Honolulu Rail: Designed to Fail

Randal O'Toole, economist and author of several books on transportation and urban planning was in Honolulu last week where he spoke on two distinguished panels in Kapolei and in Honolulu (see notes 1,2.)

He summarized his opinion about Honolulu's rail in this eye-opening Designed to Fail article.

A few highlights:

• Honolulu rail ... will have the high costs of heavy rail and the capacity limits of light rail.
• Honolulu rail ... has too few seats so bus riders question whether people will be willing to stand for 20-minute trips.
• Honolulu rail ... was planned to go to Kapolei, which has about 35,000 people, but the city decided it didn’t have enough money to go that far. Between East Kapolei and Honolulu the rail line will pass through Waipahu (33,000 people), Pearl City (48,000 people), and by Pearl Harbor Naval Base (its 20,000 people work right on the base). The rest of the rail line goes through light industrial and commercial areas. So the rail line will serve, at most, about 15% of the residents of Oahu and probably no more than 20% of the jobs. That means no more than about 3% of workers will both live and work on the rail line.
• Honolulu rail ... ridership projections are questionable and average at 110 passengers on board the two-car trains at any given time. US light-rail cars carry an average of 24 people, and the most crowded in San Diego carry just 37 people, 110 is highly optimistic.
• Honolulu rail ... proponents argue that the project will relieve congestion, but even the final environmental impact statement says that, at every place evaluated, congestion will be worse in 2030 with the project than without it (see page 3-51).
• Honolulu rail ... will not save energy: at 2,020 BTUs per passenger mile, Honolulu’s bus system already uses less energy than almost every other light-rail and heavy-rail line outside of New York City. By 2030, under the Obama fuel economy standards, the average car on the road will also use only about 2,000 BTUs per passenger mile, and cars in Hawaii (where gas prices are higher than the rest of the U.S.) will probably use even less.

Finally speaking about deficient (low) capacity, O'Toole calculates this:
With 64 seats, the two-car trains supposedly have room for 254 standing passengers. But that’s at “crush capacity,” which is far more crowded than Americans are willing to accept. Assuming the city increases the seating to 76 seats, actual loads are likely to be limited to a total of about 150 to 200 people per train. At a maximum of 20 trains an hour in each direction, the line will be able to move about 3,000 to 4,000 people per hour inbound in the morning and a similar number outbound in the afternoon. By comparison, a highway lane can easily move 600 buses per hour, and at 40 seats per bus that represents 24,000 people per hour, none of them having to stand.

Overall O'Toole observes that in order to pay for this and other rail contracts, Honolulu’s city manager quietly “suspended” the city’s debt limit without consulting the city council or, apparently, the mayor. As Wendell Cox points out, the city faces billions of dollars in expenses fixing its sewer, water, and other infrastructure, and spending $5.3 billion on rail, which at best is a luxury (and at worst a curse) will make it harder to do anything else.

Notes: (1) West Oahu Development: Meat and Potatoes or Gravy Train? (2) Sustainable Growth for Hawaii

Opposition to Honolulu Rail Grows to 55%

February 12, 2012 poll by HawaiiNewsNow and Honolulu Advertiser: 53% oppose rail



March 5, 2012 poll by Civil Beat: 55% oppose rail

Energy, Power, Storage, Distribution, Management

These five words, Energy, Power, Storage, Distribution, Management encapsulate almost all of what's involved with powering up our daily life, production and industry.

First, we need to make an important distinction between Energy and Power. We’ve got lots of Energy. We are getting short on Power.

Roughly speaking, if we could capture 100% of one day of sunlight energy, store it and distribute it as electric power, this would cover the entire needs of today’s world for a full year.

On the other hand, Bill Gates on GatesNotes on Energy states that "All the batteries on Earth can store 10 minutes of the world's electric needs." We are very short on storage.

We’ve got enough geothermal energy in Hawaii to make us self sufficient for centuries including the production of fuels for transportation.

