Uncertainty surrounds $8B Honolulu rail project

National professional news outlet Construction Dive looked into HART in the article Uncertainty surrounds $8B Honolulu rail project after reviewing the Honolulu Civil Beat article What Honolulu Rail Officials Know They Don’t Know.

• The total cost of the project is in question. Panos Prevedouros, chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, estimates that it will cost at least $13* billion. The price tag for the mostly elevated rail line could rise as crews move into the city and navigate unmapped utilities, encounter various types of subsoil, come across potential native burial sites, and possibly damage existing structures as they excavate nearby. In order to provide the public with a rapid rail option and stay within the budget, officials could opt to shorten the system

• Polls suggest a majority of the public wants to finish rail and stay within the existing budget. Both can be achieved only by finishing rail at the Middle Street Transit Center, where riders can transfer to coordinated options such as pooled ride-hailing and high-tech versions of Honolulu’s award-winning bus service.

• Prevedouros believes such a plan would give taxpayers substantial value for their money already spent on rail, by getting people beyond both the H-1 and H-2 and the Middle Street merges while avoiding untold billions in construction costs and freeing up any saved construction financing to pay for operations and maintenance.

• Most rail commuters will need to transfer at least once in any event. Consider this example: If rail were built to Ala Moana Center, it would take 12 minutes to get there from Middle Street by rail, and then another 16 minutes by bus to University of Hawaii Manoa — a total of 28 minutes. But if rail terminates at Middle Street, a UH student can get to Manoa by express bus in about 20 minutes.

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(*) Back in 2009, FTA's consultant Jacobs of Dallas, TX conducted a risk analysis on HART's budget (actually Honolulu rail became the HART project after 2010) and showed a 10% chance of the project costing $10.5 billion. During the Legislative session of spring 2017, Mayor Caldwell mentioned that for all practical purposes the cost of the project is $10 billion. See "Mayor Kirk Caldwell and City Council Chairman Ron Menor think Oahu taxpayers are so rich we can pay not only for a $10 billion rail system that’s $5 billion over budget and climbing, but also for road projects on the neighbor islands."

As of 2018, the project is at least 6 years late (and likely to have further schedule slippages).

• Taking the Jacobs $10.5 B projection and compounding it by 4% over 6 years gives a year of expenditure (YoE) cost of $13.29 Billion.
• Taking the Mayor's $10.0 B projection and compounding it by 5% over 6 years gives a YoE cost of $13.40 Billion.
• If you dislike compounding inflation and prefer the simple inflation of costs, then the corresponding numbers are $13.02 B and $13.00 B.

The Onion on Transportation

Satirical publication The Onion has at least three priceless articles on transportation, as follows:

• November 29, 2000, Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

WASHINGTON, DC–A study released Monday by the American Public Transportation Association reveals that 98 percent of Americans support the use of mass transit by others.
...
Anaheim, CA, resident Lance Holland, who drives 80 miles a day to his job in downtown Los Angeles, was among the proponents of public transit.

"Expanding mass transit isn't just a good idea, it's a necessity," Holland said. "My drive to work is unbelievable. I spend more than two hours stuck in 12 lanes of traffic. It's about time somebody did something to get some of these other cars off the road."

Public support for mass transit will naturally lead to its expansion and improvement, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said.

"With everyone behind it, we'll be able to expand bus routes, create park-and-ride programs, and build entire new Metrolink commuter-rail lines," LACMTA president Howard Sager said. "It's almost a shame I don't know anyone who will be using these new services." READ MORE

• March 10, 2004, Urban Planner Stuck In Traffic Of Own Design

PITTSBURGH, PA—Bernard Rothstein, an urban planner and traffic-flow modulation specialist with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, found himself stuck in rush-hour traffic of his own design for more than an hour Monday.
...
As Pittsburgh, America's steel capital, made the transition to high-tech and service industries in the 1980s, many thought its rusting, blighted urban landscape was obsolete. According to Rothstein, it was then that the Urban Redevelopment Authority, along with several private urban-planning firms, began the slow process of rethinking the city's roads, parks, and commercial and residential districts. Today, the city's designers are regularly lauded for their elegant, modern buildings and stuck in traffic of their own making for hours at a time. READ MORE

• February 5, 2018, MTA Reminds New Yorkers They Can Fucking Walk

NEW YORK—In response to numerous complaints regarding recent delays and route changes to the city’s public transportation system, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials at a press conference Monday reminded residents that they can fucking walk. “While we always do our best to avoid inconveniencing our customers, city residents should be aware that at any time, they are more than welcome to get off their asses and use their two fucking feet to reach destinations,” said MTA spokesperson Reggie Dawes, adding that the city’s comprehensive street grid system is easily accessible on foot ... READ MORE

Ban the Bike! How Cities Made a Huge Mistake in Promoting Cycling

Summary by Robert Poole of Lawrence Solomon's article. Solomon is an environmentalist whose career with Canada’s Energy Probe Research Foundation spans several decades.

"  Expanding the role of bicycle travel in urban areas has been government policy in developed nations for several decades. As Lawrence Solomon wrote in a recent piece in Canada’s Financial Post, “At no expense to taxpayers, the bicycle took cars off the road, easing traffic; it saved wear and tear on the roads, easing municipal budgets; it reduced auto emissions easing air pollution; it reduced the need for automobile parking, increasing the efficiency of land use; and it helped keep people fit, too.”

Yet despite these ostensible benefits, something of a “bikelash” is under way, in cities that include Amsterdam, several major cities in China, London, Singapore, and elsewhere. As The Economist reported in “The Bikes That Broke Free” (Dec. 23, 2017), one emerging problem is dockless bike-sharing systems that have plagued cities with bikes left all over the place. Amsterdam has banned such systems, and a growing number of Chinese cities have called a halt to any expansion of existing systems.

