Hwy. away from Turtle Bay has been outlined in Hawaii DOT plans. Also for this option, the highway may be elevated which minimizes the disruption to lands underneath but it increases costs and reduces accessibility. Low height elevated segments may be necessary for wetland protection.

The third option, jetties and artificial ponds, is the most attractive because it protects the highway and communities, substantially reduces beach erosion and at some places adds beach or ocean recreation space. Its downside is some destruction of marine environment but some of this may be offset by the creation of traditional Hawaiian fishponds. This option also has the potential to be combined with wave action or high/low tide power generation by devices at key locations of the ponds (i.e., tidal power plants). An approximation of the proposed ponds is the lagoons at Ko'olina pictured below.

Notes
1: Two weeks later, on February 29, 2016, another segment of the same road failed due to waves, as covered in: Contraflow to last another week as crews shore up second stretch of crumbling highway.

Honolulu's Recycling Plan Needs Important Revisions

Throughout my campaigns for mayor of Honolulu I focused on the flawed recycling efforts of Honolulu. Huge amounts of effort and fuel are wasted to recycle things instead of safely burning them and making free electricity for Honolulu.

Back in 2013 I developed a pictorial guide for Honolulu.

Later in 2013, a graduate student of mine and I published an article in the Pacific Business News which revealed that "Waste to energy is superior to any other technology in the long term."

Then in July 2015 HONOLULU magazine quotes me about a dozen times in their detailed article Should Honolulu’s Recycling Program Go Up in Flames?

“Trash is treasure,” says Panos Prevedouros, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UH Mānoa and a former mayoral candidate. “Not only do you make energy, you remove something that is bad.” Prevedouros adds that a waste-to-energy plant can make “serious money” charging tipping fees, selling its electricity to the utility and harvesting the valuable metals for what he calls “a win-win-win” situation: The plant helps the state meet its renewable energy goals...

Paper and cardboard are heavy and hard to compact further for efficient shipping to recycling plants; they burn beautifully, and are depressed in price. “Paper, oh, my God, it’s really perverse to recycle. We’re losing the opportunity to make energy, and we’re wasting more fossil fuel to ship it somewhere else. If you have paper, put it in the gray bin,” says Prevedouros.

Made-in-China May be Costly for the Planet: The Case of Solar Panels

A team from Northwestern University lef by prof. Fengqi You performed a comprehensive evaluation called life cycle analysis on solar panels. LCA accounts for the energy used to make a product including the energy to mine raw materials, the fuel to transport the materials and products, the electricity to power the processing factory, and the cost and impacts of most resources required. This yields a more complete picture of costs environmental impacts for making and using solar panels.

The primary differences, the researchers found, are the less stringent enforcement of environmental regulations in China coupled with the country’s more coal-dependent power sector. “It takes a lot of energy to extract and process solar-grade silicon,” says co-author Seth Darling. “And in China, that energy tends to come from dirtier and less efficient energy sources than it does in Europe.”

Two Reasons Why Sun and Wind Don't Work

One may ignore all the fluff about the talented comedian (but energy clueless) Jimmy Fallon and go straight to the second page of this article in Forbes for the reasons why sun and wind energy is unsuitable and often counter-productive. The numbers from the heavily invested in sun and wind Germany are startling.  One can't run an industry, city or country with such swings in energy supply!

Sometimes sun and wind in Germany can cover 25% of the demand for electricity.  Other times they supply only 2.5%.  Overall in a year these renewable sources of energy can be "dependent upon" to produce only about 5% of the country's needs despite the hundreds of billions invested.  In fact Energiewende is expected to cost close to $1.4 billion by 2040!

Desalination Works but It's Expensive

A recent large deployment of desalination in San Diego is useful to Hawaii where Oahu and Maui may approach the need for manufactured potable water in the next 20 years or so if population and tourism growth trends continue and appreciable sea water rise continues (e.g., 0.32 cm water rise was noted between 1993 and 2013, which, if remains steady, results in 32 cm or 13 inches mean sea level rise every 100 years.) Recall that as sea water rises it makes larger parts of the aquifer brackish, thus unusable for drinking and irrigation.

