Critical Challenges in Transportation

I received a survey distributed to transportation committees of the National Academy of Engineering on future challenges that will affect transportation. My main responses are as follows.
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Please indicate to what extent you are interested in being engaged in activities related to the following critical challenges (not at all interested, not so interested, somewhat interested, very interested and extremely interested).

I was very interested or extremely interested in five out of the 14 critical challenges presented, as shown below along with my rationale.

Changing Characteristics of New Technologies & Innovation Environment (autonomous, shared, data-intensive): Potentially disruptive to traffic and freeway operations because we could get rid of most of roadside/ government data collection and tolling equipment, and rely on the big data generated by Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV).

Rapid Entry of Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs in Transportation Technology and Services: We’ve got to watch this one. If the "ITs" succeed in taking over a big chunk of transportation, their next goal will be controlling a big chunk of the government.

Changing Demographics, Values, Preferences, & Behaviors (age distribution disparities, evolving service expectations): Demographics are the most predictable among the future unknowns. But "safety behavior" will become a major challenge as driving progressively becomes a secondary task.

Climate Change (increased disruptive events, concern for sustainability): Major concern for sustainability but due to consumption and resource depletion, less due to climate effects… at least till 2050.

Challenges to Planning and Forecasting (forecasting under rapid change, addressing uncertainties, implementing new methods): 20+ year forecasts are exercises in political appropriation of funds and social engineering. Long term forecasts for facilities and services subject to a lot of possible automation aren't useful.

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.

The Onion on Transportation

Satirical publication The Onion has at least three priceless articles on transportation, as follows:

• November 29, 2000, Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

WASHINGTON, DC–A study released Monday by the American Public Transportation Association reveals that 98 percent of Americans support the use of mass transit by others.
...
Anaheim, CA, resident Lance Holland, who drives 80 miles a day to his job in downtown Los Angeles, was among the proponents of public transit.

"Expanding mass transit isn't just a good idea, it's a necessity," Holland said. "My drive to work is unbelievable. I spend more than two hours stuck in 12 lanes of traffic. It's about time somebody did something to get some of these other cars off the road."

Public support for mass transit will naturally lead to its expansion and improvement, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said.

"With everyone behind it, we'll be able to expand bus routes, create park-and-ride programs, and build entire new Metrolink commuter-rail lines," LACMTA president Howard Sager said. "It's almost a shame I don't know anyone who will be using these new services." READ MORE

• March 10, 2004, Urban Planner Stuck In Traffic Of Own Design

PITTSBURGH, PA—Bernard Rothstein, an urban planner and traffic-flow modulation specialist with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, found himself stuck in rush-hour traffic of his own design for more than an hour Monday.
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As Pittsburgh, America's steel capital, made the transition to high-tech and service industries in the 1980s, many thought its rusting, blighted urban landscape was obsolete. According to Rothstein, it was then that the Urban Redevelopment Authority, along with several private urban-planning firms, began the slow process of rethinking the city's roads, parks, and commercial and residential districts. Today, the city's designers are regularly lauded for their elegant, modern buildings and stuck in traffic of their own making for hours at a time. READ MORE

• February 5, 2018, MTA Reminds New Yorkers They Can Fucking Walk

NEW YORK—In response to numerous complaints regarding recent delays and route changes to the city’s public transportation system, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials at a press conference Monday reminded residents that they can fucking walk. “While we always do our best to avoid inconveniencing our customers, city residents should be aware that at any time, they are more than welcome to get off their asses and use their two fucking feet to reach destinations,” said MTA spokesperson Reggie Dawes, adding that the city’s comprehensive street grid system is easily accessible on foot ... READ MORE

Ban the Bike! How Cities Made a Huge Mistake in Promoting Cycling

Summary by Robert Poole of Lawrence Solomon's article. Solomon is an environmentalist whose career with Canada’s Energy Probe Research Foundation spans several decades.

