The Ho'opili TIAR is Unacceptable

A critical element in approving any land use changes is the Traffic Impact Analysis Report or TIAR. The Friends of Makakilo and Save Oahu's Farmlands Alliance asked me to review B. R. Horton's TIAR submitted to the state's Land Use Commission (LUC) as part of the process for obtaining the approval to convert prime agricultural land to a residential development.

Let me quickly dispense the argument that my review of the Ho'opili TIAR may have been biased by the fact that Ho'opili contains two rail stations and is being billed as an exemplary Transit Oriented Development (TOD) of the proposed rail which I oppose.

The TIAR shows that Ho’opili’s transit trips are modest. If 50% of transit trips are made by rail, this results in 166 riders in the AM peak hour -- two bus loads and that’s it:
• Ho’opili does not work for rail proponents because it generates manini ridership.
• Ho’opili does not work for rail opponents because deleting it does affect the projected rail ridership substantially.

The first phase of Ho'opili barely justifies a basic bus service and the full development may benefit from limited express bus service. But as a ridership generator for rail, it is worthless, as all suburban TODs are. Suburban development and rail never go together.

Now back to the TIAR and why LUC should reject the petition on the basis of an inadequate TIAR alone.

“The planned year 2020 level of development is expected to occupy approximately one third of the total Ho’opili project site” stated on page E-2 is a hugely important statement. This means that all outcomes presented in the TIAR are only 1/3 of the whole. This is a “salami tactic” to get Ho’opili going without any disclosure of its total effects. A whopping 67% of the Ho’opili’s total effects are nowhere to be found. Therefore, this report should be deemed UNACCEPTABLE without at least an illustrative (approximate) full build-out scenario along with mitigations and final impacts. These numbers are simply “cheating” both decision makers and the community as they omit 67% of the potential impacts.

In the study’s Methodology for Freeway and Junction Analysis, the “… operating conditions were evaluated using the HCM 2000 methodology.” The current version is HCM 2010, but that’s a minor problem. HCM is not an appropriate tool for this application. The Federal Highway Administration (which has H-1 Freeway oversight) does not recommend such simple models for complex corridor and freeway analysis because they ignore congestion effects. The freeway operations in the Ho’opili area are dominated by the H-1/H-2 merge and other secondary bottlenecks. The TIAR’s segment by segment freeway and ramp analysis is entirely inappropriate. Also the H-1/H-2 merge is totally absent, therefore the presented results are UNACCEPTABLE.

The TIAR preparer assumed that Ho’opili will adopt a Traffic Demand Management composed of nine (9) major actions such as extensive biking, carpooling, tele-work, etc. Absolutely no other place in Hawaii has any four of these nine TDM actions occurring at the same time so at best this is a pie-in-the-sky assumption that artificially reduced the traffic impact of Ho’opili.

The TIAR preparer claimed that the Oahu MPO planning model allows them to take an up to 30% trip reduction due to the integrated character of the Ho’opili community. However, there is no proof that this is a valid or prudent assumption. I cannot think of a more integrated community on Oahui than Kalilhi. Arguing that Kalihi folks make 30% fewer trips is baseless and likely wrong. These multiple traffic reductions make the assessment of Ho’opili’s traffic impacts.

The freeway mitigations shown in the study are localized band aids and none of them address the merge of the H-1 and H-2 freeways. Worse yet, I note that the furthest downstream section of their mitigations is always a 3-lane “choker” so all these actions actually force more traffic flow onto bottleneck sections. The proposed freeway mitigations are UNACCEPTABLE.

The LUC Docket A06-771 “2020 TIAR” that I reviewed includes over 300 pages of computer traffic analysis output. All of it with simple Equation Type models, which are inappropriate for congested freeway corridors, as mentioned above. What I found surprising is that the memo for freeway analysis relating to Ho’opili agreed upon by State DOT, and two consultants of B. R. Horton is dated October 9, 2009 but nearly all of the computer outputs were dated August 20, 2009. So: (1) Freeway and ramp analysis was done before the State/Developer MOU, and (2) This TIAR is stamped “April 2011 update” but the traffic analyses are from summer 2009.

The TIAR states that “neither the City and County of Honolulu nor the State of Hawaii have guidelines for identifying the transportation impacts caused by the project.” This is a sad statement for our city and state and it is true. Solid technical criteria for the judgment of properly quantified traffic impacts are absent. Therefore, developers hire consultants to present a picture of the impacts and then government and top level decision makers arrive at an ad hoc determination about what’s wrong with the picture, if anything. This simply perpetuates arbitrary, capricious and favoritism-prone decision making.

Regardless of the lack of City and State criteria, the outputs of this analysis are by and large worthless. The report describes the 2020 plan with only one third of Ho’opili developed. The partial and biased TIAR of questionable methodology should be found UNACCEPTABLE for permitting the conversion of prime agricultural land to any other land use that obliterates the current active agricultural use of the land.

Energy Challenge: Options for Power Generation and Hawaii’s Path Forward

Excerpt of my article in the Civil Beat:

Hawaii has several special and severe problems:

1. Extreme electric power price gauging which international oil markets and proposed EPA regulations for oil and coal burning power plants will make increasingly intolerable.
2. U.S. mainland solutions such as natural gas and nuclear are less promising for Hawaii.
3. The Jones Act governing US marine transportation restricts Hawaii’s fuel supply.
4. Absence of a plan for fuel shortages and local fuel production.
5. Utopian views and policies about clean energy in which cost effectiveness is not even a factor.
6. Land and development plans intertwined with energy solutions.
7. Extreme political influence on what is fundamentally a technical problem.
8. One power monopoly with Gordian tentacles.
9. Regulators with questionable expertise and motivation.
10. Hawaii’s extreme NIMBYism due to its natural beauty, cultural resources and strict environmental laws.

What does the future hold for Hawaii? Hawaii with its mandates and high feed-in tariffs is moving in the direction of scarce and expensive energy by incentivizing increasingly larger deployments of costly, intermittent and ineffective power plants which are also too wimpy to affect the oil-based monopoly.

Read a brief backgrounder on Energy and Power, and Hawaii's options for reducing its severe energy dependency on oil in the full article.

Star Advertiser Reduces Anti-rail Letter from 527 to 167 Words!

