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.”

Rail Critic Calls HART’s Financial Recovery Plan Shallow

Quoted in KITV report by Catherine Cruz on HART's "recovery plan" report to the FTA.

"It's the same people trying to make the soup, and nobody's a chef, " said University of Hawaii Engineering Chairman Panos Prevedouros.

The outspoken rail critic poured over the financial rail recover plan as it was released online Monday.

He essentially concluded its another recipe for disaster.

He called the revised plan "shallow," lacking real meaningful data.

"There are not major updates, there is no information about how to make things better. Value engineering, mistakes we made, how we are going to fix those mistakes we made? Everything is dispatched in four pages. This is not really a sincere effort," Prevedouros said.

Prevedouros was also disappointed the report didn't include updated ridership numbers.

He isn't assured the new CEO Andrew Robbins who he called a train sales man is the right choice to complete the most complicated leg of the rail route.

"What does he know about multiple construction projects with big geo-technical problems, real estate problems and all kinds of issues of doing big construction in a very dense urbanized area?  Nothing!” said Prevadouros.

At last week’s HART meeting, Robbins praised the changes made in the last year under interim CEO Krishniah Murthy.

He did also acknowledge the risks in this last and most complicated leg of the 20-mile route and the expectation that HART will watch every penny given the directive from the state.

"We have to step up our game and perform we have been given this additional funding and we have to perform on that budget and that schedule,” said Robbins.

Prevedouros laments the loss of institutional knowledge following the departure of key HART personnel and isn't sure what to make of the defection of construction point man Brennon Morioka to Hawaiian Electric during this critical path of construction and under grounding of utilities.

It remains to be seen if the plan will pass muster with the Federal Transit Authority, but Prevedouros believes we need to do better to explain how we are going to save not millions, but billions.

"If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are bound to repeat them and they will, Prevedouros said.

The Great Train Robbery

"The now nearly 50-year experiment with transit subsidies has fallen well short of expectations. A more practical result could be obtained by better prioritization of funding to meet the greatest needs in the metropolitan reality as it currently exists. . . . In the cities without legacy cores, and in the suburbs of cities with legacy cores, we should focus on the needs of those unable to provide their own mobility. This is far more socially responsible than adding expensive services such as urban rail that have shown virtually no evidence of reducing driving alone. . . . In the vast majority of markets, transit has not lured drivers from their cars to relieve congestion or improve air quality. And it is wasteful to commit transit funds to achieve purposes other than improved transportation, such as city-building or place-making. Transportation is too important to economic growth and prosperity to be subject to utopian notions."

–Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, "The Great Train Robbery: Urban Transportation in the 21^st Century," Center for Demographics & Policy, Chapman University, 2017