Honolulu Rail Cost Escalation

It is important to understand how much costs escalate in megaprojects. All these costs in bond-financed public projects are to be borne by the taxpayer. Oahu has fewer than 400,000 taxpayers so the possibility of a twelve billion dollar bill for a long rail line presents a staggering liability. Over $30,000 per taxpayer.

In 2005 Mayor Mufi Hanneman and his supporters went to the Legislature and asked for a temporary (20 year) 1% tack on to Hawaii's 4% general excise tax in order to develop a large rail system for an approximate cost of $2.7 Billion. The Legislature approved a 0.5% tack on to the GET in hopes that Federal Transit Administration and other taxes will cover the total. Here is the letter to The Honolulu Advertiser by Mayor Mufi Hannemann promising that the 20 mile system will cost $3 Billion.

In 2008 General Elections there was a City Charter Amendment asking the city to install a steel on steel fixed guideway system. The cost of the 20 mile system had grown to $4.6 billion and almost $1 Billion was the contingency funds. TheBus funds were not touched in 2008.

In 2010 outgoing governor Lingle procured a financial analysis report for the rail that she had supported, in light of the escalating costs of rail and the 2008-2009 fiscal crisis. IDG, a reputable financial and risk analysis consultant based in Washington, D.C., estimated that the 20 mile cost will be more likely $7.2 Billion.

Despite these facts, Governor Abercrombie signed off on the State EIS and Mayor Carlisle dismissed the financial report as "an anti-rail tirade."

In summer 2012 the City submitted its final application to the FTA for a Full Funding Agreement. In it, the cost of the 20 mile line has grown further to $5.17 Billion but contingencies have been reduced to about $600 Million and another $150 Million is "borrowed" from TheBus fleet funds. In other words, the 2012 cost estimate would be $5.7 Billion if they did not fudge the amounts and kept them at the 2008 level.

In May 2012 Councilmember Kobayashi asked HART to estimate the cost of the full 34 mile system from West Kapolei to the UH and Waikiki. HART's response was $9.03 Billion.

If we apply IDG's cost escalation of the 20 mile system to the 34 mile system we get $12.6 Billion. Hanneman's rail has ballooned from $3.6 Billion to $12.6 Billion!


Rail was a bad idea at a cost of $3 Billion. Now that the likely cost is three times higher, the choice is clear. People have made their choice quite clear by handing both mayors Hannemann and Carlisle their walking papers.

Why Rail Is Bad for Honolulu...

I agree!

Honolulu Rail on Trial

Malia Zimmerman interviews Professors Randy Roth (law) and Panos Prevedouros (engineering). In this video filmed on O'lelo's Palolo studio a week ago, Professor Roth correctly predicts the outcome of the State Supreme Court. See below.

Congratulations to Paulette Kaleikini and her native Hawaiian hui for scoring this legal victory: Rail Construction Shouldn’t Have Started, Hawaii Supreme Court Rules. In other words, Mayor Carlisle and HART clearly broke the law.

Ninth Circuit Court Judge Teshima heard the Federal Lawsuit against Honolulu rail. Listen to the YouTube above where I indicate how the attorney for FACE clearly lied to the judge. Professor Roth expects that this lawsuit will also be successful. Decision expected in a couple months.

TECHNOLOGY and INNOVATION Survey -- The Economist and Hawaii Results

I like people, global and local issues, and numbers ... so I present a mini-series of surveys on major issues which have been debated at The Economist. Obviously the results only represent people with at least a basic level of computer and Internet savvy. However, the results may be sufficiently indicative because most questions along with the careful wording of questions lead to a straightforward answer: Agree, Disagree or Do Not Know. The Economist has received a few thousand responses to each of their questions. I post results only when Hawaii surveys exceed 100 responses.

TECHNOLOGY Results (click to take the survey, part 1, and technology survey part 2.)

The results are summarized in the Table and discussed below.


The original debate questions in The Economist address various issues relating to technology. Ten questions were selected and International and Hawaii responses are compared.