In this one newspaper town, any anti-rail individual who sends a letter to the editor at Star Advertiser should be happy if the letter is printed in some shape or form since 9 out of 10 anti-rail letters disappear and when an anti-rail letter is printed, at least one pro rail letter is added, "for balance."

Attorney Bradley Coates' letter was reduced from 527 words to 167 words. Below is the full edition.

Ben Cayetano is not only the guy with the smartest grasp of the rail issue, he also represents the last best hope Honolulu has of overturning our city’s entrenched “old boy” network consisting of big business, developers, labor unions and embedded political interests.

Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the insulting “Be Nice Ben” smear campaign which was immediately implemented (and undoubtedly funded by) that exact same unholy alliance which supports both Carlisle and Caldwell. The very fact that those two mayoral rivals could suddenly join together so quickly in alignment with the ultimate king(maker) of establishment Hawaii politics Senator Inouye, shows just how scared that whole cabal is of losing their grip on
power.

As was brilliantly pointed out in Richard Borreca’s 5/6 Star Advertiser column, the Democratic power brokers have now somewhat ironically become the party pushing all the pro-growth agendas seeking absurd exemptions from long established zoning and environmental laws in order to push for unrestricted development. As poorly thought out monster-sprawl mega projects like Koa Ridge and Ho’opili attest, the developers and their “puppet politicians” now seem perfectly willing to sacrifice the mana of Hawaii in exchange for money and power. With about 12% population growth in just this last decade alone, our island may well have reached its “carrying capacity.” We should be preserving our islands’ unique beauty, our open spaces and especially our agricultural lands. We should be slowing growth rather than encouraging it. . .but unfortunately sustainability has become an afterthought.

Nor is Cayetano just a single issue candidate on rail alone. As a former governor who ran a far bigger administration than either of his two rivals, Ben has the most experience on all the aspects which will govern Honolulu’s shaky budget and finances. It is noteworthy that former Gov. Lingle, who along with Ben has the most experience running large government budgets, has also turned negative on rail. Even Governor Abercrombie now seems to be hedging. The recent GSA scandal as well as numerous other episodes have clearly shown the greed, waste and corruption which has begun to pervade Big Government. With $7 billion up for grabs (assuming we ever actually even get that “promised” funding), we can anticipate that greedy contractors and developers will push the edge of every possible envelope and, along with inept government and embedded and inflexible unions, will almost certainly turn the rail project into a total travesty. Let’s be realistic, despite all its expensive (and taxpayer funded) PR campaigns to the contrary, rail is the cabal ’s pet project, not the people's project. This could potentially bankrupt the city-not to mention turning into a horrible unaesthetic eyesore which will permanently scar our beautiful island.

Ben has already held the highest office in the state and is a reluctant candidate at best. He has absolutely nothing left to prove or gain personally. Instead, he is obviously embarking on this idealistic campaign (which has now come down to going toe to toe with almost all of Hawaii’s entire entrenched political “establishment”) strictly because he wants to do the right thing for Honolulu. He deserves our respect and our votes.

BRADLEY A. COATES
COATES & FREY ATTORNEYS AT LAW, LLLC

BBC: Is it Cheaper to Put Greek Train Passengers in Taxis?

BBC News coverage on May 12, 2012.

The claim that it would be cheaper for Greece to send every rail passenger to their destination by taxi was first made by Stefanos Manos, the former Greek finance minister, in 1992. Manos used the railway system to illustrate what he saw as gross public sector waste.

Mr Manos is correct if there are more than two passengers in each taxi.

But either way, the Greek railways are in a pretty awful mess, and while train journeys may cost less than cab journeys, they are more expensive than travel on other forms of public transport, including air.

"Over $13bn has been pumped in, in the last 15 or 16 years. In terms of passengers, long-distance rail has 2.7% of the share and in terms of freight it's truly a joke because it's 0.08% of the freight so the costs are staggering," says Prof Prevedouros.

Can We Solve Honolulu’s Pervasive Traffic Congestion Problem?

Yes we can!

There are several specific projects that mitigate congestion that if one could magically install half of them overnight, Honolulu’s congestion level would be so low that traffic congestion would be removed from people’s list of worries. That would be a great thing for quality of life on Oahu and a booster to our tourism and the overall local economy.

Part 1 gives some background on congestion (did you know that some congestion is a good thing?) and presents low cost and shorter term traffic congestion solutions. Part 2 presents longer term, high cost traffic congestion solutions.

Honolulu Traffic Congestion – Part 1: From Bumper-to-bumper to Zoom-zoom by Removing One Third of Honolulu's Traffic Congestion for Less Than $500 Million

Honolulu Traffic Congestion – Part 2: Up-shift to Overdrive by Removing another One Third of Honolulu's Traffic Congestion for Less Than $5 Billion

These two white papers illustrate the dozens of doable, affordable, all-local-labor and effective projects for mitigating one of our largest problems on Oahu, traffic congestion.

Traffic congestion mitigation in Honolulu is in the hands of government and politicians. They may actually be the main causes of our traffic congestion.

10 Requirements for Infrastructure Mega-Project Success

This article was published in the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers, SES News No. 179, Feb. 2012.

The article features analysis and a spectacular picture of Gefyra which is a 9,500 ft. long cable-stayed bridge connecting Rio and Antirio. (I was born and raised in the city of Patras which is just five miles from Rio.) The Rio-Antirio Bridge received the 2005 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Hawaii and Greece are half a globe apart, but they have several things in common:

• Both are temperate places dominated by coastline and a marine lifestyle.
• Both have been historically invaded and taken advantage of by various colonialists.
  
• Both are relatively powerless in regional and world politics.
• Both have agriculture and fisheries, but they are relatively poor in natural resources.
• In both places tourism, education and military are a big part of the economy. And,
• Both places have insider-dominated politics.

With these as background let’s look in brief at the lessons learned from large infrastructure proposals for highways, airports, rail systems, and large wind, solar or other renewable energy “farms.”

Hawaiian Island Sustainability

How can we tell if an island is sustainable or not? All islands are net importers, meaning residents depend on external resources to survive, so they tend to be less sustainable compared to a self-sufficient continent.
To get a handle on island sustainability, a UH study group developed a database of 52 islands with populations in excess of 50,000.