Solomon—once a strong advocate of urban bicycling—has concluded that bicycling today “is a mixed bag, usually with more negatives than positives. In many cities, bike lanes now consume more road space than they free up; they add to pollution as well as reducing it; they hurt neighborhoods and business districts alike; and they have become a drain on the public purse.”

Many of his examples come from Europe and Australia, where cities have been far more aggressive in promoting bicycle use than is typical in the United States. Transport for London has spent large sums to create a “cycle super highway” that has taken away traffic lanes and increased traffic congestion, sparking a significant backlash. Paris is spending €150 million on cycling infrastructure, Amsterdam €120 million just on bike parking spots, and Melbourne is under way on a $100 million cycling plan.

Negative health impacts are an unexpected consequence of aggressively expanded urban bicycling, Solomon notes. Congestion caused by taking away traffic lanes leads to idling traffic, which increases emissions. Cyclists are the most-exposed to PM2.5 soot from idling vehicles. A study by the London School of Medicine found that cyclists in London have 2.3 times more inhaled soot than walkers, because “cyclists breathe more deeply and at a quicker rate than pedestrians while in closer proximity to exhaust fumes.”

Although Solomon doesn’t mention cyclist deaths and injuries due to driving in close proximity to motor vehicles, my traffic engineer friends tell me (off the record) that they are appalled by the proliferation of bike lanes on major U.S. arterials that, because they are a vital supplement to the freeway system, increasingly have traffic signal timing aimed at providing rolling green lights and 40-45 mph speeds. They would much prefer that bicycles be kept away from such high-volume traffic arteries.

Solomon also points to concerns of local merchants who depend on metered street parking for their customers. In some cities, bike lanes have replaced street parking. The result is to replace a multi-function lane (traffic lane during AM and PM peaks, parking and truck delivery space at other hours) with “a single-function piece of under-used pavement.” Cities lose the former parking meter revenue, and in some cases have to build expensive parking structures nearby to replace the street parking.  "

Honolulu Rail Creates One Tenth of Jobs Promissed

Quoted in Marcel Honore's article in the Honolulu Civil Beat Rail Promised Lots Of Jobs But There’s No Sure Count Of What It’s Delivering.

• “It’s not the kind of project that lends itself to a huge amount of workers working at the same time,” said Panos Prevedouros, a longtime rail critic and one-time mayoral candidate who chairs the University of Hawaii’s Civil Engineering Department. “The way they did it, it’s much simpler to manage. It takes a longer time, but it keeps the (job) count quite low.”

By "the way they did it," I explained to Marcel that HART rail is being built one segment at a time by a single builder, instead of having, say 4 builders building 5 miles each, simultaneously.

• Prevedouros said the city should keep better track of the actual jobs that rail is generating since that was such a strong part of the pitch years earlier to build the project.  “What was presented and promised, it was all rhetoric around the Great Recession we had. So it was a big selling point,” he said.  “Really, 1,000 jobs doesn’t make or break anything.” [in Honolulu]

It wasn't difficult for me and unbiased economists to see the lies in the jobs numbers. Back on April 14, 2010, I exposed this in my article Proposed Rail Creates 1,000 Local Jobs and Destroys 4,000 Jobs.

See Scott Ishikawa serving city propaganda for the 10,000 jobs... and an interesting comment underneath.

On March 23, 2012 I simply wrote that HART's Job Estimates Are Wrong.

So, let's recap... So far I was right about the cost of rail will be much higher than advertised, the delivery of rail would be much longer than advertised, and that the advertised job numbers were fake.  There are two big ones left: Reliability and Ridership.

Reliability may be better that mediocre now that Hitachi has put its name on the Ansaldo trains. Ridership will be, at best, one half of what the city proclaimed in the EIS (see my estimate.)

Behaviour of Lithium-Ion Batteries in Electric Vehicles

Hot off the press and pleased to be coauthor of Chapter 5 of the newest book on lithium batteries for transportation. I co-authored this article with my 2011 PhD student Dr. Lambrosw Mitropoulos.

Our chapter is titled Conventional, Battery-Powered, and Other Alternative Fuel Vehicles: Sustainability Assessment.

ABSTRACT:   The substantial impacts of transportation on environment, society, and economy strongly urge the incorporation of sustainability into transportation planning. Major developments that enhance transportation sustainability include alternative fuels, electric drive and other novel technologies for vehicle propulsion. This chapter presents a sustainability framework that enables the assessment of transportation vehicle characteristics. Identified indicators are grouped into five sustainability dimensions (environment, technology, energy, economy, and users). The method joins life cycle impacts and a set of quantified indicators to assess the sustainability performance of seven popular light-duty vehicles and two types of transit buses. The hybrid diesel electric bus received the highest sustainability index and the internal combustion engine vehicle the lowest. Fuel cell and hybrid electric vehicles were found to have the highest sustainability index among all passenger vehicles. The sustainability performance of some new technologies currently suffers from limitations in engine and battery performance, comfort and convenience, and availability of charging stations.

26 UH Engineering Undergrads Achieve Professional Certification

More than two dozen students in the civil and environmental engineering program (CEE) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa became Envision Sustainability Professionals (ENV SPs) before the end of the fall 2017 semester.

All the students were enrolled in the College of Engineering‘s CEE 444 course on infrastructure sustainability.

To become ENV SPs, they passed a comprehensive assessment of sustainability credits that are applicable to any type of infrastructure project, including new projects and expansion or rehabilitation projects.

The exam was developed at Princeton University and is administered by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.

Encouraged by discussions at the National Civil Engineering Department Heads Conference last summer, Civil Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros contacted local ENV SP engineer Jon Young and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design engineer Amber Takenouchi about presenting lectures to his CEE 444 students.

Both had facilitated an envision course in February and were willing to help. They created a 40-question homework assignment and, with Prevedouros, prepared and presented three lectures.