For the first four issues, both The Economist and Hawaii respondents agree. For the next two issues either International or Hawaii responses are neutral, and for the last four issues the opinions are clearly opposite.

Both Hawaii (80%) and international response (62%) disagrees with the position that genetically modified crops and sustainable agriculture are complementary. Both agree that the Internet is making journalism better and that we are now in a new tech bubble. More international respondents (61%) than Hawaii respondents (56%) agreed that social networking technologies will bring positive changes to education.

Economist respondents want NASA to send astronauts to the moon but Hawaii is clearly ambivalent on this. Hawaii respondents believe that innovation works best when government does least but The Economist habitual government subsidy readers overwhelmingly place government at the center of innovation (84%). It does not take a genius to know who's right. Just think about the last time that a PC, smartphone or search engine was invented in Europe...

Hawaii respondents clearly agree (81%) that if the promise of technology is to simplify our lives it is failing, but The Economist respondents mildly (53%) believe that technology has simplified our lives. Technology has simplified my life. As an engineer and researcher, the Internet and digital scholar tools have cut down by annual time spent at the university library from 1 to 2 weeks a year in the late 1980s to less than two hours per year after 2000.

Exact opposite responses to the argument that the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of education: 56% of international respondents disagree and 57% of Hawaii respondents agree. In other words, Hawaii respondents believe that technology doesn't do much for education. Maybe that's a generic response because public education in Hawaii produces poor outcomes. Or, perhaps in Hawaii we buy a lot of technology for schools but don't use it in an effective and exciting manner. (However, that's not the case at Liholiho Elementary that my 5th grader attends since kindergarten.)

Underutilized technology is certainly the case with intelligent transportation systems (ITS) on our highways. Hawaii has spent upwards of $500 million on ITS and signal infrastructure since 2000. Yet traffic signals still operate mostly like Christmas lights and, like Chicago in the 1970s, we get our traffic conditions from ... Jason Josuda on FM radio. In 1994 I bought a Saab 900 with a Radio Data System. The car could show on the dash messages about road conditions. It was disabled for the US and if I still had it, it could be useless in Hawaii in 2012.

Hawaii respondents got the next one right: 65% agree that we're on a post-PC era, and that smartphones and tablets will soon dominate. No question that this will be so by 2020 in most of the US. Only 28% of international respondents agreed to this. Much lower disposable income (due to lower incomes and higher taxes) do not allow Europeans to change technology items frequently.

Finally from President Obama, to Linda Lingle and many luminaries in the between, math and science education is the best way to stimulate future innovation. Correctly, 74% of international respondents agreed but only 33% of Hawaii respondents agree. Sun, surf and R&R does not jibe with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math!)

Innovations We Can't Live Without: US and Hawaii

Earlier this year Consumer Reports published a small survey in a sidebar answering this question: Which of these innovations of the past few decades would be hardest to live without?

I used my AIKEA FOR HONOLULU newsletter and Facebook page to invite people to respond to an identical survey and make two choices among these innovations: Bank ATM – Broadband (fast) Internet service – Cable or satellite TV – Cell phone – Digital camera – GPS – Home computer – Microwave oven – Smart phone. The survey is still live; feel free to take it if you haven't done so.

The results are summarized below. They are listed from high to low according to their Hawaii share. For six out of nine innovations, the USA and Hawaii results are very similar, i.e., within two percentage points (green cells.) However, the other three reveal a different pattern:

• USA folks are more focused on food and ready-to-eat meals. They chose the microwave oven as their top innovation!
• Hawaii folks are more focused on technology with personal computers and fast Internet connections being their top two choices.

We have to be cautious with this outcome because Hawaii respondents were contacted by email and Internet social media, thus my survey touched only a computer savvy Hawaii population sample. However, both surveys agree that four innovations based on Intelligent Technology (IT), namely PC, digital TV, Internet and cell phones get the lion's share of the responses: 58% in the Consumer Reports USA survey, and 74% in my limited, computer-based Hawaii survey.

Faith-based Transportation Policy

Washington Post, George F. Will, A Golden State train wreck, August 8, 2012.

