Panos Prevedouros on the Rick Hamada Program

For nearly three years now and on 40 or so Mondays per year I join political columnist and radio host Richard Hamada, III on KHVH 830 AM The Rick Hamada Program for a humorous, interesting and if I may say so, insightful, discussion on Honolulu city's issues and challenges relating to traffic and infrastructure, as well as on cost-effective ideas to mitigate these problems.

Here is a sample of the first four shows in 2010. Visit HonoluluTownPodcast.Com for more, including the "dark side", that is, Mayor Mufi's rail propaganda on the Mike Buck Show on KHVH.

• January 18, 2010
• January 25, 2010
• February 1, 2010(with Steve Boleyn)
• February 8, 2010

They lied about the ridership, they lied about the costs, so why wouldn’t they lie about the jobs?

Randall O'Toole's blog provides this sobering insight in Rail Jobs Overestimated.

Randall also predicted Honolulu's likely predicament with rail by analyzing the extension of a heavy rail line in Washington, D.C. in $6 Billion Down the Drain

The interesting thing is that the motivation and conclusion are the same for Washington and Honolulu! So taxpayers are on the hook for spending at least $5.2 billion — more likely $6 billion or more — for a rail line designed solely to benefit a few property owners and developers. But, as it turns out, even they won’t benefit from it.

Because rail is the 5% solution... 5% will use it, the remainder 95% will be stuck in horrendous congestion. And with more potholes and lane closures from water main breaks because the city's budget will be broke.

Is that a legacy worth leaving to our children?

Honolulu Rail's Cost, Route and Ridership Opinions

President's Day 2010 brought a lot of interesting perspectives on the table for Honolulu's $5.3 billion proposed elevated rail line. None of them favorable.

Dr. Kioni Dudley of Makakilo offers his perspective about the proposed rail in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. These sentences from his article are particularly insightful:

• This rail is not being built to solve current traffic problems. It actually is not even for us. It is being built to benefit developers.
• The traffic problems it will solve are future problems, yet to be caused by people yet to move into homes yet to be built.

Cliff Slater of HonoluluTRaffic.com covers the costs of the proposed rail in his article published in the Honolulu Advertiser. "The city's rail project is not merely the largest public works project in Hawai'i. It will be the fourth most expensive of any post-1950 metro area rail system in the nation, exceeded only by Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles."

The article is great, but why should anyone read past its opening paragraph? Stop the insanity! should be the response. The fourth most expensive system in the US, proposed for an island paradise in the middle of the Pacific, with less than one million people. The governor should stop this grave error and refuse any approvals for it.

Finally Shawn Hao of the Honolulu Advertiser uses soft language but reveals other parts of the insanity in yet another well-researched article.

• The benefit of the proposed rail: "Honolulu's planned rail line from East Kapolei to Ala Moana is expected to boost public transit use by about 1 percentage point by offering faster, more reliable service than buses." [Would you pay five billion to receive a 1% reduction? Follow Mufi and you will.]

• The dropping ridership of TheBus. [I have plotted the statistics that Hao quotes from the Hawaii Data Book below. Transit ridership is on a steady downhill. But we keep buying more buses...]

• The City's attitude: "We don't care what the Mainland is doing," Honolulu Transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka said.

Ainokea is right Mr. Yioshioka.

For the record, I see the numbers and Aikea.

Rail for Honolulu is Pure Fiction at a Huge Cost

The numbers in the table tell the story...



2009 Ridership Source