With a sustainability score of 300 being “very good” and a score of 30 being “very bad,” Oahu scores 140 and Maui scores 180. The Big Island scores 170 and can improve to 200 with all-geothermal power. Overall, Hawaii’s population-adjusted score is exactly average at 150, so its sustainability profile has a lot of room for improvement.

Read full article in Honolulu Weekly.

Move Oahu Forward?

BUSINESS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS FORM GROUP IN SUPPORT OF HONOLULU’S RAIL TRANSIT PROJECT

More than thirty of Hawaii’s leading business and community leaders have joined together to form a new organization, Move Oahu Forward...

There are hundreds of large companies and thousands of small businesses on Oahu. Now the usual pro-rail suspects* got together and gave another name to the old and tired Go Rail Go which morphed into a construction unions operative.

Campbell Estate should be "credited" for giving Oahu mainland suburban sprawl (where transit has no chance to succeed,) instead of diversified ag. If they are so proud of their 2nd city why do they need a five billion dollar tether to the first city for it?

HECO alone has given Oahu the nightmare of 77% oil dependency for power generation and power rates 300% higher than mainland, and climbing. Instead of cutting down, it wants to sign up the 40 MW electric rail customer. How greedy and irresponsible!

Move Oahu Forward? Move Oahu Toward Us ... for our sustained profiteering, is more apt.

(*) The MOF list does include a few surprises such as Hawaiian Airlines and Outrigger Hotels. Business dealings and obligations to bankers and other creditors are partly at play here. Don't forget that Aloun Farms has agreed to be obliterated by B.R.Horton's Hoopili development in Ewa. Mufi manages the hotel association. Sen. Inouye can facilitate for foreign landing slots for Hawaiian Air, or intervene to protect HA stronghold markets. All kinds of interactions are at play. The rail is the tip of the collusion and interdependency iceberg. Overall, however, it is becoming clearer who the political puppet master is in the Honolulu rail affair.

Transportation Seminars in Nepal and Korea

I'll be giving a total of eight seminars in Nepal and Korea in the second part of April, 2012.

The seminar series in Nepal is on

• Transportation Planning: Practice and Problems

Then in South Korea I visit and lecture at three universities as follows:

April 25 at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

• TRANSPORTATION & ENERGY: Fundamentals and Comparisons

April 26 at Ajou University

• URBAN TRANSPORTATION FOR LARGE CITIES (Population 500,000 to 2,500,000) -- BRT, HOT, CS, EV and … BTU

April 27 at Korea University

• TRANSPORTATION SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS

Keep a 9 y.o. Car or Replace it with a Hybrid?

I own a sporty 4 door sedan with almost 70,000 miles on it. It's a good car that will likely serve me well for another 6 to 10 years with proper maintenance. It does require premium gas and its average real world 20 miles-per-gallon (mpg) is decent. Could a high efficiency hybrid car be a less expensive choice in the long term?

The general question is: What is the total cost of a new and a used car and how can one estimate it? Each person's choice will vary so I use my case to illustrate the approach.

The only high-mpg alternatives to my car are the 2012 Toyota Camry LE Hybrid and the 2012 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. The remainder of the hybrids are too "sleepy", too large or too expensive for me.

I chose to make comparisons with the Camry. It is less sporty that my current car but various magazine tests praise it for its good acceleration and good fuel efficiency. It is rated at 43 mpg city so I assumed a 40 mpg for my estimations. Having used a rented Prius for a few days I confirmed that its city mpg is as good as advertised at 51 mpg. I excluded the Sonata despite the fact that it is $4,000 less expensive than the Camry because tests have shown that its real world mpg is worse than its EPA rating of 35 mpg city. [1] According to Edmunds.com both have a similar 5 year total cost to own. [2]

Real world mpg is important and EPA has revised the rules because of large deviations. For example, I did complain to Honda in 2000 because my 1999 Accord LX rated at 24 mpg city never did any better than 20 mpg even with a bit of freeway use thrown in the mix. In 2011 Honda had bigger problems with its Civic Hybrid (lawsuits about the claimed mpg) which stresses the importance of the real world mpg rating in different areas by different users.

There are many variables in this long term calculation, some more important than others:

• Length of analysis: 6 years and 10 years.
• Out the door cost of the new car: $29,160.
• Current value of the 9 y.o. car: $9,500.
• Insurance and registration: I called my insurer to find out today's premium for the 2012 Camry Hybrid: 5% higher than my current car. Registration is the same at $300 per year.
• Usage: this is hugely important in comparing a high mpg to a low mpg car because high use makes the high mpg car cheaper in the long term. My scenario was for 6,000 miles per year which is what I averaged in the past three years. I also run the numbers for 10,000 miles per year.
• Tires: New set of tires costing $800 every 30,000 miles.
• Maintenance: annual average cost of $900 for the 9 y.o. car and $300 for the new car based on past experience. In other words, in the next 10 years it’ll take $9,000 to keep the 9 y.o. car in very good shape and $3,000 to do the same with the new car.
• Cost of fuel: this is another critical variable because fossil fuel pricing will be quite uncertain in the future. There is no doubt that the price of fuel will fluctuate a lot between 2012 and 2022. Some argue that new large deposits will be found, Libya’s production will come up to normal soon and China’s thirst for oil will be leveling off. Others point to the diminishing reserves (they are good for up to 100 years more) and the large unrest likely in the Arab peninsula, like Syria or worse. So I run three scenarios of average annual price change of -4%, +2%, and +5%. I explain each scenario below.
  

Today's oil price is about $105 per barrel. When President Obama took office the price was $35 per barrel. Many analysts expect that in the next decade the price of oil will average $50 to $80 per barrel, so gas may be cheaper than it is today. This is represented by the -4% scenario. In this scenario, today’s unleaded gas is $4.35 per gallon and the average price in the next 10 years will be $3.65/gln. (All prices mentioned are in today’s dollars.)

The 2% scenario assumes that the current level of oil price per barrel is high, that it will drop some time after the 2012 elections and then begin to grow again resulting in a mild average increase. In this scenario, today’s unleaded gas is $4.35 per gallon and the average price in the next 10 years will be $4.76/gln.

The 5% scenario assumes major unrest in Saudi Arabia or another calamitous event that affects oil prices. In this scenario, today’s unleaded gas is $4.35 per gallon and the average price in the next 10 years will be $5.47/gln.