• In faith-based transportation policy, rail worshipers think people will park their cars in Tampa and then rent cars in Orlando.
• California Governor Brown’s reverence for his rail bauble is fanaticism.

How will people in Honolulu

• go to their second job ...
  
• manage their school and job ...
• take kids to school ...
  
• go surfing ...
  
• go eating ...
  
• go to their doctor, hospital, blood test lab, dialysis location ...
  
• do their groceries and run other errands ...
  
• have a diverse and fulfilling life ...
  

... without the independent transportation on roads with cars and buses that serve all neighborhoods?

Railigion is the affliction or belief that most "other people" will be able to use the rail regularly to make the trips that take them to the activities above. This is faith, affliction or outright stupidity. Whatever you call it, professional and responsible transportation planning is not.

HOT Lanes and Tunnels are Hot and Free to the Taxpayer

$52 Billion Chicago Plan. Carefully targeted investment to modernize the greater Chicago region's highway system would reduce projected 2040 congestion by 10% overall and by 20% within Chicago itself, according to a major report from the Reason Foundation's Galvin Mobility Project. The plan includes a 275-mile HOT lanes network, a new Outer Beltway, and several urban highway tunnels. All the new capacity would be variably priced, and projected revenues of $58 billion would exceed the $52 billion construction cost, according to detailed modeling carried out for the study.

Steps Toward DC-Region Express Toll Network. On August 1st, Virginia DOT and the Fluor/Transurban joint venture that is nearing completion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) Express Lanes, reached commercial and financial close on the $940 million I-95 project. It will convert the existing two reversible HOV lanes to three reversible Express Toll lanes along 28 miles of I-95. Across the river in Maryland, the Maryland State Highway Administration is studying potential express toll lanes for the I-270 corridor, which heads northwest from the Beltway.

Largest Infrastructure Fund Exceeds $7 Billion. Infrastructure Investor reported on July 31st that the world's largest infrastructure investment fund, Global Infrastructure Partners II, has amassed $7.02 billion in capital, towards its target of $8 billion. Overall, such funds have raised an estimated $200 billion over the past decade.

Port of Miami Tunnel at Half-Way Mark. The massive tunnel boring machine that is creating the tunnel between the Miami area's expressway system and the Port of Miami on Watson Island has completed the first of two 4,200-foot tunnels under Government Cut. The next step is for the TBM to be turned around to dig the parallel tube over a six-month period. The $607 million tunnel is being procured under a 30-year concession.

Dutch Pension Fund Buys Stake in Texas Managed Lanes. Pension fund APG from the Netherlands has invested $300 million to acquire a 12.3% equity stake in the North Tarrant Express and a 13.3% stake in the LBJ managed lanes project. Both are being developed by a Cintra/Meridiam concession company. Both concessions are for 52 years.

Source of the summaries: Robert Poole, the Reason Foundation.

Take the Rail to Watch a Rainbow Warriors Game?

It's 2023. The rail hui won and got rail running.

The Rainbow Warriors of the University of Hawaii are having their homecoming game. Two families of four, one from Makiki and another from Kapolei are getting ready to attend the game. Both of them will go by rail.

How much will each family pay in fares? Thirty four dollars for eight adult tickets at $4.25 each. Not a bargain. (The $4.25 is based on city estimates. Actual fare will likely be higher. For example today’s adult fare on the BART from the Fruitvale TOD to Embarcadero is $3.55.)

The rail does not go to Makiki or Kapolei as it does not go to over 90% of places and neighborhoods on Oahu.

Walking to the nearest station is too far and they are thinking that by the time they’re back it'll be too late to wait for a bus. Both decide to drive to the nearest station. So both families spend 10 to 15 minutes and gas to get to the station by car.

The Makiki family cheated and parked at Ala Moana Center, but the lots were quite full so it took them a while to find a spot. The shopping center is working on a plan to curb rail freeloaders. The Kapolei family drove to the park-and-ride facility but the lot was full so, like many others, they parked on the grass and hoped to avoid a ticket.