The students were given a choice. If they took the envision exam and passed it by December 12, it would stand in for their final exam. Prevedouros emphasized to the students that this would be a personal decision to build up their own records and not a course requirement (the final exam is 30 percent of the grade in CEE 444).

Nearly all of the students chose to take the exam. Prevedouros was ecstatic at the results.

“I thought that this addition to the course would have been a small success if about a dozen students tried the exam and maybe half of them passed it,” he said. “It would have been a clear success if just ten passed, but 26 of our undergraduates now have a professional certification before they actually have their degrees.”

[Originally posted by University of Hawaii: 26 UH engineering undergrads achieve professional certification, on December 27, 2017.]

Hawaii Wakes Up to Fake Missile Attack

Hawaii suffers from government unions which are the institutionalized protection (if not cultivation) of incompetence, laziness and un-accountability. These unions have become so big and powerful that most of the time succeed in electing politicians of their choosing, and control them to their liking. All this dysfunction lead to today's international embarrassment of the fake ballistic missile attack.

This must not be another day in paradise. Heads should roll. Preferably 38, one for each minute of absurdly incompetent failure to recall the alarm.

MidWeek, Old Friends, November 29, 2017

Mahalo to Jaimie Kim Farinas for my profile in Midweek. I'm on page 11.

On page 10, retired UH professor Dan Boylan covers the other "gearhead" professor, psychology professor Mark Hanson and his documentary film Hao Welo (Hot Metal) about car racing on Oahu.

It’s Not Too Late to Build Rail Better

Quoted in Honolulu Civil Beat's editorial board opinion about HART.

Honolulu’s prophets of doom for the rail project — Randall Roth, Cliff Slater and Panos Prevedouros — believe they were right all along that the city’s ambitious mass-transit plan is a mess.
...

Roth, Slater and Prevedouros have imagined exactly that. And that is why they’ve accepted the reality that rail is “happening,” as Prevedouros put it in a recent editorial board meeting with Civil Beat. It comes in the wake of the Hawaii Legislature approving a $2.4 billion funding package to continue building the rail line, now pegged at $8.17 billion.

What Roth and Co. are are not accepting, however, is that the city and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation should go ahead and build all of the planned 20 miles and 21 stations. Instead, they want rail to stop at Middle Street.
...

But what Roth, Slater and Prevedouros argue now is that, because Middle Street is home to Oahu Transit Services — home of TheBus, The Handi-Van and the Kalihi-Palama Bus — it can be the future of what they envision as a multimodal hub.

What’s central to this thesis is that transportation technologies and business models are developing faster than once thought possible. Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have altered the way consumers view short trips, while automated buses and cars are already being tested and deployed.
...

Roth and Co. believe the FTA would be open to a new plan. The built guideway could eventually be modified to accommodate shared or automatic transportation systems.

Could Self-Driving Cars and Buses Replace the Last Leg of Rail?

Quoted by Marcel Honore in his article in Honolulu Civil Beat.

It’s been nearly three months since state leaders approved their latest, $2.4 billion funding package to bail out the largest public works project in Hawaii’s history.

But don’t tell Randall Roth, Cliff Slater or Panos Prevedouros that Honolulu rail transit is finally in the clear to reach Ala Moana Center. For the three longtime outspoken rail critics, who’ve previously predicted budget overruns, it’s not a question of “if” the $8.17 billion project will again run out of cash — it’s “when.”

...

Despite the latest influx of cash to move rail forward, Roth, Slater and Prevedouros haven’t given up their efforts. They have adjusted their message, however.

Now, the trio advocates stopping rail at Middle Street and exploring whether the growing popularity of ride-hailing services such as Uber and future self-driving technologies could then get Honolulu commuters from that transit hub further into town.

Prevedouros, a UH civil-engineering professor who previously ran for mayor as an ant–rail candidate, suggested the city could run automated buses along Dillingham Boulevard and Nimitz Highway from the Middle Street transit hub.

The city’s existing road grid could potentially handle more vehicles if they’re self-driving because they would travel more closely together, he added.

However, there’s been no local studies to examine whether this might work, and the idea is only preliminary, he acknowledged.

“This is part of the discussion that hasn’t happened here at all and, it is time that we make that discussion and make that connection to the rail,” Prevedouros said Wednesday.

“What’s the choice of investment? Nineteenth century versus 21st century and this discussion is not even happening in this town. No one is talking autonomous,” or self-driving vehicles, he said.

Slater, meanwhile, pointed to Uber’s recently announced plan to buy 24,000 sports-utility vehicles from Volvo to launch its own self-driving car fleet.

==================

And I add this to the discussion presented in the Civil Beat article:

In November 2017 Google's Waymo unit specializing on driverless technology posted a video of autonomous vans providing a prototype "suburban service." Now fast forward to 2020 and it's not hard to imagine:

1. A dozen Waymo vans roaming on routes in Kapolei and taking people to/from the rail station. They'll be smart too. Midday they'll park at key spots until they are called; unlike buses that clock many miles mostly empty. This has a number of positives in terms or resource consumption, pollution, and wear and tear.
2. Six to ten automated buses connecting Middle Street with downtown, each one departing a few minutes after a train arrives.

Driverless transportation is a low cost, high tech way out of perpetuating the rail black hole. What a way to get Honolulu ahead of most cities in transportation innovation!

Rail Expansion to Manoa and Waikiki Is Impossible

Quoted in Jim Medoza's story that Rail expansion to Manoa, Waikiki impossible — at least on current route.

UH traffic engineer Panos Prevedouros said the situation is, simply, "poor planning."

He thinks rail planners should scrap any idea of an alternate route.

“They're talking about expansion of a system that we don't have enough funds to complete as it is. It's premature,” he said.

Recycle or Incinerate? The Battle of the Blue Bins

Quoted in Honolulu Civil Beat article on Recycling and Waste to Energy issues.