The estimation of total costs takes quite a bit of analysis. The figure below shows the calculation for one car, one mileage scenario and one gas price scenario. The final results require 12 estimations like this.


The results are summarized in the table below. The obvious result is that regardless of gasoline pricing scenario, the car with 40 mpg city is a good choice for high annual mileage users. In my case, staying with what I've got is the smart choice.



[1] http://www.edmunds.com/hyundai/sonata-hybrid/2012/

[2] Hyundai: True Cost to Own®: $42,406 -- Toyota: True Cost to Own®: $42,915 (both are 5 year estimates) from [1]

Panos 2050

My program on sustainability solutions for Hawaii is now permanent on the TV guide.

Please check it out on the public access channel VIEWS 54.

Sustainable Development is an Oxymoron

On March 2, 1972, a team of experts from MIT presented a groundbreaking report called The Limits to Growth. Read more in the Smithsonian Magazine.

More recently, Australian physicist Graham Turner of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems shows how actual data from 1970 to 2000 almost exactly matches predictions set forth in the “business-as-usual” scenario presented in The Limits to Growth.


Looking at the thick line updates of the 1972 trends, I find the energy trend alarming. The rest of the trends do no seem to be as alarming as originally forecast in 1972. Significantly, the population growth in China is under substantial control. But growth in China, Brazil and Nigeria counterbalance the population reduction of China.

The retired MIT professor who led the original study had this to say:

• Sustainable development: I consider to be an oxymoron actually...
• Predicting a global collapse ... is like being in San Francisco and knowing that there is going to be an earthquake and that it is going to cause buildings to fall down. Which buildings are going to fall down, and where are they going to fall? We just don’t have any way of understanding that.
• You can for a brief period spend more out of your bank account than you save, if you have come through a long period of thrift. But eventually, of course, you bring your bank account back down to zero and you’re stuck. That is exactly what is happening to us on the globe. We are living off the savings of biodiversity, fossil fuel accumulation, agricultural soil buildup and groundwater accumulation, and when we have spent them, we will be back down to the annual income.
• In 1998 we had the dot-com bubble bust. In 2008 we had the housing bubble bust. Both illustrated what incredibly primitive understanding and capacities we have for dealing with bubbles. We are now forming a bubble in population, and in material and energy consumption.

$10 Gas? Not Really!

Gas at $10 is a myth. China's big boom is over. Their cities are so congested and polluted that they can't absorb more cars so their demand for gasoline should level off.

Similar story for Brazil where Sao Paolo just exceeded 19 million people. In such vast and growing cities rail systems are an obvious need. The explosive growth in demand for oil distillates from the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will subside significantly soon. Most of the problem in gas prices is actually created by the restrictions of the EPA and the President.

$10 per gallon of gas is called ... Greece, Italy and several other countries where most people drive 40+ mpg cars instead of 20 mpg cars. In this way, their relative cost for fuel is roughly the same as ours. People find a way to assure themselves independent, flexible transportation. See more in this post: Gasoline Price Comparisons: Taxes not Octanes Matter

People in Hawaii can adjust should gas prices "explode." I am still amazed at the $30K to $50K trucks people buy when a hybrid family sedan is much safer and less than $30K to buy -- let alone the sub-$20K and over 35 mpg compact cars available in the market. There is a lot of room for downsizing in Hawaii.

What Has Been the Biggest Failure in Transportation in Recent History?

A well known transportation academic posed this question recently to other transportation experts.

Failure he said. You decide the criteria. Failures could be big small, but not too small and localized.

I am looking for projects, systems, technologies, or policies that have been failures.

To provide a response in a general way, I had to define failure in a general way. So I defined it as “the usefulness of a transportation mode or infrastructure to my adult life and the quality of it—the mode with the least usefulness would be a failure.” Here’s my assessment looking back in the last 30 years which also coincides with the length of my adult life, more or less.

Roads and cars allowed me to access everything that was out there… people, sights, activities, opportunities.

Roads and buses let me travel intra- and inter-city when I was making little money.

Roads, bicycles and mopeds made college life much easier and efficient. The bicycle as exercise on public roads and bikeways is among the least demanding and most enjoyable. It works for me.

Airplanes took me the world over. Nowadays, large airports like Incheon in South Korea allow me to get to Asia in one flight from the US and then the rest of Asia is one flight away.

Helicopters allowed me to study the main freeway in Honolulu and observe traffic shock waves in action. They are the best mode to view volcanoes in Hawaii and among the best means for rapid rescue the world over.

Bridges and tunnels. All had an obvious utility in time savings and safety.

Small ferries took me to islands with my car, large ferries took me to countries with my car, and container ships got me food, TVs, furniture and cars. Tanker ships bring oil to fuel most of the transportation I listed above. I love fish, so many thanks to the global fishing fleets and their harbors.

Freight trains. Without these trains and coal the US would not enjoy the cheap power it used to propel it to a global dominating status and the highest standard of living. Their indirect effect to my well being has been substantial.

Cable systems and telepheriques have a practicality all of their own and once built they are not too expensive to operate. The alternative, if one exists, is typically a long drive along narrow, winding and occasionally icy roads.

Passenger trains. There was always a substitute and they never were a necessity. I took the TGV in France, Shinkansen in Japan, and China’s fast trains. Without exception, all of them were one way trips, just to try them out. All of them were expensive and difficult to handle with two suitcases. They were much more crowded than airplanes. I also use metro rail in Europe and Asia, and in a handful of very large cities in the US chiefly because their downtowns are devoid of parking and their bus systems are too complex to learn in a short visit.

Thus, in relative terms, rail systems have done too little for my life experience and quality of life, thus, almost all rail systems built in the last 30 years were a failure. Add to this that all but Shinkansen are constant loss-makers and their first place as modern era transportation failures is assured.

ENDOTE
One maybe tempted to say that my response is skewed because Honolulu does not have rail. I've been in Honolulu for 22 years and my residence and work locations have been in a triangle formed by Kalihi, Kailua and Kahala. Rail would not be useful to me.

I spend a lot of time in Athens and my brother, sister and their families reside there. Less than 1% of our trips use any of Athens' multiple rail lines. For most people, a rail line makes no difference in their 21st century life style.

What Year Is It In Economic Times?

In the recent article Lost Economic Time, The Economist argues that the economic clock went back several years in terms of the economy for several developed countries.