It's Saturday and instead of the weekend schedule the City is paying heavy overtime to run trains at a fast schedule to accommodate the Aloha Stadium ridership. The Rainbow Express and other bus routes to the stadium have been cut. All transit users have to take a feeder bus to a rail station. The glory days of TheBus are over. It’s been “restructured.”

Trains run every 5 minutes. Trains run full with 300 passengers and half of them are standings all the way. In two hours, full trains manage to get 12,000 people to Aloha Stadium. But this fills only 24% of Aloha Stadium’s seats. The other three quarters must arrive by car, taxi, limo or bus.

So far the two families spent about 45 minutes to reach the crowded Aloha Stadium rail station. After a long walk and a couple road crossings they are at their seats.

UH wins. Go Warriors!

Now 12,000 people start walking to the station. They are tired and would like to go home. Many have an early church service or other early to dos on Sunday. (They'll need a car for those activities.)

The trains are running like mad. People pack in like sardines. Each train picks up 300 people at a time…. 300 eastbound and 300 westbound. But there are 12,000 people who need to go home.

How long do they have to wait? The very first 600 people got lucky and had no wait. The very last 600 had to wait for 76 minutes!

The average waiting time to board a train for all the folks who went to Aloha Stadium by rail was 38 minutes.

Tempers flare, BO and beer smells. Pushes, shoves. Some groping and pickpocketing too. The Kapolei and Makiki families are tired, frustrated and very late.

Thirty four bucks for this? Never again!

Rail wins? We lose!

It's a lose-lose. Here is why:

If rail is a success and people use it in large numbers, then it'll be overcrowded, smelly, and expensive. Most people will travel as standees and a lot of time will be wasted in waiting and transferring. Why is this better than using a bus or being in bumper to bumper traffic? Why did the average family of four have to pay $20,000 to build this rail?

If rail is a failure and only ex-bus riders, carpool passengers and a few others use it (these are the usual riders of modern rail systems) then why did we spend six billion dollars for an underutilized system that did nothing to relieve traffic congestion?

If we install a 19th century "solution" for our 21st century problem of traffic congestion, then there’s no win.

Today’s population has a complex and diverse demand for mobility that stems from our independent, multi-purpose life-style. Only unscrupulous transit professionals and misinformed politicians would claim that a single line of rail with 20 stations is a mobility and congestion solution for our island.

Free Bus?

That's a question that comes up often in public forums I attend. Why don't we make public transit like Honolulu's TheBus free?

The Transportation Research Board, a unit of the National Academy of Engineering has just released a report titled Implementation and Outcomes of Fare-Free Transit Systems.

The quotes below help us conclude that tiny systems like the one on the Big Island are better of being free because it costs more to collect money than the money that will be actually collected. Large systems like Honolulu's can't be run for free. They will run out of funds quickly and they'll likely become movable homeless shelters. Recall that TheBus is cutting routes because it cannot afford its fuel bill. Actual ridership of free bus systems also showed that free bus does not translate into less traffic congestion because even at zero cost, too few motorists switch to the bus.

Here are the main findings of the report:

1. No public transit system in the United States with more than 100 buses currently offers fare-free service. (Honolulu TheBus has over 550 buses.)
2. The largest jurisdictions currently providing fare-free service are Indian River County, Florida, and the island of Hawaii, both with populations of approximately 175,000. (The free bus on the Big Island basically transports workers from Hilo to resorts in Kailua-Kona.)
   
3. Fare-free public transit makes the most internal business sense for systems in which the percentage of farebox revenue to operating expenses is quite low. In such cases, the cost associated with collecting and accounting for fares and producing fare media is often close to, or exceeds, the amount of revenue that would be collected from passengers.
4. Providing fare-free public transit service is virtually certain to result in significant ridership increases no matter where it is implemented. Ridership will usually increase from 20% to 60% in a matter of just a few months. (Note: It's worth exploring a low cost bus fare between the Waianae coast communities and the Kapolei transit center.)
   
