Can we get 80% federal funding for HOT lanes?

The Federal Highway Administration provides 80% of the funds for all highways designed as a part of the NHS, the National Highway System. The feds paid 80% of the H-1, H-2 and H-3 freeways. I am 99% sure that the feds also paid 80% of the Kalanianaole widening from 4 to 6 lanes from Aina Haina to Hawaii Kai. The Pali and Likelike highways are also part of the NHS.

The new reversible HOT lanes can indeed be part of the NHS and play a significant role as an emergency backbone in a disaster. They can receive the standard 80% FHWA funding, if approved by the FHWA. Both the transit and highways branches approve projects on a competitive basis and there are more projects than funds, but with a rolling horizon of 10 to 20 years, most projects get funding.

Why did Tampa do its reversible express lanes (REL) alone with state and county funds? Because this enabled them to finish the project in under 7 years from concept to open-for-traffic. It would have taken over 11 years if the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority that developed the REL had decided to seek federal funding. The federal oversight and bureaucracy adds several years to project delivery, for both road and transit projects.

In July 2008, US DOT secretary Peters released 15 billion dollars in guarantees for private financiers to develop public-private partnerships (PPP) for the explicit purpose of building HOT lanes to decongest the main cities of the nation. The first project to successfully apply and receive funding from this extra source was the Capital Beltway in Washington DC, where the Virginia DOT is building 14 miles of HOT lanes, 2 lanes per direction.

A Good Way to Spend Five Billion in Honolulu

Someone asked me this: If you save Oahu the five plus billion dollars that rail would cost in local taxes, how would you spend it? Here is my response.

Five Billion Dollars is a mighty sum and lots of good things can be done with it. Recall that five billion is 5,000 million. Also recall that Charlotte, North Carolina built its light rail with 450 million dollars. Less than $100 million of the rail system's cost burdened the city’s taxpayers; the rest was contibuted from state and federal resources.

Honolulu plans to do the same for a cost of over 6,400 million dollars for 30 miles of rail, with five billion dollars of tax burden for Oahu’s 400,000 taxpayers. The city recently announced at a City Council session that there will be budget shortfalls for both construction and maintenance. They said that budget shortfalls will be covered by increased property taxes.

I estimate that property taxes need to increase by at least 40% to cover construction and operation shortfalls as soon as the GET 4.5% sunsets to 4.0% in 2022.

I do not plan to increase any taxes in four years. My budget plan for investing five billion dollars of local taxes on local infrastructure is as follows:

1. Assuming that the already expended $0.5 billion has been spent on good and necessary work, then $1.0 billion to bring our sewers to a B+ state.
2. About $1 billion for two trash factories that will allow us to close Waimanalo Gulch landfill and generate valuable recyclables with only 2% if trash being actual waste. We can actually afford to ship this little residual waste to mainland landfills. This billion also includes monies to convert the WG landfill into a methane and photovoltaic energy producing unit.
3. About $1.5 billion to bring city pavements to a C+ condition. Right now we are at a solid F, since Honolulu ranks 3rd bottom out of 67 cities with a population of 500,000 or more in road quality.
4. About $0.5 billion for traffic operations quick (but effective) fixes such as traffic light synchrolization, underpasses, spot lane additions and other localized bottleneck fixes.
5. About $0.5 billion on general community welfare including fixes to parks, beaches, athletic complexes, libraries, pools, and playgrounds.
6. And $0.5 billion matched by a federal and private partnership to form a $1.0 billion financing block to build 10-12 miles of reversible high occupancy express lanes from the H-1 and H-2 freeway merge to Airport, Kalihi and Iwilei which will solve the supermajority of the congestion issues on the Leeward corridor.
   

For more details and interesting movies and posts about my ideas and 21st century solutions, please visit my main campaign site at panosforprogress.com and its HQ (digital headquarters) section.