• Panos Prevedouros, chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii Manoa, said burning recyclables would be better for the city’s pocketbook and the environment.
• The way Prevedouros sees it, more trash burned at H-POWER also means less fossil fuel consumed use to produce electricity.
• “We are resource-poor when it comes to generating electricity,” Prevedouros said, adding he thinks Honolulu should even consider importing trash from neighbor islands for incineration.
• Glass could also be crushed and mixed with asphalt to create “glassphalt” for road construction, said Prevedouros.

Duke Professor Henry Petroski on Future of Transportation

Thank you to Hawaii News Now for covering our guest, Duke University civil engineering professor and infrastructure historian Dr. Henry Petroski.

What Lies Beneath? Questions Raised About Infrastructure Below

Quoted in Gina Mangieri's "Always Investigating" extensive coverage of the problems with underground cavities and sinkholes in Kakaako, What lies beneath? As Kakaako develops up, questions raised about infrastructure below.

This broken culvert was discovered in spring 2017 and required emergency repairs.

...

Driving through Kakaako lately has meant navigating a maze of emergency road work after underground near-collapses and even sink holes have popped up in the area.

“We have so many streets,” explained Panos Prevedouros, a University of Hawaii civil and environmental engineering professor, “so many likelihoods of a potential sinkhole.”

That’s because Kakaako was once a low-lying marsh, perfect for fishponds, salt, rice, and taro, but trickier for roadways and urban development we see now.

UH experts Always Investigating spoke with say the buckling roads are giving us signs of three things to watch out for:

Age of infrastructure like underground drainage culverts;
Rising sea levels and groundwater; and
Soil problems common to coastal areas.
“We have clay and sand, things that are easy to dissolve,” said Prevedouros, “and then because we have intrusion of sea water, or perhaps pipes, storm drains, and even sewers breaking, all that has the effect of diluting the soil and creating all kinds of cavities which pose a major threat to public safety.”

...

Experts agree the new structures are built to last and take all coastal-zone geographical challenges into account.

“The newer the buildings, the safer they are,” Prevedouros said. “The older buildings, they may start having problems with their foundations and they may have some tilting. Eventually they will have to have significant repairs and eventually demolition and reconstruction.”

...

“One of the side benefits of the rail project is they can help us with the geo-technical investigations they have done,” Prevedouros said, “and actually they can inform the neighborhood as to the stability of the soils, because they have to do it for their own foundations. Unless you plan to put a big rail or a big road in the area, you cannot simply start poking holes. It’s simply too expensive.”

...

Rail Work Kicks off Airport Leg

Quoted in Jim Mendoza's coverage of rail construction Phase 3: Aloha Stadium to the airport and the Middle Street terminus.

University of Hawaii traffic expert Panos Prevedouros thinks that's where the contractors will face their biggest hurdle.

"When they hit Aolele Street there is essentially an S-curve, one right hand turn followed by a left hand turn which is quite challenging to do in infrastructure. There's also a lot of elevation. You have all the ramps from the freeway going to the airport," he said.

...

Kiewit's work on the first ten miles inconvenienced drivers and harmed businesses. Prevedouros expects STG's work to do the same..

"There will be disruptions and there may be at times major disruptions due to safety," he said.

Bob Poole: Facing Reality on a Shared-Vehicle Future

The cover story of the current issue of Thinking Highways takes on the question of whether an autonomous vehicle future will be largely one of shared AVs or individually owned AVs. Authors Bern Grush and Blair Schlecter rightly begin by asserting that "the ownership question is more important than automation." They also start by telegraphing their conclusion: "That private ownership will cease or become rare is wishful thinking—at least for the next half-century and for any country whose government will not ban ownership."
This conclusion surprised me, because I've read a lot that Bern Grush has written on AVs, and he's made it clear that he would prefer a future in which shared AVs largely win out over individually owned AVs. But that makes his honest look at the obstacles to that future all the more compelling.
Blair and Schlecter begin by contrasting the two predominant views of the future, as follows:

• According to the environmental and livability perspective, the ideal future would be based on vehicles that are automated, connected, electric, and shared (ACES).
  
• But the ideal AV future for most drivers would be vehicles that are comfortable, affordable, fast, and instantly available (CAFI).
  

And they point out that "The ACES-CAFI difference is the divide between what planners wish and consumers want. This gap is now very wide. It has to be closed in order to achieve the holy grail of having most people use 'mobility as a service' (MaaS) rather than owning their own vehicle."
The key to understanding the authors' conclusion is their clear-eyed assessment of serving "travelers with non-routine needs." They identify eight such categories, as follows.

1. Travelers with children, who may need car safety seats for young ones and will also be concerned about the sanitary condition of the vehicles;
   
2. Travelers who trip-chain, e.g., making multiple stops on the way to or from work;
   
3. Travelers who are disabled or elderly, and have difficulty getting in and out of standardized vehicles;
   
4. Baby boomer travelers, a huge cohort over the next several decades, who hope to age in place and will relish the ability to preserve their current mobility via owning an AV;
   
5. Travelers with pets or helper animals—another category not likely to be acceptable to the other passengers in a shared AV;
   
6. Travelers who smoke—ditto;
   
7. Travelers concerned about communicable diseases; and,
   
8. Travelers who need carrying and storage capacity, which includes not only shoppers but also service providers such as pool cleaners, plumbers, electricians, etc.
   

This should be a sobering message for those who glibly predict the imminent displacement of individually owner vehicles by Mobility as a Service. I close with a concluding thought from Grush and Schlecter:

"Currently, the ideal [shared] vehicle fleet would satisfy only a fraction of user trips. For every pet taken in a pet-free vehicle or smoker using a smoke-free car, a robo-ride user might be disappointed and encouraged to buy a car or join an exclusive-car club, diminishing the pool of riders for massive robo-fleets and the efficiency of massive, relatively uniform, coordinated fleets."