5. Some public transit systems that have experimented with or implemented a fare-free policy have been overwhelmed by the number of new passengers or been challenged by the presence of disruptive passengers, including loud teenagers and vagrants.
6. Systems offering fare-free service in areas of higher potential demand for public transit need to be aware that increased ridership might also result in the need for additional maintenance, security, and possibly additional equipment to provide sufficient capacity and/or maintain schedules.
7. A relatively small percentage of the additional trips (from 5% to 30%) were made by people switching from other motorized modes. Most new trips were made by people who would have otherwise walked or used a bicycle, or would not have made the trip if there was a fare to pay.

New Lane on EB H-1 Freeway!

Bravo Hawaii DOT. Now the Koko Head bound (east-bound, or EB) direction at Makiki has four through lanes between Ward Ave. and Punahou St. With a simple re-stripping, the freeway viaduct over Piikoi St. changed from a total of 6 lanes to 8. That's a 30% improvement for "peanuts."

Before the EB Vineyard Boulevard on-ramp the freeway has its the typical 3-lane configuration, like so:


The new lane is the continuation of the fourth lane that comes from the Vineyard Boulevard on-ramp like so:


The Ward Avenue on-ramp adds a fifth lane but this lane merges onto the fourth lane. Now next to the Piikoi Street on-ramp the freeway is 4 lanes wide!


This location was a perennial midday bottleneck. Now outside the peak hours, flow should be much smoother on both directions. Recall that the west-bound direction was modified from 3 to 4 lanes a couple weeks earlier, as presented here.

BUS RAPID TRANSIT: Projects Improve Transit Service and Can Contribute to Economic Development

I am pleased to present the summary findings of this hot-off-the-press report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office report to the U.S. Senate.

U.S. bus rapid transit (BRT) projects we reviewed include features that distinguished BRT from standard bus service and improved riders’ experience. However, few of the projects (5 of 20) used dedicated or semi-dedicated lanes— a feature commonly associated with BRT and included in international systems to reduce travel time and attract riders. Project sponsors and planners explained that decisions on which features to incorporate into BRT projects were influenced by costs, community needs, and the ability to phase in additional features. For example, one project sponsor explained that well-lighted shelters with security cameras and real-time information displays were included to increase passengers’ sense of safety in the evening. Project sponsors told us they plan to incorporate additional features such as off-board fare collection over time.

The BRT projects we reviewed generally increased ridership and improved service over the previous transit service. Specifically, 13 of the 15 project sponsors that provided ridership data reported increases in ridership after 1 year of service and reduced average travel times of 10 to 35% over previous bus services. However, even with increases in ridership, U.S. BRT projects usually carry fewer total riders than rail transit projects and international BRT systems. Project sponsors and other stakeholders attribute this to higher population densities internationally and riders who prefer rail transit. However, some projects—such as the M15 BRT line in New York City—carry more than 55,000 riders per day.

Capital costs for BRT projects were generally lower than for rail transit projects and accounted for a small percent of the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) New, Small, and Very Small Starts’ funding although they accounted for over 50% of projects with grant agreements since fiscal year 2005. Project sponsors also told us that BRT projects can provide rail-like benefits at lower capital costs. However, differences in capital costs are due in part to elements needed for rail transit that are not required for BRT and can be considered in context of total riders, costs for operations, and other long-term costs such as vehicle replacement.

We found that although many factors contribute to economic development, most local officials we visited believe that BRT projects are contributing to localized economic development. For instance, officials in Cleveland told us that between $4 and $5 billion was invested near the Healthline BRT project—associated with major hospitals and universities in the corridor. Project sponsors in other cities told us that there is potential for development near BRT projects; however, development to date has been limited by broader economic conditions—most notably the recent recession.

While most local officials believe that rail transit has a greater economic development potential than BRT, they agreed that certain factors can enhance BRT’s ability to contribute to economic development, including physical BRT features that relay a sense of permanence to developers; key employment and activity centers located along the corridor; and local policies and incentives that encourage transit-oriented development. Our analysis of land value changes near BRT lends support to these themes. In addition to economic development, BRT project sponsors highlighted other community benefits including quick construction and implementation and operational flexibility.