While few would argue with the economic back-tracking of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, many would be reluctant to admit that the US economy has gone substantially backward. Yet The Economist data show that US is third worst.


This prodded me to do some basic analysis of my economic situation relative to the cost of living. I was further surprised to realize that this was also true for me!

I thought I was doing quite well in my professional and professorial career, but a reduction in my university salary, a drop in consulting (I wonder why nobody hires me to do work for the rail...) and the ever advancing Consumer Price Index or CPI have taken their toll. Indeed my CPI adjusted income average for the last three years took me back to ... 2001.



Time to redouble our efforts and claw ourselves out of our economic 9-11.

Notes: (1) The income trend in the graph is based on my federal tax adjusted gross income or AGI at the bottom of the first page of my annual tax return. (2) The CPI trend is from the annual average tabulated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (3) Both trends are normalized to start at 100 in 1994.

Dear FTA ...

... a little less pork will be good for you!

Anti Rail Plaintiffs to Federal Transit Administration: City Rail Project is Fundamentally Flawed, Based on Weak Financial Plan

Solar Paint

It is understood that by the end of the century the use of fossil fuels will be substantially reduced either because we have largely exhausted them or because we regulated their use to a minimum.

What's next is unclear because at the present time, other than nuclear energy, nothing comes close to the energy density and portability of fossil fuels.

However, disruptive technologies are in the horizon that may change the way we make power. One such technology that recently crossed my radar screen is solar paint developed at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Called “Sun-Believable,” the paint is still a ways from being commercially available. But its development could ultimately lead to a new generation of inexpensive power generation.

Once able to be produced at a reasonable cost this paint would combine well with neighborhood large battery storage for 24 hour power supply.

The Seven Rules of Bureaucracy

The Seven Rules of Bureaucracy by Loyd S. Pettegrew and Carol A. Vance presents an insightful and succinct list of routine actions by "successful" bureaucracies. Their article provides many examples. Most of these are directly applicable to the education and traffic congestion problems in Hawaii. Both come with huge bureaucracies that lie about the issues and maintain poor performance.

Although politicians of all colors and persuasions have used these one time or another, the rules also read like the manifesto of a major political party in the US, don't they?

1. Maintain the problem at all costs! The problem is the basis of power, perks, privileges, and security.
2. Use crisis and perceived crisis to increase your power and control. Force 11th-hour decisions, threaten the loss of options and opportunities, and limit the opposition’s opportunity to review and critique.
3. If there are not enough crises, manufacture them, even from nature, where none exist.
4. Control the flow and release of information while feigning openness. Deny, delay, obfuscate, spin, and lie.
5. Maximize public-relations exposure by creating a cover story that appeals to the universal need to help people.
6. Create vested support groups by distributing concentrated benefits and/or entitlements to these special interests, while distributing the costs broadly to one’s political opponents.
7. Demonize the truth tellers who have the temerity to say, “The emperor has no clothes.”

HART's Job Estimates Are Wrong

Back in 2009, UHERO provided some rail jobs estimates that said employment will start with 300 jobs, and at the peak of construction, there may be 2,000 jobs, but at that time UHERO did not know that a $1.4 billion contract to build the rail cars would go to Ansaldo Breda in Italy.*

However HART testified at City Council that the rail will create 4,000 to 17,000 jobs. These estimates are flat out wrong if people believe that these are Hawaii-based jobs. Here is why:

• Material costs are not jobs and most materials like steel, concrete and glass will be imported, thus those jobs are not local.
• Finance charges are not jobs.
• Equipment and outside purchases are not jobs in Hawaii. These will be a huge portion from trains, escalators and elevators to ticket machines, tickets, bolts and nails.
• Also many large and "linear" infrastructure projects like the rail are of a "copy-paste" nature, that is, the people who build the first mile will also build the second mile, etc. There are no 10 groups of workers building 10 separate miles.
  

In sum, a very large portion of the $5.3 Billion pie is not labor related. The part that is labor is not very large for Hawaii because (1) a portion of the labor is outside Hawaii or imported expertise, and (2) Linear infrastructure does not need a large number of workers. Therefore UHERO's estimate that the maximum likely number of jobs is around 2,000 is the best answer. This makes Rail smaller in terms of jobs than Hilton Hawaiian Village. Of course the Village is a sustainable job supplier, whereas Rail is not.

It is also a fact that tax-based infrastructure development causes major job losses because the taxes taken from people to build the rail were not spent elsewhere in the economy.

If infrastructure projects can be made with all-local materials and labor, then the projects simply circulate monies in the same market (Oahu in this case) but they do not create real growth. This circulation also has "parasitic losses" due to the bureaucracies involved and, on occasion, lawsuits and other penalties.

Rail, unfortunately, uses so many imported components and expertise that local taxes will be exported in the billions of dollars, so its net effect will be strongly recessionary.

Two years ago based on UHERO's 2009 estimates of rail jobs I wrote the article
Proposed Rail Creates 1,000 Local Jobs and Destroys 4,000 Jobs (the bold part is UHERO assessments):

UHERO estimates that first year rail construction job count will be about 360 jobs and only in peak years the construction job estimate will reach about 2,000 jobs. But most of them will be unsuitable for carpenters that are suffering the brunt of construction sector unemployment now. Also almost all of the rail construction materials and technology comes from off-island sources, so at best 1,000 of these jobs are local. The City estimates for rail jobs are false. They are advocacy estimates.

More on this in Malia Zimmerman's article Honolulu Rail Sold to City Council, Public, on Jobs Boost, But Will the Promise Hold Up? in the Hawaii Reporter.

Public Education Systems. There is Hope, but not in Hawaii. Yet.

"Nevada and New Mexico are among a growing number of states that are looking to Florida and Mr Bush’s time in office for inspiration on school reform. Many of these, such as Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arizona, have Republican governors, while others, such as Colorado, have Democratic governors but influential Republican education leaders. Many are also known for mediocre schools. That, indeed, was Florida’s situation: its schools were among the nation’s worst in 1999 and are now among the best."

So there is hope in Hawaii, but another set of players will be required.

The quote above is from a great article in The Economist last month: The Floridian school of thought.

HART's Misrepresentations Are Intolerable!

Yesterday HART issued an email blast. My brief response to HART's selective misrepresentations is as follows. (Sent to Gov. Legislature and City Council.)