Kapiolani Blvd. Contraflow Lane Doing More Harm Than Good?

Quoted in Honolulu Civil Beat, Councilman: Contraflow Lane Is Doing More Harm Than Good, Honolulu, Natanya Friedheim, Oct. 11, 2017.

Panos Prevedouros, chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii, thinks the contraflow lane is useful to Koko Head-bound drivers in the afternoon, and would change his mind only if data showed the lane causes inefficiencies. 

In 2016 DTS published a report on the effect of contraflow lanes on major Honolulu roadways. The study recommended the city keep the Kapiolani contraflow lane. It also found that while the restrictions on left turns cause drivers to alter their route, it provides a safer driving environment.

“My feeling is that there was a purpose why we did it and the purpose has not changed,” Prevedouros said of the contraflow lane. “(If there is) credible data saying going back to three lanes is OK, I’m somewhat in disbelief, but you can trust the data.”

Hawaii’s Infrastructure Upkeep Ranks Last

Quoted in Honolulu Star Advertiser, Hawaii’s infrastructure upkeep ranks last in a financial website’s assessment, Nanea Kalani, October 10, 2017.

University of Hawaii civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros said that while Hawaii’s aging infrastructure tends to fare poorly in national rankings, he was surprised the state landed in the bottom spot. He said Hawaii typically earns a D+ or D- grade on the American Society of Engineers’ infrastructure report card, which comes out every four years and evaluates such areas as roads, bridges, dams, airports, harbors and public transportation.

“We’ve been doing poorly, but what is very surprising is that we came in dead last. Obviously, it’s not encouraging — we have hit rock bottom,” said Prevedouros, chairman of the Civil Engineering Department at UH-Manoa.

Within the categories of the “Falling Apart” report, Hawaii had the highest percentage of dams in the country with “high-hazard potential” ratings, at 93 percent. According to the National Inventory of Dams maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 124 of the state’s 133 dams have been assigned the hazardous classification, indicating that failure or mis-operation is likely to cause loss of human life and economic and environmental losses.

Close to 70 percent of the dams in Hawaii are on privately owned land. A spokesman for the Department of Land and Natural Resources, which runs the state’s dam safety program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“That’s almost a given when you have earthen dams,” Prevedouros said of the high-hazard risk ratings. “It’s very difficult to know how the structures are performing without careful inspection.” He said most of the islands’ dams are old and in need of more maintenance and upkeep to ensure public health and safety. He cited Nuuanu Reservoir as a particularly risky dam given its close proximity to residential areas.

“It’s pretty clear that the state and the city do not pay much attention to the condition and the operation of the roads,” Prevedouros said. “They’re both in poor quality and operating poorly with a lot of congestion. Clearly, now the numbers show we are in a lose-lose situation, where we are spending the money on the wrong projects, and the big categories that affect the well-being of the population are being neglected.”

Rail Critic Calls HART’s Financial Recovery Plan Shallow

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

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

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

He essentially concluded its another recipe for disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Train Robbery

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

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

Academic Critical of Overblown Budget on Hawaii Rail Project

Interviewed by Radio New Zealand:

"We should have put aside monies, which is really trivial given the overall scope, and a couple of million dollars at most would have done it, for a national forensic expert on transit systems to come and look at what is really happening here and how come our transit system is two to three times more expensive than other comparable US systems," Panos Prevedouros said.

Waves Eat Away Part of Kamehameha Hwy.

Allyson Blair reports on the worsening erosion along Kamehameha Hwy.

Traffic engineering expert Panos Prevedouros agrees.

"It's a major risk. The pavement is undermined so it can collapse in a small or large degree, to which I don't know, at any time," said Prevedouros.

Prevedouros says the road needs immediate repair. In the meantime drivers shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the undermined asphalt.

"Everything in that area seems to be completely eroded. Therefore even the crash guard that looks to be okay, although it has some rust on the backside, it may be structurally compromised," said Prevedouros.

Tourists to Help Pay for Beleaguered Honolulu Rail

Quoted in this article in Travel Pulse. I had no idea but Google found it for me...

The Flooding in Mapunapuna?

Quoted in Alexander Zane's story on KHON about the repeated flooding in Mapunapuna.

Several years ago, the city installed a duckbill drainage system to get storm water out and keep ocean water from coming in.

But according to Panos Prevedouros, chair of the UH Manoa Dept. Of Civil and Environmental Engineering, anything more would come with a hefty price.

“Basically you’d need to have a storage system and a pump system to pump the storm water out of it. Essentially close the connection. You have to cut the cord with the ocean so the ocean never comes in,” Prevedouros explains.

As for the option of installing a pump system to get water out of the area, Panos Prevedouros says it probably won’t happen.

“I’m pretty sure that the area does not generate significant county taxes to justify a huge investment. That’s probably what the problem has been all this time. If the area was upgraded with more expensive real estate so that the county can collect more taxes than a more sophisticated solution could be put in place, so it’s a trade-off kind of thing,” Prevedouros said.

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A couple more things to add here:

Duckbills can get clogged by debris and then they remain open allowing ocean water to intrude. In all likelihood they do not work as City claims because the area flooded during king tides in July this year.

Given the relatively low property value of this area, it makes sense to provide incentives for small businesses to relocate and return this large parcel to nature. That is, treat this area as a small estuary:  The Mapunapuna pond.

In addition, Charles Hunt saw this story and contacted me with the following important perspective and information:

An added perspective that occurs to me is that such systems will become increasingly necessary, what with progressive sea-level rise, so the City will eventually have to start installing some. Mapunapuna could be an early prototype for the City to gain experience with system designs, learning which systems and consultants have “proven out” in other locales, which systems offer best cost/reliability characteristics, etc. Or – if tax-base is an overriding consideration – perhaps another locale like Waikiki or Downtown will become the first prototype.