New Lane on WB H-1 Freeway!

Quietly, quickly and effectively the Hawaii State Department of Transportation (HDOT) has added a full lane of traffic on the west-bound H-1 Freeway from Punahou Street to Pali Highway.

The new lane starts as an extension to the existing auxiliary freeway lane between the Punahou Street on-ramp and the Lunalilo Street off-ramp like so:


The added lane continues onto the viaduct than now has four instead of three lanes! This is a whopping 25% to 30% capacity addition. Numerically it is a 33.3% gain but when a lane addition is effected by narrowing lanes and shoulders, some capacity loss does occur. As you see in these pictures, vehicles fit well on the narrower lanes and after multiple passes, I did not notice any slow downs because of the tighter lanes.

Now the critical Lunalilo Street on-ramp and Vineyard Boulevard off-ramp has five lanes instead of four, like so:

The fourth lane terminates smoothly as the Pali Highway off-ramp.

This lane addition is the result of many months of work at my University of Hawaii Traffic and Transportation Lab, the R. M. Towill Corporation, the Planning, Traffic and Design section of HDOT and others.

Cudos to HDOT for doing it! I look forward to the similar lane addition on the east-bound side.

Honolulu TheBus Color Scheme Preference

Congress: Now Honolulu Can Switch from Rail to BRT

The recently passed 2-year transportation act of Congress which was signed by the president contains these golden nuggets for Honolulu:

1) ... the bill modifies the definition of Bus Rapid Transit projects to broaden the use of the program. BRT projects will now be classified and funded as ... Fixed Guideway

2) ... the bill allows three Fixed Guideway BRT projects to receive at least 80 percent federal funding share each fiscal year. These provisions provide a significant opportunity for communities seeking to invest in BRT

Source: Inside MAP-21: New Starts Transit Grants.

Significantly, part of the rail's guideway can be retained as express flyovers for buses. Based on the letter of the law, these flyovers can be used off-peak for other operations such as emergency, city services and other transportation services. The unsightly stations can be replaced with on/off ramps. Like the Harris BRT, there will be no need for an elevated guideway in the city core.

Now there shouldn't be any question as to what the right course of action for Honolulu is.

Honolulu BRT: The College Express

I have long advocated for BRT service along King and Beretania Streets. A sample article from 2002 was titled: A Less Expensive and Less Disruptive Bus Rapid Transit System for Honolulu.

I modified one of the routes proposed ten years into The College Express in a proposal to past Governor and current candidate for mayor Ben Cayetano. The "constant motion" circuit route connects the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii Pacific University and Honolulu Community College with a bus every 15 minutes off-peak and every 6 minutes in the peak periods.

In addition to connecting three college campuses, this route also provides service to important transit-dependent markets in-town such as:

• Hospitals: Straub, Kapiolani, Honolulu Medical Group, Holistic Medical, many doctors' offices
• SuperMarkets: Times, Safeway, Foodland
• Banks: BOH, FHB, CPB
• Government buildings
• City Center/Downtown
• Chinatown and Iwilei

This route may begin operations immediately as a regular bus route. Once an environmental assessment has been approved and funding is secured for parking relocations (if needed) and minor lane improvements as well as traffic signal improvements, the route will convert into a faster College Express BRT service. Depending on demand, high technology, high capacity double decker buses may be utilized, as the sample shown below. (This is similar to the Las Vegas public transit bus.)

Godfather of Global Warming Is Less Alarmed Now

Professor James Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist who had a major impact on the development of global warming theory. As the Toronto Sun describes him: Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honored working scientist and academic.


In recent interviews Lovelock has made these rather starling declarations:

1. He had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.
2. He's been a long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
3. He is in favor of natural gas fracking extraction because natural gas is a low-polluting alternative to coal.
4. He believes that ‘sustainable development’ is meaningless drivel.
5. He "can’t stand windmills at any price."
6. He "blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion."

I am truly humbled to be in agreement with him, 5 for 5, with first five arguments: climate change, nuclear power, fracking, sustainable development and windmills. I have not yet written an article blasting greens (although I often refer to them as pseudo-greens) because I've been rather busy countering the railigious.