HART: Rail provides congestion free transportation

1) Rail is station to station transportation. Hardly anybody resides in or near stations, particularly the stations that HART is developing in the middle of nowhere and next to stadia and big box retailers. So future riders will drive or ride buses thus will be exposed to congestion and delays. And searching for the scant park and ride parking will waste a lot of their time.

2) While on the train you do not have traffic congestion, but you do have a very slow ride. See Chapter One of a recent national report for US for urban trips: Commuter rail, the fastest form of rail with far spaced stations, averages 14.1 mph. Car travel averages 33.2 mph.

3) For the next 30 years Kapolei to UH, Waikiki and beyond will be far faster by car than with any combo that includes rail.

4) The less fudged Alternatives Analysis and DEIS clearly showed that rail is not travel time competitive anywhere east of Aiea.

HART: When rail is built, it will eliminate 40,000 vehicle trips from Oahu's roadways each weekday

Firstly, one has to believe the city's ridership numbers. This is not a good idea; like in San Juan Puerto Rico, where Parsons Brinkerhoff predicted 80,000 riders per day, then FTA approved it. But they got only 25,000. By the way, San Juan is over 3,000,000 people. What does PB predict for the opening year in the tiny corridor of maybe 500,000 people in Honolulu? 97,000 !

Secondly, rail will eliminate 40,000 car trips out of 3.9 Million daily trips on Oahu. How would you like to pay $5 Billion for 1% reduction in trips? Would you like to repeat this with our water mains and sewer line improvements?

Did you try to make the division of $5 Billion by 40,000? It yields a cost of $125,000 for each car-trip saved. That's nuts!

What was the cost per student-trip from the DOE budget that state plans to cut as "unaffordable"? Taken for a Ride: Hawaii Lawmakers Still Plan To Cut School Bus Funding, http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/03/13/15146-taken-for-a-ride-hawaii-lawmakers-still-plan-to-cut-school-bus-funding/


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Yesteray's email blast from HART

A recent HonoluluTraffic.com commentary contained incorrect information about the Honolulu Rail Transit Project. Here are the facts from HART:

• Rail provides a congestion-free transportation choice. Passengers who choose rail will have zero congestion - and that's a fact. The elevated line will be free from traffic delays and accidents on congested streets and highways. Rail will allow riders to bypass the gridlock and reach their destination reliably and on time.

• When rail is built, it will eliminate 40,000 vehicle trips from Oahu's roadways each weekday - that's tangible traffic relief.

Hawaii's 2nd Energy Update... or Waste Update?

DBEDT has just issued the 2nd edition of Hawaii's Energy Update. See it here:
http://energy.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DBEDT-Energy-Update-Edition-2-March-2012.pdf

When a government glossy brochure is 99% about benefits and 1% about costs, and when the (suspect) jobs created, may of them part-time, cost the taxpayer $92,000 per year each, then it's easy to realize what kind of green they are really talking about...

Spending taxpayer money to apply expensive, inferior solutions for "creating jobs" is ineffective and unsustainable. The ARRA taught us this lesson recently. Fewer than expected jobs were created, the nation now co-owns car manufacturers and collectively we owe $6 Trillion of added debt.

Take a look at this "Hawaii Energy" brochure. It's all about jobs and expenditures. How much of the electricity used daily in Hawaii did we get for all this? About 1% if there's stiff wind and no clouds. How does this agree with the opening sentence of the brochure? Clean energy is a matter of energy security... Not!

Germany's Solar Failure is a Big Lesson for Hawaii

Bjørn Lomborg recently exposed Germany’s Sunshine Daydream. It's the same daydream that Governor Abercrombie, PUC Chair Mina Morita and the local pseudo-greens have put in motion for Hawaii.

Like Germany, our results will be pathetic and the costs will be very high. Here are some highlights of Germany's failed solar initiative:

• Despite the massive investment of $130 Billion, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy.
• Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $8.
• Defenders of Germany’s solar subsidies also claim that they have helped to create “green jobs”. In China where the panels are made.
• German citizens now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world.
• Denmark citizens now pay the highest price for electricity because they are the “world wind-energy champion.”

Hawaii's energy plan is focused on solar and wind, so we clearly know what the energy supply and cost future will be for Hawaii.

Hawaii citizens pay the same rate as Germany now, three (3) times the US average and if the current plan continues, Hawaii's price for electricity will be five (5) times higher that mainland US.

However, this may be the least of Hawaii's problem. Since wind and solar are intermittent, we will need to maintain archaic, oil burning generators for ever. In contrast, Denmark import electricity from the hydroelectric plants of Scandinavia when wind dies down and Germany imports electricity from France's nuclear power plants. Hawaii has no such options so the outcome will be brown outs and explosive KWh cost. A true lose-lose plan is now in the works.

If you doubt me, just read this: Keahole Solar Power, HECO sign power-purchase agreement and compare it with this (same company): Solar Power Plant on Oahu Does not Pass Muster.

If you thought that Hawaii has perfectly sunny conditions for solar, you'd be wrong. It has good conditions but far from perfect due to frequent cloudiness. Compare the Nevada desert clean solar pattern with Keahole Point on Oahu cloudy profile.

Let's not forget that at best we get 8 to 10 hours of solar power per day, so with solar we need oil 60% to 70% of the time on a clear sunny day. For this reason, solar energy has a capacity factor of 25%. This means that a 100 MW solar photovoltaic plant is equivalent to a 25 MW oil or hydroelectric plant. A similar "capacity factor" applies to wind.

Solar thermal like the Keahole Solar Power that HECO agreed to buy energy from (and PUC is likely to rubber stamp) is defunct technology abandoned in Spain and by Google. (There is also a HECO-Sopogy link: HECO's past CEO is now a Sopogy board member.)

Google cans solar energy project

Even when you have all the money of Google, you should spend it wisely. The search giant, which invests heavily in renewable energy initiatives, backed off of at least one of them yesterday.

Google said it is dropping development of “solar thermal” electricity because solar thermal cannot keep pace with the rapid price decline of another solar technology – photovoltaics.

On November 29, 2011, I sent the article about Google's decision to PUC chair Mina Morita, Governor and State Legislature. Apparently, unlike Google, they did not care to spend money wisely.