The project in San Diego was smartly located right next to a large powerplant which means that a comparable location for Oahu would be next to the Kahe powerplant and Electric Beach.  This is because desalination requires vast amounts of both water and electricity, and pumping requirements can be reduced by taking advantage of the seawater pumped into a pre-existing powerplant.

The deployment in San Diego is currently under construction. It is designed to produce 50 MGD of water, that is 50 million gallons per day. This amount of clean water can supply 112,000 typical single family homes or more than one third of the current s.f. homes on Oahu.  This would be the upper limit of desalination plant that would be needed for Oahu. This plant would require more than 30 MW of electricity which is what the H-Power plant was producing for decades, before its boiler capacity was doubled in mid-2013.

The budgeted price of San Diego's Carlsbad desalination plant?  One billion dollars including a 10-mile distribution pipe, if the project is completed on time and on budget in early 2016.  Come 2020, Oahu may need to start budgeting for such a large project.

Household Electricity and Solar Panels

This brief analysis is a simple case of a picture is worth one thousand words.

The GREEN line is our house's monthly electricity consumption which averages about 450 kilo-watt-hours or KWh.

The ORANGE line is our house's monthly solar panel electricity production which averages about 250 KWh.

To make them directly comparable both averages were normalized to the level of 100. Also these were further smoothed to account for HECO's accounting variability because some monthly bills include as few as 28 days or as many as 33 days. So power consumption was estimated on a per day basis and then converted to a monthly basis.

What is there to observe?  Simply that the solar (renewable electricity) production profile is not at all in tune with our household's monthly electricity consumption. Humid days call for more A/C use, Christmas celebrations call for more lights and cooking, summer months take us to vacations or time away from home, but the sun's trajectory and cloud density do not follow any of these habits.

The lesson on a grand scale is that a city, state or country cannot possibly depend on renewables such as wind and sun for more than a small fraction such as 10% for its power generation because of significantly negative productivity, health and safety implications.

One must be a great fool to believe that the large deviations shown in the graph (which can be extreme on an hour-by-hour basis) can be covered by ... batteries.

On the other hand, renewables from geothermal, nuclear and tidal wave harnessing are in a different class and can offer base-load reliability that covers the fluctuating needs of a large population concentration. But even them they need supplementation by true base load power generation from nuclear, coal, oil or natural gas power plants. As mentioned in an earlier article, waste-to-energy for Maui, natural gas for Oahu and geothermal power plant development on the Big Island are best near term choices for Hawaii.

The Public and Private Versions of Solar Power, in Brief

Private version: The installation of photovoltaic panels to generate electric power utilizes unused rooftops and provides free building cooling. (Y. Hata Co., Honolulu, HI.)







Public version: The installation of photovoltaic panels to generate electric power wastes productive land, wastes taxpayer funds, and lies about sustainable green jobs; there aren't any. (DHHL, Kalaeloa, HI)

AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 32 – Here’s Wishing for a Helmet Law and Jones Act Repeal

The magic of Fibonacci numbers. Simple series. Fascinating creations!

Biologist Mohamed Hijri brings to light a farming crisis no one is talking about: We are running out of phosphorus. (TED talk in French, subtitled.)

 

As 2013 comes to a close it is worth remembering that Honolulu's $5.2 Billion rail project is a testament of the power of government and special interests to get their way.  The Honolulu Civil Beat's multiple polls over the years show that the rail project never had a public approval of over 35%. Here’s a link to a slideshow summary I presented at the ADC conference in Washington, D.C. in mid-October.

My first transportation wish for 2014: Hawaii needs a motorcycle helmet law. It’s a no brainer! Just read these few lines about the impact of injuries of motorcyclists without helmets: “The helmet-less are distinctive, says Dr. Lori Terryberry-Spohr: they suffer ‘diffuse’ internal bleeding and cell death across large areas. Such patients typically run up $1.3 million in direct medical costs. Fewer than a third work again. A study of helmet-less bikers admitted to one large hospital, cited by the Centers for Disease Control, found that taxpayers paid for 63% of their care.”