"  Expanding the role of bicycle travel in urban areas has been government policy in developed nations for several decades. As Lawrence Solomon wrote in a recent piece in Canada’s Financial Post, “At no expense to taxpayers, the bicycle took cars off the road, easing traffic; it saved wear and tear on the roads, easing municipal budgets; it reduced auto emissions easing air pollution; it reduced the need for automobile parking, increasing the efficiency of land use; and it helped keep people fit, too.”

Yet despite these ostensible benefits, something of a “bikelash” is under way, in cities that include Amsterdam, several major cities in China, London, Singapore, and elsewhere. As The Economist reported in “The Bikes That Broke Free” (Dec. 23, 2017), one emerging problem is dockless bike-sharing systems that have plagued cities with bikes left all over the place. Amsterdam has banned such systems, and a growing number of Chinese cities have called a halt to any expansion of existing systems.

Solomon—once a strong advocate of urban bicycling—has concluded that bicycling today “is a mixed bag, usually with more negatives than positives. In many cities, bike lanes now consume more road space than they free up; they add to pollution as well as reducing it; they hurt neighborhoods and business districts alike; and they have become a drain on the public purse.”

Many of his examples come from Europe and Australia, where cities have been far more aggressive in promoting bicycle use than is typical in the United States. Transport for London has spent large sums to create a “cycle super highway” that has taken away traffic lanes and increased traffic congestion, sparking a significant backlash. Paris is spending €150 million on cycling infrastructure, Amsterdam €120 million just on bike parking spots, and Melbourne is under way on a $100 million cycling plan.

Negative health impacts are an unexpected consequence of aggressively expanded urban bicycling, Solomon notes. Congestion caused by taking away traffic lanes leads to idling traffic, which increases emissions. Cyclists are the most-exposed to PM2.5 soot from idling vehicles. A study by the London School of Medicine found that cyclists in London have 2.3 times more inhaled soot than walkers, because “cyclists breathe more deeply and at a quicker rate than pedestrians while in closer proximity to exhaust fumes.”

Although Solomon doesn’t mention cyclist deaths and injuries due to driving in close proximity to motor vehicles, my traffic engineer friends tell me (off the record) that they are appalled by the proliferation of bike lanes on major U.S. arterials that, because they are a vital supplement to the freeway system, increasingly have traffic signal timing aimed at providing rolling green lights and 40-45 mph speeds. They would much prefer that bicycles be kept away from such high-volume traffic arteries.

Solomon also points to concerns of local merchants who depend on metered street parking for their customers. In some cities, bike lanes have replaced street parking. The result is to replace a multi-function lane (traffic lane during AM and PM peaks, parking and truck delivery space at other hours) with “a single-function piece of under-used pavement.” Cities lose the former parking meter revenue, and in some cases have to build expensive parking structures nearby to replace the street parking.  "

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.)

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.]

Hawaii Wakes Up to Fake Missile Attack

Hawaii suffers from government unions which are the institutionalized protection (if not cultivation) of incompetence, laziness and un-accountability. These unions have become so big and powerful that most of the time succeed in electing politicians of their choosing, and control them to their liking. All this dysfunction lead to today's international embarrassment of the fake ballistic missile attack.

This must not be another day in paradise. Heads should roll. Preferably 38, one for each minute of absurdly incompetent failure to recall the alarm.

MidWeek, Old Friends, November 29, 2017

Mahalo to Jaimie Kim Farinas for my profile in Midweek. I'm on page 11.

On page 10, retired UH professor Dan Boylan covers the other "gearhead" professor, psychology professor Mark Hanson and his documentary film Hao Welo (Hot Metal) about car racing on Oahu.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”

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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.

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.

Duke Professor Henry Petroski on Future of Transportation

Thank you to Hawaii News Now for covering our guest, Duke University civil engineering professor and infrastructure historian Dr. Henry Petroski.

What Lies Beneath? Questions Raised About Infrastructure Below

Quoted in Gina Mangieri's "Always Investigating" extensive coverage of the problems with underground cavities and sinkholes in Kakaako, What lies beneath? As Kakaako develops up, questions raised about infrastructure below.

