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.

Chris Urmson Reflects On Challenges of Driverless Cars

Chris Urmson reflects on challenges, no-win scenarios and timing of driverless cars is a summary of six important points (written by Chuka Mui in Forbes) that summarize the current state of the art and the future likely path of driverless technology.

1. There is a lot more chaos on the road than most recognize.
2. Human intent is the fundamental challenge for driverless cars.
3. Incremental driver assistance systems will not evolve into driverless cars.
4. Don’t let the “Trolley Car Problem” [ethics] make the perfect into the enemy of the great.
5. The “mad rush” is justified.
6. Deployment will happen “relatively quickly.”

Most articles that cover Transportation as a Service or TaaS including this neglect to address the environmental trade-off... much less need for parking, but much higher VMT and energy use.

Death spiral for cars. By 2030, you probably won’t own one shows possible trends in costs and adoptions, but I think that it is way off the mark.