My second transportation wish for 2014: Hawaii gets an exemption from the Jones Act which artificially inflates the cost of living for all of us. BusinessWeek observes that “when large container ships filled with bicycles and sleeper sofas leave China for the U.S., they don’t stop in Hawaii to unload cargo bound for that state before continuing to Los Angeles or Seattle.” Unfortunately status quo politicians such as Hirono, Schatz and Hanabusa are strong supporters of the Jones Act. And fake energy solutions. They cost Hawaii dearly … expensive gas, expensive power, expensive groceries, and extra taxation on everything for the rail.  Other than that, Hawaii Democrats are all about support for the little guy ;)

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for 2014!

AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 31 – Senator Schatz is Wrong about Wind Energy

A TV ad started last week shows U.S. Senator Brian Schatz promoting “energy that’s moving Hawaii forward. Senator Brian Schatz is leading the effort to harness our incredible wind energy potential with tax credits to grow wind energy production that would create thousands of new jobs and clean energy.”

Hawaii residents from Waianae to Kahuku, from Molokai to Lanai, and everywhere in the between dislike wind turbines. Senator Schatz promotes more taxpayer monies for special interests who are peddling a technology that cannot make it on its own. He is wrong for the following reasons.

Independently from any politics, a Punahou and UH-Manoa graduate student and I conducted detailed research on cost effective energy solutions for Hawaii, by examining all major energy sources available to Hawaii.  A summary of our work was accepted by Pacific Business News last month, and was published this week: Making the Case for Liquefied Natural Gas.

Our research concluded that wind and solar power plants are ineffective; they require multimillion dollar subsidies. The solar energy in our research was the power plant type that consumes land in order to produce some daytime electricity, similar to the 36 acres wasted by the Pohoiki plant at Kalaeloa to produce only 5 MW!

On the other hand, solar photovoltaic panels have been locally accepted by thousands of homeowners and businesses. Rooftop PV is an incremental, distributed power source with near zero visual or other negative impacts for Hawaii, as I explained here: Big Rooftop Solar Panels Make Sense in Hawaii - without Any Subsidies! Rooftop PV supports dozens of local small businesses.

Recently BMW decided to locate its electric vehicle chassis assembly in a region of Washington State because the local electricity rate is 3 cents (!) per kilowatt-hour.  HECO’s rate on Oahu is over 33 cents and thanks to Senator Schatz’s flawed advocacy, our electricity costs will increase, and Hawaii will become increasingly uncompetitive.

I urge Senator Schatz to review the three page summary of our research titled The Next 100 MW Power Plant for Oahu and modify his views about renewable energy. America’s future cannot be supported by intermittent, unreliable and expensive energy.

Hawaii does not need unsightly turbines and cannot afford their cost and flaky reliability. And please stop bragging about the jobs. Hawaii has fewer than 50 turbines and fewer than 50 people are located here to manage them … that is, when the turbines are not down due to fires or other self-inflicted damage.

Let Them Eat Cake

Honolulu's public is starved for traffic congestion relief. The power elite has responded with "let them have rail."

To many citizens and to most elected officials it is clear that if the government provides overhead rail, people stuck in traffic congestion will take it. "How come you don't support the rail?" They ask me. "Haven't you seen the traffic from Kapolei to the UH?"

Planners, politicians and hired spinsters have spend a lot of time and money in trying to convince people that rail is a solution to traffic congestion, jobs, development, the environment, etc. They've made many false promises. People are desperate for some relief to their daily commute after all the taxes they pay. It's easy to sell false hope.

Having lost most arguments about traffic congestion relief, environmental benefits and "thousands of new jobs," the propaganda has shifted to "transit oriented development" or TOD.

Planners, politicians and hired spinsters are extolling the mostly imaginary virtues of TOD.  Banks, developers and contractors are salivating (and bankrolling politicians) over those TODs because they are indeed, Taxes Offered to Developers to develop subsidized properties around transit stations. By the way, TOD needs Transit not Rail. Buses on express lanes will do fine, at a much lower cost than rail and transit buses offer direct connections to many locations because they are flexible.

There is little doubt that drivers and passengers dislike bumper to bumper traffic. However, they need their vehicle to meet the obligations of their daily life in space and time. Have you seen city administration and HART officials going places on TheBus?