This broken culvert was discovered in spring 2017 and required emergency repairs.

...

Driving through Kakaako lately has meant navigating a maze of emergency road work after underground near-collapses and even sink holes have popped up in the area.

“We have so many streets,” explained Panos Prevedouros, a University of Hawaii civil and environmental engineering professor, “so many likelihoods of a potential sinkhole.”

That’s because Kakaako was once a low-lying marsh, perfect for fishponds, salt, rice, and taro, but trickier for roadways and urban development we see now.

UH experts Always Investigating spoke with say the buckling roads are giving us signs of three things to watch out for:

Age of infrastructure like underground drainage culverts;
Rising sea levels and groundwater; and
Soil problems common to coastal areas.
“We have clay and sand, things that are easy to dissolve,” said Prevedouros, “and then because we have intrusion of sea water, or perhaps pipes, storm drains, and even sewers breaking, all that has the effect of diluting the soil and creating all kinds of cavities which pose a major threat to public safety.”

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Experts agree the new structures are built to last and take all coastal-zone geographical challenges into account.

“The newer the buildings, the safer they are,” Prevedouros said. “The older buildings, they may start having problems with their foundations and they may have some tilting. Eventually they will have to have significant repairs and eventually demolition and reconstruction.”

...

“One of the side benefits of the rail project is they can help us with the geo-technical investigations they have done,” Prevedouros said, “and actually they can inform the neighborhood as to the stability of the soils, because they have to do it for their own foundations. Unless you plan to put a big rail or a big road in the area, you cannot simply start poking holes. It’s simply too expensive.”

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Rail Work Kicks off Airport Leg

Quoted in Jim Mendoza's coverage of rail construction Phase 3: Aloha Stadium to the airport and the Middle Street terminus.

University of Hawaii traffic expert Panos Prevedouros thinks that's where the contractors will face their biggest hurdle.

"When they hit Aolele Street there is essentially an S-curve, one right hand turn followed by a left hand turn which is quite challenging to do in infrastructure. There's also a lot of elevation. You have all the ramps from the freeway going to the airport," he said.

...

Kiewit's work on the first ten miles inconvenienced drivers and harmed businesses. Prevedouros expects STG's work to do the same..

"There will be disruptions and there may be at times major disruptions due to safety," he said.

Bob Poole: Facing Reality on a Shared-Vehicle Future

The cover story of the current issue of Thinking Highways takes on the question of whether an autonomous vehicle future will be largely one of shared AVs or individually owned AVs. Authors Bern Grush and Blair Schlecter rightly begin by asserting that "the ownership question is more important than automation." They also start by telegraphing their conclusion: "That private ownership will cease or become rare is wishful thinking—at least for the next half-century and for any country whose government will not ban ownership."
This conclusion surprised me, because I've read a lot that Bern Grush has written on AVs, and he's made it clear that he would prefer a future in which shared AVs largely win out over individually owned AVs. But that makes his honest look at the obstacles to that future all the more compelling.
Blair and Schlecter begin by contrasting the two predominant views of the future, as follows:

• According to the environmental and livability perspective, the ideal future would be based on vehicles that are automated, connected, electric, and shared (ACES).
  
• But the ideal AV future for most drivers would be vehicles that are comfortable, affordable, fast, and instantly available (CAFI).
  

And they point out that "The ACES-CAFI difference is the divide between what planners wish and consumers want. This gap is now very wide. It has to be closed in order to achieve the holy grail of having most people use 'mobility as a service' (MaaS) rather than owning their own vehicle."
The key to understanding the authors' conclusion is their clear-eyed assessment of serving "travelers with non-routine needs." They identify eight such categories, as follows.