Sources

• Green ‘drivel’ exposed: The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria
• 'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change
• James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking

Is Honolulu Really No. 1 in Traffic Jams?

Of course not! Honolulu’s congestion ranking is No. 50. But with rail, it stands a good chance to climb to the top 10 congested cities in the US. Read my analysis on Honolulu's congestion rank in this Honolulu Weekly article.

Electric Vehicles: Another Government Bet, Another Taxpayer Loss

I quote below a summary by Robert W. Poole, Jr., Director of Transportation Studies, Reason Foundation that he originally titled What's Wrong with Electric Cars?
=================================================
Several years ago in this newsletter (prior to the debut of the Chevy Volt), I celebrated the vision of a future of zero-tailpipe emission cars, powered by breakthrough battery technology. Articles on advanced batteries were appearing in respectable places like MIT's Technology Review, and Silicon Valley venture capitalists were ramping up funding of electric vehicle (EV) and advanced-battery startups. With the coming of practical, zero-emission vehicles, I hoped, a lot of the anti-car, anti-highway ideas that I disagree with could be dismissed as irrelevant.

Alas, several years later, things don't look so bright for EVs. Canadian columnist Margaret Wente, writing in The Globe and Mail last fall, summed it up as follows: "As Dennis DesRosiers, a leading auto consultant points out, consumers simply won't pay a $20,000 premium for a vehicle that doesn't go very far, isn't very convenient, and runs out of juice as soon as you turn on the air conditioner." And that, I think, neatly explains why:

• sales of the highly touted Chevy Volt totaled just 7,671 last year, and
  
• the Nissan Leaf did only marginally better at 9,674.
  
• The Daily Mail in London reported that only 2,149 EVs have been sold in Britain since 2006.

Wall Street Journal auto industry analyst Joseph White in February penned a detailed comparison of the Chevy Volt and the conventionally powered Chevy Cruz, about the same size but selling for half the Volt's $40,000 price. The Cruz is breaking sales records, while the Volt is a dud. The underlying problem is simply that despite lithium-ion batteries being far superior to the lead-acid batteries that powered GM's previous electric car (the EV-1), they are still heavy, costly, and vastly less efficient at storing energy than that miracle fuel, petroleum.

For EVs like the Volt, Leaf, and Ford's Focus, the battery pack costs $12-15,000, about one-third the cost of the vehicle. And that is despite $1.26 billion in federal subsidies to battery producers over the last several years. There may be some future battery technology that will represent a breakthrough in energy storage, but lithium-ion clearly is not it.But that has not stopped the government's multi-front program of jump-starting an EV industry based on flawed technology.

Besides grants and loans to battery companies, the Department of Energy and the Administration's stimulus program have put some $9 billion for EV production into major auto companies like GM and Nissan as well as a whole raft of start-ups such as Tesla, Fisker, Bright Automotive, Think, and even truck-maker Navistar, which got $2.4 billion to jump-start production of an electric truck called eStar that has found few buyers. (A number of the smaller start-ups have already filed for bankruptcy.) In addition, of course, buyers of EVs get a $7,500 tax credit (which the Administration's current budget proposal would increase to $10,000). That credit applies not just to the low-end Leaf and Volt but also to the $100,000 Fisker Karma and Tesla roadster.

The average household income of Volt buyers is around $170,000, and I'm sure those who have put down deposits for Fisker and Tesla EVs are in far higher brackets. What kind of public policy sense does it make to subsidize playthings for the rich?