Here’s a link to the gateway page for my report, there’s a full PDF of the report available at the page. We installed some instrumentation to record water levels and the pump on-off duty cycle and were able to tell a few stories about drainage from the watershed and how the pump-out system operated during a couple of rain storms over the year of study:

Hunt, Charles D., Jr.; De Carlo, Eric H., Water-Resources Investigations Report 99-4171: Hydrology and Water and Sediment Quality at James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge near Kahuku, Island of Oahu, Hawaii, 2000.

Hunt also suggested that a camera system can be used to monitor the operation of the duckbills.

Rail Project Audit Needs to Be Comprehensive, Independent

"Incredibly, the people now asking for another $3 billion without accounting for the first $7 billion, say independent forensic auditors with special expertise in rail engineering and construction would cost too much."

Honolulu Star Advertiser
Island Voices

Rail Project Audit Needs to Be Comprehensive, Independent

By Panos Prevedouros, Randy Roth and Cliff Slater
August 24, 2017

The Hard Reality of Honolulu Rail Costs

Dear Hawaii Senators and Representatives,

I hope that you will find five minutes to read my article on HART costs: The Hard Reality of Honolulu Rail Costs.

The disparity between the actual constructed or bid costs on one hand, and the overall costs presented by HART is way too large.  It is similar to buying a $20,000 vehicle and then the dealer charges you another $30,000 for delivery, fees, docs and taxes.

A major cause of this disparity is waste and fraud. You can't possibly approve more taxes for HART before you control waste and fraud. Otherwise you are more than partners in the waste and fraud; you are the enablers.

Aloha,
Panos

30 Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea

Panos Prevedouros joins Jay Fidell on Community Matters to discuss developments in the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) plans on Mauna Kea.

State Explores Possibility of Taxing Drivers by the Mile

While the topic of a mileage based taxation for vehicle use on public road dates back to the 1990s, there have been no takers other than the large experimental deployment in Oregon. Now Hawaii wants to lead the way with an expensive implementation as shown in this KHON story by Manolo Morales.

We reached out to University of Hawaii engineering professor Panos Prevedouros, who questions why the state is moving forward ahead of so many other states.

“I just wish that we waited a little bit more so bigger states, like California, Washington, can work through the details so we can get a more ready-to-use plan, instead of us paying to develop a ready-to-use plan,” he said.

So far, only Oregon has implemented the road usage charge at a rate of three cents per mile.

HART Pays to Pave Prison Parking

From the bottomless pit of enough is enough that is HART comes this story in Hawaii News Now by Rick Daysog.

Repaving the Oahu Community Correctional Center’s parking lot, widening nearby Kamehameha Highway and other related work will cost about $650,000.

"It's clearly unnecessary in two ways. Why are we doing this in 2017? There is no rail project anywhere near that site,” said rail critic and University of Hawaii Civil Engineering Prof. Panos Prevedouros.

“Second, what has HART to do with OCCC?”

But facing a shortfall of about $2 billion, HART only has enough money to build to Middle Street. Prevedouros noted that OCCC is several hundred yards beyond Middle Street.

"If they had done construction and put some pilings into OCCC obviously they would have to do some finishing work around it.  But right now there is nothing happening anywhere near there,” he said.

He said the paving work makes even less sense because the prison will eventually be knocked down and relocated.

But other says it will be years before OCCC is moved and that the parking lot needs to be resurfaced in the meantime.

"We absolutely have seen no plans by the state of moving OCCC in the near future, within the next one or two years,” said City Councilmember Trevor Ozawa.

Ozawa , a rail skeptic, was the swing vote when the City Council voted to approve $350 million bonds for the rail project. He voted for the plan only after HART and city officials assured him that none of the bond money would be spent on heavy construction beyond Middle Street.

Ozawa said he's okay with the OCCC expenditures because it doesn't involved heavy construction, such as the elevated guideways.

Meanwhile, Prevedouros said the repaving project underscores a need for a forensic audit of HART's construction work.

Residents calls for emergency repairs to crumbling Hauula highway

Quoted in this news story by Allyson Blair of Hawaii News Now.

Transportation engineering expert Panos Prevedouros says that with the amount of erosion that's already occurred, the Department of Transportation should schedule emergency repairs.

"This is a site that needs immediate work right now," he said. "The holes are too close to the travel lane. At this point, they need to do some inspection with wave technology to find out if there are any cavities under the road."

[Pictures by A. Blair -- click to enlarge]

Honolulu’s Potholes Are Costing Drivers And Taxpayers Millions

Quoted in Courtney Teague's story in the Honolulu Civil Beat about the poor quality of pavements in Honolulu.

...

Local asphalt industry expert Jon Young and Panos Prevedouros, professor and chair of the University of Hawaii Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, agree that the city’s methods for filling potholes are cost-effective, but not the longest-lasting.

“Dramatic deterioration” of Oahu’s roads at the turn of the century forced the city and state to be more proactive about maintenance, said Prevedouros, who once ran for mayor on a platform that focused on fixing infrastructure. He said the city — and especially the state — could improve maintenance strategies.

The state paid UH $1 million over about five years for a report by Ricardo Archilla, associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, that looked at ways Oahu could improve its roads and created the recommendations, Prevedouros said.

Though the city did not pay for the report, Prevedouros said it has been quicker to adopt its findings and conduct field assessments.

....

Prevedouros described the city’s pothole repair methods as “amateurish,” but cost-effective.

He pointed to “very durable” European techniques as a superior example, which involve squaring off the edges of a pothole and using heavy trucks to pack the pothole down in 30-40 minutes. There’s no difference in the amount of time taken to fill the pothole, but there is a difference in quality and longevity of the repair — and cost, he said.

Pothole repairs on state roads take place at night, he said, and more time is spent on them because of the higher traffic volumes.