People need and consume electricity in Hawaii. Electricity in Hawaii costs over 300% the mainland average. Have you seen people gathering wood to cook and heat water? No? Expect a similar reaction to rail. Very very few will switch to it.

John Brizdle recently commented: "It will be very hard to get car commuters to get out of their cars to ride rail. They will have to give up their comfortable seats, door to door service, snacks, drinks, Bluetooth phone conversations and then stand-up on rail averaging 27 miles per hour."

Indeed, the reality is this. If you build it, they won't come. Here is the evidence: During the last decade, the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dollars in new rail systems and upgraded transit buses. Did transit share grow? No! Look at the U.S. Census data below. The share of mass transit is stuck at or below 5%. All the rest of urban travel is done by car, carpool, bike, walk, or telecommuting.

When the 2010 U.S. Census numbers came out in 2011, the American Public Transit Association gloated that mass transit ridership grew by 8.5% in the ten years between 2000 and 2010. True, but in the same decade the U.S. population grew by 9.7%. Clearly despite large expenditures and expansions, mass transit usage does not even keep up with population growth, let alone gaining share to provide any relief to roadway congestion.

No matter how sleek and expensive the new transit offerings are, less than 5% of the travelers chose them. Year after year. But government and politicians support these boondoggles. Why?  Follow the money.

Professor Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University has proved that government rail projects are by far the most fraught with deception and delusion among all large infrastructure projects:

• Deception means that the proponents lie to their constituents. Basically most cost and ridership forecasts for rail are very wrong. Costs are stated too low. Ridership is stated too high.
• Delusion means that the rail proponents believe that their project is better and different than all the failures of the past, including the national evidence shown above. 

This history of public trust and public funds mismanagement is repeating in Honolulu. There is little doubt that Honolulu Rail will be much like the Tren Urbano of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was finished in 2006, almost 100% over budget and its ridership level has not even reached 50% of the forecast!

Rail projects are tax-payer financed and government-controlled. They take a decade or more to complete and in the end, like Puerto Rico, nobody is held accountable for the gross errors and lies. In addition to "history repeating itself" in Honolulu, I have 10+1 reasons why I do not support the Honolulu rail:

1. Rail is the 1% solution to Oahu's traffic congestion problem.
2. Spending over five billion dollars for a non-solution is unethical.
3. The original and the current system are very different. Offering the public 41% less for a 73% higher price is a lie and a breach of public trust.
4. Construction will cause critical lane closures and result in debilitating congestion for a decade.
5. TheBus will be changed from a core operation to a feeder operation hurting those that need its service the most.
6. Rail comes with a high security risk. It's a magnet for shooters, suicides, groping, robberies, drug trafficking...
7. Rail makes Honolulu less resilient during and after a natural disaster.
8. Cannot afford it. Hawaii is fifth worst state in the country in pension and health benefit funding liability.
9. City budgets will be crushed by the union raises, the EPA sewer consent decree and the pension liabilities. Adding the rail construction cost-overruns will lower credit rating and ability to borrow and pay debt and other obligations. This is a long spelling for bankruptcy.
10. During 2008 elections the ratio of pro-rail lies to anti-rail information in advertising media was more than 10 to 1. Taxpayer monies were used to support rail and, indirectly, rail-supporting politicians. That election process was indeed unethical. This repeated in 2012 with a smear campaign against Gov. Cayetano.

Last but not least, Honolulu is beautiful. Overhead rail is ugly and noisy. Installing overhead rail in beautiful Honolulu is a crime.

Rail is politics. Hawaii politics is all about Democrats. They proclaim their care for the little guy but they are cutting the little guy's bus, degrade his quality of life and cost of living with ever worsening traffic congestion, and raise the tax for one million little guys by several billion dollars for the benefit of capitalist interests!

Such politics take us back to eighteenth century France.  Instead of cheap roads for the 80% of travelers they offer pricy rail for the 6% who ride transit... "Let them eat cake" 250 years later.

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Postscript: Visit John Pritchett's collection of rail cartoons. Although the rail is no joke, his cartoons are a humorous take of the history of Hawaii's biggest fiasco ever.