The whole federal push to jump-start an EV industry is misguided. As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has said, "The government is a crappy venture capitalist." In a field where true breakthroughs are needed if a practical, cost-effective EV is ever to emerge, government funding of basic research and development might be justified. But the attempt to shape and micro-manage the development of an industry is a recipe for massive wasting of resources. As former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Michael Boskin put it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in February, "Industrial policy failed in the 1970s and 1980s. Letting governments, rather than marketplace competition, pick winners and losers is just as bad an idea today.
=================================================
I should add that while in South Korea last month I read "China's dream of electric car leadership elusive" and I quote:
In 2009, [China] announced bold plans to cash in on demand for clean vehicles by making China a global power in electric car manufacturing. They pledged billions of dollars for research and called for annual sales of 500,000 cars by 2015. Today, Beijing is scaling back its ambitions, chastened by technological hurdles and lack of buyer interest. Developers have yet to achieve breakthroughs and will be lucky to sell 2,000 cars this year, mostly taxis.

Transit Oriented Development Is Such BS

This shop is literally 20 ft. from the top of the elevators leading to a major station of the Athens Metro. It was among the early victims of the Greek recession. If TODs are robust, these shops were supposed to close last. Far from it. Transit ridership is higher now thatq the Greek economy is doing poorly but the artificial TOD neighborhoods are ghost-areas.


Lesson: Soul-full neighborhoods like Kalihi and Manoa can weather severe, prolonged crises, but artificial ones like Kapolei and Hoopili will likely wither or vanish. And you don't want to be walking there in the dark coming up or down the stairs of a transit station like a perfect target...

Underpasses Explained

Urban underpasses are the key to central city congestion reduction given that there is no room to widen streets and there is no desire to build intrusive flyovers. Here is a short video that explains them.

Honolulu would greatly benefit from at least three express underpasses. One from Nimitz to Alakea and Halekawila, another on Kapiolani Boulevard at the Kapiolani/Date/Kamoku intersection by Iolani School, and a third by having a lane of Kalakaua Avenue go under Kapiolani Boulevard.

Here is a video of our traffic simulation that explains the one lane express underpass from Nimitz to Alakea and Halekauwila. Observe that the left turns that take a long time to receive green and spill over and block lanes on Nimitz Highway flow non-stop to both Alakea St. and Halekauwila St. Also the westbound (Ewa) flow has green light all the time except when there are pedestrian crossing requests.

The simulation screen-shots below show the before/after situation on Kapiolani Boulevard at its intersection with Date and Kamoku streets. The one lane per direction underpass visibly reduces congestion on Kapiolani Boulevard and allows for more green time to be allocated to the other sides of this complex intersection. This reduces their congestion and shortens the waiting time for the pedestrian crossings.


Because almost 50% of peak hour traffic on Kapiolani Boulevard and nearly 100% of its off peak traffic will use the underpass, the risk of collisions and pedestrian accidents also reduces substantially.

At least two of the existing surface lanes are maintained because these are "low clearance" underpasses which are easy to fit in a crowded urban setting. London, Paris, Seoul and Singapore have many such underpasses. Any vehicle such as a standard transit bus and lower will be able to use them. Taller vehicles (amounting to about 2% to 4% of traffic) must use the regular lanes. Also when the subject street has green, most of its traffic will opt to use the surface lanes.The underpasses will be equipped with sumps and pumps to remove storm waters.

Castle junction on the windward side of Oahu is an exception because for that location a flyover rather than an underpass would be shorter, safer and much cheaper to implement. The one lane flyover would replace the very busy Kaneohe-bound twin left turns that on some occasions cause queues to grow near the tunnels and block the lanes to Kailua. In the peak periods the intersection will improve from Level of Service F in AM and PM peaks now, to D in the morning and B in the afternoon peak periods.

More on our analyses of underpasses in these professional articles:

Dehnert, G. and P. D. Prevedouros, Underpasses at Urban Intersections: Investigation and Case Study. ITE Journal, Vol. 74, No. 3: 36-47, March 2004. Received 2005 Institute of Transportation Engineers Van Wagoner Award.

Prevedouros, P. D., J. K. Tokishi and K. Chongue. Simulation of Urban Underpasses for Traffic Congestion Relief. 10th International Conference on Applications of Advanced Technologies in Transportation, ASCE, Athens, May 2008.

Yu, A. and P. D. Prevedouros. Left Turn Prohibition and Partial Grade Separation for Signalized Intersections: Planning Level Assessment. ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering. In review, 2012.

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.