The city usually fixes potholes quickly during the day in 30 minutes to an hour, Prevedouros said. When crews have to leave for the next pothole, he said the new asphalt isn’t completely dry and is already being damaged by traffic.

...

Overall, Prevedouros of the University of Hawaii gave Oahu’s roads a D+ grade. The average lifespan of Hawaii roads is short and the powerful sun poses a constant threat, he said.

Road repaving should be prioritized over pothole repair, he said.

“We have made a business of (repairing potholes),” he said. “…It’s emergency Band-Aids and that’s not a way to run any system … it shows that (the road) is way past deterioration.”

CITYLAB: Honolulu's Rapid Transit Crisis

National publication CITYLAB which used to be Atlantic Cities covered the Honolulu rail boondoggle in Honolulu's Rapid Transit Crisis.

Despite a famously laid-back culture, Honolulu’s traffic is about as bad as it gets. In a bid to unsnarl its highways a bit in 2011, the city embarked on a $5.2 billion Honolulu Rail Transit Project. At the time, the planned 20-mile elevated electric train line was expected to ease traffic congestion on Hawaii’s most densely populated island by 18 percent, with the first trips planned for 2017.

Fast forward six years and the still-sputtering project looks very different. The city now estimates that the rail will cost $10 billion—almost five times the city’s annual budget and twice the original project cost estimate—while civil engineering specialists forecast a price tag closer to $13 billion.

Per capita, the Honolulu rail could become the most expensive transit project in U.S. history, according to the conservative public policy think tank Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. What’s more, the funding source of at least $3 billion in projected costs remains unseen. Meanwhile, the city’s traffic problems have worsened and state lawmakers are left divided and scrambling to craft a plan to pay for the cash-strapped project. All told, 75 percent of the contracts needed to bring the project to completion have been awarded, and the first planned trips along the full track are no longer expected to run before 2025.

So when is it too late to quit a major public-infrastructure project gone awry?

“The project is objectively terrible,” says Panos D. Prevedouros, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii, whose two failed campaigns for mayor embraced an anti-rail platform. “It reminds me of some proclamations that Trump makes with the beautiful wall he wants to build. Well, in this case, it’s the beautiful train. But it is not beautiful. It’s useless for our population.”

Read the Full Article at CITYLAB.

Professor Randall Roth: HART Blames Massive Cost Overruns on Lawsuits to Stop Rail. It’s a Lie.

There were two lawsuits. The one in federal court briefly affected the City’s ability to buy land in the downtown segment, but had no impact on rail construction or construction bidding.

The other lawsuit was brought in state court by Paulette Kaleikini. She sued because the City had started construction without first completing an archaeological study, as is required by law. A unanimous state Supreme Court ordered construction stopped until the City completed the study, which took 13 months. Blaming Ms. Kaleikini is comparable to blaming an abuse victim for seeking legal protection. The City and its contractors simply ignored the law (and the law's purpose) in their rush to get construction beyond a point of no return. The dollar impact of the state lawsuit was slightly more than $39 million, according to HART.

While the federal lawsuit did not stop or even slow down rail construction, it did provide access to FTA’s internal email that referred to the City’s “lousy practices of public manipulation,” use of “inaccurate statements,” culture of “never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over,” the observation that the City had put itself in a “pickle” by setting unrealistic start dates for construction, and concern about the City’s “casual treatment of burials.”

The federal lawsuit took longer than it needed to take because the City’s lawyers used every trick in the book to drag it out. They wanted our legal costs to soar, which they did. Raising the money simply to see that lawsuit to a conclusion was like crawling over a constantly expanding field of broken glass. The City spent more than $3 million on lawyers and expert witnesses, and the delay increased costs by another $3.3 million.

According to HART, the lawsuit delay costs come to about $46 million, see figure above, which is only 0.46% of the current cost of HART rail. Rail's final cost before it started construction was proclaimed to be $5.17 Billion, by mayor Carlisle. Rail's current cost was stated at $10 Billion by mayor Caldwell. HART current cost overrun is 93.4%, of which 1% is due to the two lawsuits.

HART Rail: Local Cost 34 Times More than H-3

I'd like to thank the Honolulu Star Advertiser for publishing my article with Cliff, originally titled HART Rail: Local Cost 34 Times More than H-3.

Rail will never be as practical as roadways
By Panos Prevedouros and Cliff Slater
July 11, 2017

Oahu’s H-3 freeway endured political controversy and major engineering challenges, such as the boring of two miles of tunnels through solid rock of the Koolau mountains and erecting 160-foot columns for the windward viaduct. Even so, the rail’s construction cost is exorbitant compared with the H-3’s — and that cost to local taxpayers, as explained below, shows how poor the rail choice was and how irrational it would be to continue.

If Mayor Kirk Caldwell is to be believed, the 20-mile elevated rail system will cost $10 billion from Kualakai Parkway to Ala Moana Center, minus $1.55 billion (hopefully) covered by the Federal Transit Administration; and about 15 percent paid by Oahu’s unsuspecting tourists. The rail guideway could instead be used to run buses, providing one traffic lane per direction for a total of two lanes. So its cost to the local taxpayer is $180 million per lane-mile.

The H-3 has two lanes per direction, four lanes total. Because the federal government provided 90 percent of its funding, the cost to local taxpayers was only $5 million per lane-mile, after being adjusted to 2017 using the Price Trends for Federal-Aid Highway Construction Index. Therefore, the lane-mile cost of rail to local taxpayers will be 34 times greater than the cost of the H-3.

The long-term cost difference is actually much greater when operating and maintenance costs are considered. Keeping the trains running will require an annual subsidy of $130 million, according to the city. This is dramatically higher than the annual cost of maintaining the H-3. This would be a new annual cost for Oahu, and it is roughly equal to the $150 million that the state Department of Transportation receives annually from the federal government.