HECO is in a position of technological and cost-effectiveness indifference caused by mandates. It agreed to a power purchase at 33.5 cents per KWh from hyper-expensive and under-performing Sopogy technology. Note that's 33.5 cents at the production site. It will reach residences at over 50 cents per KWh, or five times US mainland average. So the exorbitant pricing future I was talking about before... is here already!

PUC chair Mina Morita, Governor and State Legislature received this article on March 16, 2012.
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March 19 Addendum. Hawaii's current renewables plan relies heavily on wind power, which I oppose when applied in large numbers as expensive, unreliable and intrusive. The following passage's from Washington Post's United Technologies to sell wind businesses article are relevant:

• Chief Financial Officer Greg Hayes that selling Clipper was not a difficult decision because the alternative energy business has stalled. “We’ve gone into this business with the thought that there was going be a renewable energy mandate in this country and there has not been one.”
• Alternative energy has stagnated with booming natural gas exploration. The nation’s supplies are bulging and natural gas is cheap. By comparison wind power is less economical than many thought it would be two years ago, he said.
  

Honolulu’s Money Train

Wendell Cox summarizes the reasons why the proposed Honolulu Rail is such a bad idea for the 99% who are not in it for the money in Honolulu’s Money Train.

Hawaii Jobs: Outlook for Jobs in Education, Government, Military and Tourism

There are basically four main industries in Hawaii: Education, Government, Military and Tourism. And a fifth large one serving these four is Services. In round numbers, education (DOE, UH system and private) employed 63,000 people in 2010, civilian federal, state and county government employed 77,000 people, the hospitality industry including entertainment, restaurants and bars employed 90,000 people, the armed forces employed 50,000 people, and professional, business and other services employed 100,000 people. These five types of industries employ 60% of Hawaii's people.

While we have been inundated about a need for "construction jobs," the construction industry typically employs less than 5% of the workforce as the detailed breakdown below indicates.(1)


This article presents a brief analysis of Hawaii’s four main industries and assesses their growth potential.

Education
At roughly $15,000 per pupil, the annual expenditure Hawaii’s state based education system is among the highest in the nation. This level of expenditure all by itself indicates that this is certainly not an area of future growth.

Part of the Education industry but separate from the state DOE is the UH system which has become administratively bloated in the last two decades and its diversity of campuses has added more to its costs as a system. UH-Manoa is one of the top pork-barrel research funding recipient universities in the nation which is unsustainable past the retirement of Senator Daniel Inouye. Several units will continue to excel, but the UH as a whole is not a promising locus for job growth in Hawaii.

Private education will continue to hold its own but escalating tuition costs place a ceiling on the potential for large expansion unless citizens receive the choice of having education vouchers. Given the poor outcomes of Hawaii’s public education system, this opportunity may arrive sooner than it is currently thought to be possible.

Civilian Government
The table above suggests that Government provides 21% of the jobs in Hawaii but the table below suggests that if public education and US DOD are taken aside, then the share of the rest of the government’s shrinks to 10%. (The percentage shown is out of the total civilian employment in 2010.)


Over several decades Government has been a “growth industry.” Hawaii had 125,200 civilian government workers in 2010 of which 57% in state government, 28% in federal government and 15% in local government. This is an area that will experience reductions in the next few decades as city and state budgets come under heavy stress from necessary infrastructure investments, consent decrees, and pension and health fund liabilities vis-à-vis the actuarial reality of long-living baby boomers. Even larger pressure will be on federal employment.

In 1960 the ratio of government employment to the population in Hawaii was 7.8%, that is, there were 8 government workers for every 100 Hawaii residents. This ratio reached a high of 9.5% in 2000 and dropped to 9.2% in 2010. In 1960, the federal civilian employment was large at 4.3% but it reduced to 2.6% in 2010. State employment went the opposite way: From 2.3% in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010. State employment doubled from 1960 to 1970, and it doubled again between 1970 and 1990. County employment was 1.2% in 1960 and 1.4% in 2010.

It is clear that there has been no bloating in county employment and a reduction has occurred in federal employment. So the bulk of anticipated future government employment cuts will be from state ranks and from the education portion of it in particular.

Military
The explosive economic and military growth in Asia is a strong force behind stability and expansion of military in Hawaii. This is one area that the retirement of Senator Inouye may have relatively little negative effect. The geopolitical placement of Hawaii is highly advantageous. However, shifts may occur that may be less desirable for Hawaii resident employment: Military personnel numbers may increase but local civilian jobs may be reduced as Hawaii becomes more of an action-ready base rather than a storage and maintenance base. The existing Navy shipyard may be too costly and too limited to maintain at its current size.

In the past three decades the ratio of armed force personnel to Hawaii’s population has dropped from 5.3% in 1960, to 4.5% in 2000, and all the way down to 2.9% in 2010 in part because of deployments to wars. Defense cuts and vastly improved automation in military operations may result in keeping armed force employment in Hawaii below the 4% mark.

Tourism
Tourism is long regarded as the economic engine of Hawaii by capitalizing on the trifecta of natural beauty, warm climate and Hawaiian culture supported by the political and economic might of the US.

Although 2012 is expected to be a “banner year” for Hawaii tourism more dark rather than rosy clouds are in the horizon. The fundamental problems are neither market size nor marketing. It is cost.

Hawaii cannot be moved 200 miles off of the US mainland or 200 miles off of Asia. As a result, 8 million tourists have to fly to it. Fuel is roughly 25% of an airline’s cost when oil is just under $100 per barrel. If oil price grows to $200 per barrel, fuel cost will be roughly 50% of an airline’s cost and airfares will be adjusted upward accordingly. Necessarily, the market will shrink. So here is a summary of positive (+) and negative (-) forces on Hawaii tourism which, in turn will affect its job count in the hospitality industry and its supporters such as the food, culture, entertainment and transportation industries.

(-) While in the next decade there will be large changes in energy innovation and a reduction in electric power production from oil, there are no foreseeable fixes for transportation fuels, particularly when it comes to air and marine transportation, both of which are Hawaii’s only lifelines. Hawaii’s sensitivity to oil prices will only worsen.

(+) Vast improvements in personal wealth in China, Russia and other developing Asian nations combined with possible relaxation of visa requirement bodes well for tourist arrivals from Asia.

