Car or Train? The Choice is Yours.

A picture is worth 1,000 words. 

Two pictures are worth 2,000 words.



Picture 1: A 2013 new mid-size car.
















Picture 2: Typical rush hour train commute.












 Any questions?

Island Heavy Rail Calamity: San Juan Repeats in Honolulu

Tren Urbano (or City Train) in San Juan, Puerto Rico is a perfect comparison with Honolulu's heavy rail:

1. Both are heavy rail systems with a very high cost per mile of rail line.
2. Both are systems on similar tourist/agriculture/military island communities.
3. Both are under Federal Transit Administration oversight.
4. Both received US federal funds.
5. Both have the same lead planner, Parsons Brinkerhoff.

I have written in the past about Tren Urbano:

• The Delusion and Deception in Rail Forecasts.
• Honolulu Rail Forecast 2 to 4 Times Higher than Actual Systems.
• Edinburgh Light Rail Halted. The Usual Suspects. The Usual Results.

Recently, Cliff Slater of HonoluluTraffic.com has developed a documented 2-page summary of the consequences of Tren Urbano such as:

• Huge escalation of construction costs (+74%).
• Huge escalation of combined bus and rail operation and maintenance cost after the line was opened (+250%).
• Downgrade of Puerto Rico’s bond ratings.
• Dramatic decline of total transit ridership (bus and rail) because the Tren cannibalized their bus. This is happening to TheBus now.
• It is now more than five years since its opening and Tren has not reached 50% of its opening year forecast ridership! (See link above where I provide comparisons that show HART ridership estimates are 2 to 4 times too high.)

Now all these terrible transit and financial outcomes occurred in San Juan where population is much higher, and average income and car ownership is much lower than Honolulu's (see 2000 data below). The Tren (like history) is repeating itself in Honolulu. The deliberate discounting of history by current elected officials and certain candidates is truly bewildering.

Enough with The Chinese Straddle Bus!

The Straddling Bus has attracted a lot of attention. I got an early video of this concept developed in China almost two years ago. Now I get two emails a week about it. At least!

Here's my take on it. It's a cool concept, but in reality, it is impractical and difficult as a retrofit. However, it can be adopted in new cities in China, India and other new, highly populated urban areas.

Challenges of the Straddling Bus include but are not limited to these: 

1.       Very few real world streets and traffic lanes are perfectly straight or level... traffic lanes are not built to airport runway standards. Therefore, at a minimum, expensive lane strengthening and re-alignment would be needed in order to operate this bus.
2.       How do we manage a crash of such a huge vehicle on the street? How do we tow it or lift it if it becomes sufficiently incapacitated?
3.       We do not know how "the common distracted driver" will react when a “tunnel” drives over him or her. Driver startling and related crashes will be an issue. This is why I proposed that the straddle bus runs as an Express Bus over existing BRT lines.
4.       The concept requires elevated stations which adds significantly to the cost because all elevated stations need to be ADA compliant. Obviously this will be an express service with stops at intervals of 1 km or longer.
5.       Overpasses, cross wires, sign and signal gantries, and trees will present significant challenges.
6.       Trucks, buses and other large vehicles have to be regulated out of the two lanes that go under the Straddling Bus. Writing the ordinance is easy. Enforcing it is not, and one unfamiliar trucker will block the Straddling Bus for a while.
7.       Receiving U.S. DOT certification to operate it on US city streets won’t be trivial.
 
As of mid-2012 not a single prototype exists. So let China build it, and then we can copy it. That'll be a first!

Old Tires into New Roads: Save Cost and Cut Noise

Engineers are designing quieter streets by adding rubber “crumbs”, reclaimed from shredded tires, to the bitumen and crushed stone used to make asphalt.

Enough tires are recycled in America each year to produce 20,000 lane-miles of road pavement mix, enough to re-pave about 0.5% of America's roads, according to Liberty Tire Recycling, a Pittsburgh firm that handles around a third of America's recycled tires.(1)

It is now possible to make rubberized asphalt less expensively than the traditional sort because rubber can partially replace bitumen, the binding agent used to hold the crushed stones together in ordinary asphalt. Bitumen is derived from oil, which means its price has risen over the past decade alongside that of crude oil. (1)

Discarded tires are cheap and are likely to get cheaper. In rich countries, around one tire is thrown away per person per year. (1)

In Hawaii we burn tires at the AES coal plant. This is much better than dumping them in a landfill or wasting fuel to send them out of state. But we should be making new roads with them.

(1) The Economist, When the rubber hits the road, June 2012.