But what about the benefits?

Unlike rail, H-3 connects to existing networks to provide door-to-door transportation options, which most residents and visitors require. Unlike rail, the H-3 directly benefits the military, emergency responders, police, commercial service providers, and public health officials.

The H-3 and other highways also facilitate public transportation by buses, taxi companies, ride-hailing services, and stand ready to serve the future dominance of autonomous, on-call vehicles. The vehicle fleet could be mostly electric in a few decades, which diminish the rail’s “green power” advantage claimed by its proponents.

Last but not least is the economy: Without roads, our economy is dead. Without rail, the economy is better off: That’s according to University of Hawaii economist James Roumasset, who explained that a project with benefits lower than its costs shrinks the economy and thereby shrinks employment. He also has pointed out how rail’s astronomical costs freeze out funding for the adoption of many sensible solutions to Oahu’s traffic congestion problem.

Efforts to continue rail past the intermodal transit center at Middle Street is wasteful and irresponsible public policy. No additional funds should be appropriated for rail. HART’s sole effort should be to bring the project to its end at Middle Street with the funds available, and use city funds for any shortage.

After the acceptance of the system for revenue service, HART should be dissolved; Oahu Transit Services should run all public transit so that good transportation service is provided islandwide. This would mitigate the problem experienced in other cities where the high costs of rail operations have resulted in major cuts of bus routes and service. (The rail’s final environmental impact statement states that 24 routes of The Bus will be eliminated or terminated at the nearest rail station.)

The costs of rail clearly show the massive present and future fiscal impact to Oahu and the state. The brave choice is to convert the project to an automated bus operation — but such bravery, imagination and public-duty responsibility are absent.

A Bridge Across the Ala Wai Canal?

I am surprised that the proposal for a bridge across the Ala Wai canal is being discussed again... 15 years ago I wrote a report that included this:

"Adding a bridge to Waikiki across the Ala Wai canal is not a new idea. There has been community opposition to it because a new two or four lane bridge to Waikiki will bring a lot of additional traffic (and increase noise and accident risk) in the neighborhood and park between the Iolani School and the Ala Wai Field. However, my BRT alternative calls for a one-lane limited access bridge which will serve pedestrians, BRT vehicles, and emergency response vehicles."

A shorter version of the report appeared as a Star Bulletin* commentary and then several knives flew in my direction because the Ala Wai is on the National Historical register for its uninterrupted "mirror vista" similar to the reflecting pool in Washington, DC I am not sure that those in charge are aware of this huge limitation for any new bridge across the Ala Wai.

(*) Honolulu's evening newspaper that merged with the Honolulu Advertiser to form the one current newspaper, Honolulu Start Advertiser.

Marjorie Morgan: Riding the Rail Means an Endless Parade of Buses

On July 4, 2017, the Honolulu Star Advertiser published this humorous and poignant account of rail usage in Honolulu in 2030 (maybe):

My family can hardly wait. We can see how rail will change our lives forever.

First thing each weekday, we’ll walk from our home to the shuttle bus stop. It will take only 10 minutes, and the weather will probably be accommodating.

We will patiently wait for the bus, and hope it comes within 10 or 15 minutes. Sooner or later it will take us to the nearest train station, where within minutes we will be on our way to town.

The 20 stops will be humbug, but we will dependably reach the Ala Moana train station not much more than an hour after leaving our home.

Unfortunately, that won’t be the end of our commute. From the Ala Moana rail station, Mommy will then take bus No. 1 to work. Daddy will take bus No. 2 to work. Mikey will take bus No. 3 to Saint Louis School. Sally will take bus No. 4 to Saint Francis School. And baby will take bus No. 5 to preschool.

Oh wait, baby can’t go on the bus alone. I guess Mommy will take baby on bus No. 5 to the preschool. After dropping baby off, Mommy will patiently wait for a bus No. 6 that is headed back to the rail station. From there, Mommy will transfer to bus No. 1.

After work, Daddy will walk back to the bus stop closest to his office, which in his case is only a half-mile and partially protected from the elements. After waiting there for 10 to 15 minutes, Daddy will take bus No. 5 to within a quarter-mile of Mikey’s baseball game. Sally’s walk from her school to her bus station will take only 10 minutes, and the wait for her bus only another 15 to 20 minutes, but her bus stop will be only 5 to 10 minutes from the ballpark where she will join Daddy at Mikey’s game.

When her workday ends, Mommy will take bus No. 1, transfer to bus No. 6, pick up baby, wait for a bus No. 6 headed in the opposite direction, eventually transfer to bus No. 5, so that she and baby can meet the rest of the family at the game.

Afterward, the family will walk to, and wait for, bus No. 8 … transfer to bus No. 9 … and eventually reach the downtown rail station where everyone can enjoy a wonderful dinner.

Oh wait, too expensive. Instead, we’ll just ride the train back to the west side, find seats as riders start getting off at 20 stations, walk to our bus stop where we will eventually take bus No. 10 to within a 10-minute walk of our home.

Unless something unexpected happens, we will enjoy the walk and be home by the kids’ bedtime.

Oh, wait. I forgot about dinner … and working out tomorrow’s transportation plan. Except for Sally’s swim meet at a cross-town school, baby’s doctor’s appointment at Queen’s, and Mikey’s soccer practice, it will be a lot like today’s terrific schedule.

Oh wait, what about stopping off at grandma’s place to wish her a happy birthday? That could be a problem. We don’t expect to have money in the budget for an occasional side trip by taxi once the city raises our property taxes to pay for rail operations.

And to pay payments on all the rail bonds as they come due, the city will need to cut many corners, but that’s OK. I’m pretty sure my kids will get used to not having air-conditioning, clean seats, or any form of security in or around the rail stations.

The trains may be dilapidating, cement guideways crumbling, steel rusting, and escalators stalling, but at least my family will have rail.