1. Travelers with children, who may need car safety seats for young ones and will also be concerned about the sanitary condition of the vehicles;
   
2. Travelers who trip-chain, e.g., making multiple stops on the way to or from work;
   
3. Travelers who are disabled or elderly, and have difficulty getting in and out of standardized vehicles;
   
4. Baby boomer travelers, a huge cohort over the next several decades, who hope to age in place and will relish the ability to preserve their current mobility via owning an AV;
   
5. Travelers with pets or helper animals—another category not likely to be acceptable to the other passengers in a shared AV;
   
6. Travelers who smoke—ditto;
   
7. Travelers concerned about communicable diseases; and,
   
8. Travelers who need carrying and storage capacity, which includes not only shoppers but also service providers such as pool cleaners, plumbers, electricians, etc.
   

This should be a sobering message for those who glibly predict the imminent displacement of individually owner vehicles by Mobility as a Service. I close with a concluding thought from Grush and Schlecter:

"Currently, the ideal [shared] vehicle fleet would satisfy only a fraction of user trips. For every pet taken in a pet-free vehicle or smoker using a smoke-free car, a robo-ride user might be disappointed and encouraged to buy a car or join an exclusive-car club, diminishing the pool of riders for massive robo-fleets and the efficiency of massive, relatively uniform, coordinated fleets."

Kapiolani Blvd. Contraflow Lane Doing More Harm Than Good?

Quoted in Honolulu Civil Beat, Councilman: Contraflow Lane Is Doing More Harm Than Good, Honolulu, Natanya Friedheim, Oct. 11, 2017.

Panos Prevedouros, chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii, thinks the contraflow lane is useful to Koko Head-bound drivers in the afternoon, and would change his mind only if data showed the lane causes inefficiencies. 

In 2016 DTS published a report on the effect of contraflow lanes on major Honolulu roadways. The study recommended the city keep the Kapiolani contraflow lane. It also found that while the restrictions on left turns cause drivers to alter their route, it provides a safer driving environment.

“My feeling is that there was a purpose why we did it and the purpose has not changed,” Prevedouros said of the contraflow lane. “(If there is) credible data saying going back to three lanes is OK, I’m somewhat in disbelief, but you can trust the data.”

Hawaii’s Infrastructure Upkeep Ranks Last

Quoted in Honolulu Star Advertiser, Hawaii’s infrastructure upkeep ranks last in a financial website’s assessment, Nanea Kalani, October 10, 2017.

University of Hawaii civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros said that while Hawaii’s aging infrastructure tends to fare poorly in national rankings, he was surprised the state landed in the bottom spot. He said Hawaii typically earns a D+ or D- grade on the American Society of Engineers’ infrastructure report card, which comes out every four years and evaluates such areas as roads, bridges, dams, airports, harbors and public transportation.

“We’ve been doing poorly, but what is very surprising is that we came in dead last. Obviously, it’s not encouraging — we have hit rock bottom,” said Prevedouros, chairman of the Civil Engineering Department at UH-Manoa.

Within the categories of the “Falling Apart” report, Hawaii had the highest percentage of dams in the country with “high-hazard potential” ratings, at 93 percent. According to the National Inventory of Dams maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 124 of the state’s 133 dams have been assigned the hazardous classification, indicating that failure or mis-operation is likely to cause loss of human life and economic and environmental losses.

Close to 70 percent of the dams in Hawaii are on privately owned land. A spokesman for the Department of Land and Natural Resources, which runs the state’s dam safety program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“That’s almost a given when you have earthen dams,” Prevedouros said of the high-hazard risk ratings. “It’s very difficult to know how the structures are performing without careful inspection.” He said most of the islands’ dams are old and in need of more maintenance and upkeep to ensure public health and safety. He cited Nuuanu Reservoir as a particularly risky dam given its close proximity to residential areas.

“It’s pretty clear that the state and the city do not pay much attention to the condition and the operation of the roads,” Prevedouros said. “They’re both in poor quality and operating poorly with a lot of congestion. Clearly, now the numbers show we are in a lose-lose situation, where we are spending the money on the wrong projects, and the big categories that affect the well-being of the population are being neglected.”