(-) There will be a long-term reduction of arrivals from Japan not only because it is a mature market but also because it’s becoming an aging, less populous and heavily indebted country with somewhat slowed ability to innovate and outsourced production of most of its consumer and industrial products.

(+) Korea has almost 40% as many people as Japan and it’s a growth market for Hawaii.

(+) Hawaii has the ability to follow the American tradition of innovation by continuously developing niche tourist markets (adventure, ecotourism, fishing, LGBT, wedding, etc.)

(+) The large national debt is forcing a progressive devaluation of the dollar which makes foreign visitation to Hawaii more attractive. This may also boost arrivals from the mainland because foreign destinations become more expensive for Americans.

(-) Development of the proposed Honolulu rail with its debilitating multi-year construction, and the resultant non-improvement of traffic congestion and eyesore guideway will cause a prolonged tourism loss on Oahu, some of it made up by the other islands.

(-) Unless city and state budgets are re-aligned with emphasis on infrastructure improvement and maintenance, the resultant traffic congestion, potholed roads, sewer spills, water main breaks, poor park condition and homeless camps will cause a prolonged loss of tourism for Oahu. Eventually the disproportionally large budget allocations to outer islands will shrink to avert the collapse of Oahu.

While tourism and related occupations account for one fifth of the jobs in Hawaii, this is actually a fairly fragile industry that is heavily dependent on strong forces beyond its control. This is apparently lost on Hawaii legislators who on every downturn turn up the taxation scale for the tourism industry. Mismanagement in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. can easily affect Hawaii’s tourism and its related job count. So far Washington has no path to managing the national debt and Hawaii has no path to managing its looming infrastructure and energy crisis. So the dark clouds clearly overtake the rosy ones.

Summary
Oahu already had a net 50,000 out-migration from Honolulu County to other US or Hawaii counties. This will expand to all of Hawaii in the next two decades. State and federal government jobs, and DOE and UH jobs will be cut back. If local government improves its priorities there will be thousands of private local jobs for needed infrastructure replacement and maintenance, as well as productive energy projects. In the next couple decades, the job count in Hawaii will remain stable but several sectors in the economy will experience large changes.

(1) Source: State of Hawaii employment data is 2010 State of Hawaii Data Book.

Automated and Driverless Cars: Great for Safety, Not So Much for Congestion.

Can automated cars "cure" crashes and congestion? Renown (ex) Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun who's team won ARPA's $2,000,000 driveless car challenge a few years ago thinks so as he presents the Google driverless Toyota Prius in this TED video.

This is an area where I believe that lawyers and politicians have more impact than engineers and technologists. The US had a fully developed and tested AHS or Automated Highway System in the mid-1990s as the sample article Whatever Happened to Automated Highway Systems? reminds us.

For those of us involved with intelligent transportation systems (ITS) the image below of eight large Buicks developed by California's Partners for Advanced Traffic and Highways (PATH) remains etched in memory. Observe the 0.2 second clearance between the AHS Buicks at 60 mph and the typical 2.0 second clearance in regular traffic.

When success was fully demonstrated, the government cut AHS funding because the issue became liability not technology. However, many of the technologies trickled down to piecemeal applications, some of which I summarize below.

Greyhound buses in the mainland have vibrating steering wheel (modeled after the aviation stick shaker to warn of impending stall) activated by radars if the bus tries to change onto a lane that is occupied by a vehicle. This also serves as an alarm if the drivers becomes drowsy. Daimler has introduced this to Mercedes cars but the system is not available in the US (due to liability.)

Since 2005 one can purchase many luxury vehicles with intelligent cruise control that can follow the car ahead. Some of them will bring a car to a complete stop automatically if the leader car comes to a stop. Some companies brand it as Adaptive Cruise Control and here is a demonstration dating to back 2008 at about 90 mph by a motorist on an autobahn.

In Europe higher priced BMWs will soon be offered with a system that if its driver becomes incapacitated, the car will maneuver itself, at German autobahn speeds, all the way from the fast lane to the right side shoulder, stop and send an SOS.


Many inexpensive cars in Europe in the $20,000 bracket have optical sensors on the bottom side of their exterior mirrors that follow the lane markings. They issue a "lane departure" warning to their driver. A handful of cars brought in the US in 2012 have this option too.

The US federal government has a major research initiative called http://www.its.dot.gov/press/2010/vii2intellidrive.htmIntelliDrive to further boost these efforts.

And now for the conclusion and why AHS was terminated as a capacity enhancement: On a busy highway most drivers follow each other at a headway of about 1.5 seconds. As a result, the maximum sustained capacity of a freeway lane is 3600 seconds in one hour divided by 1.5 second headway equals 2400 vehicles per hour.

If car technology takes over, this headway can be reduced to 0.5 seconds which triples the capacity of the same freeway lane. So one lane could carry as many cars as an entire 3-lane section of the H-1 Freeway! This is clearly a bargain for our highway infrastructure.

However, if this was ever launched, it would require the presence of a largely empty lane next to the AHS lane (such as a bus-only lane with large gaps between the buses) so that vehicles can be merged in and out the tight AHS platoon; see the empty lane next to the platoon of fast moving Buicks in the picture above.) Only professional race drivers can routinely cope with 0.5 second headways (and they fail almost at every NASCAR race.)

With the press of the AHS button, merging into the tight lane, traveling at 60 mph and exiting the AHS lane will be done entirely by the computer, sensors and servos of the car in dense traffic. Now visuallize such a car with mommy, daddy and two kids in the back on a dusty, rainy or dark environment which may affect sensor performance and image recognition. There is clear risk and because of the tightness of the platoon, one mishap will likely cause large losses. Who is liable? The feds wanted none of this on the federal interstate system.

AHS has a tremendous promise for safety bust much less promise for direct congestion reduction. However, crash reduction does help traffic congestion because by most accounts 30% to 60% of the annual traffic congestion in a metro area is caused by accidents that block traffic lanes. Intelligent systems minimize driver error and accidents, so lanes become closed less often.

Mid-March 2012 update: The Economist publishes Self-driving cars. Safer at any speed? "Another headache will be lawsuits from motorists blaming their car for crashes. Honda is already being sued in America over the collision-avoidance system on its top-end Acura models. Pim van der Jagt, a research chief at Ford, says new laws will be needed to deal with such issues—and cars may need black boxes to record what went wrong in accidents."