Two big problems are: (1) We do not have sufficient infrastructure to take Energy and make Power, and (2) once we make power, we have no means to store it for later use. The second problem makes wind, solar and other intermittent power generation methods tertiary in terms of power production.

Smart grid distribution with connected electric car batteries, capacitors and intelligent management make the incorporation of renewable intermittent power more possible, but the existing capability in terms of storage and management is limited.

Unfortunately modern high capacity batteries in hybrid and plug-in vehicles require "exotic" materials in their composition. These make them very expensive and the potential for large price reductions and very high production numbers is limited.

A fairly recent development is large liquid batteries: "MIT team makes progress toward goal of inexpensive grid-scale batteries that could help make intermittent renewable energy sources viable." The resultant spinoff company, Liquid Metal Battery Corp. has benefited from funding from the Gates Foundation.

These batteries depend on molten metal at temperatures higher than 500 C (930 F), so I was a little sceptical that large amounts of energy would be wasted in keeping the metals molten. However the authors have accounted for this in their journal publication*: "At some larger scale, the action of electric current flowing through the electrolyte could generate enough Joule heat to keep the components molten, thereby obviating the need for external heaters, as is the case with electrolytic cells producing aluminum on a commercial scale"

(*) Magnesium−Antimony Liquid Metal Battery for Stationary, Energy Storage, David J. Bradwell, Hojong Kim, Aislinn H. C. Sirk, and Donald R. Sadoway, J.Am.Chem.Soc. 2012, 134, 1895−1897.

Fiscal Prudence of a City Budget: Carlisle Edition

This list would make a great joke if it was not so costly for Honolulu residents and their descendants:

(1) Carlisle put the $5 billion sewer consent decree on the back burner (have you seen any major construction?) and made the $5 billion rail the only budget priority.

(2) Carlisle’s delaying tactics for the lawsuit filed by Cayetano et al. postponed the final hearing from November 2011 to August 2012 at a much higher cost to taxpayers. His delaying tactics will incur construction and repair costs of over $200 million.

(3) Carlisle decides to spend hundreds of millions on construction that will have to be torn down when the city loses in court. If that's not a waste of money, what is it?

(4) Carlisle claims ignorance to the fact that his city manager appointee recklessly and unilaterally suspended the city's debt ceiling of 20% even before rail had any cost overruns.

(5) Carlisle's procurement process selected Ansaldo instead of Bombardier or Sumitomo although Ansaldo offered a $241 million more costly bid. Worse yet, spare parts and know-how won't be coming from neighboring Canada or Japan (who also are good tourist customers,) but from bankrupt Italy which is literally as far away on the northern hemisphere one can get from Hawaii.

(6) Carlisle insists on starting heavy construction although the Feds have not approved a dime of construction monies and the funding agreement with the Federal Transit Administration cannot be done before October or November this year.

And to conclude Carlisle's baker's half dozen of irresponsibility:

(7) Who can forget his remark in the 2010 elections that HART "will cost us nothing?" HART's new executive director alone costs us $1 million over three years!

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EDIT: A couple hours after I logged this post John Pritchett published his Friday Cartoon (note, Chin is the City Manager.)

West Oahu Development: Meat and Potatoes or Gravy Train?

Use this link to load or print a PDF version of this announcement.

US Financial Crisis and Globalization

In the coming years US may suffer greatly by the very pattern that it advocated: Globalization. The US is substantially dependent on outside sources to supply industrial products, consumer products, food and energy. So far this has worked well, but the table is about to turn around.

First let's summarize the fiscal crisis in a few bullets:

• This is the fourth straight year that the US borrowed more than $1 trillion to support its federal government. US budget deficit will top $1.3 trillion, 8.7% of GDP. Only two European countries, Greece and Ireland, have larger budget deficits as a percent of GDP.
• US national debt now exceeds $15.3 trillion, or 102% of GDP. Only four European countries have larger national debts than US: Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Italy.
• If one adds the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare to the US official national debt, the US debt is $72 trillion, by Obama administration projections. This is more than 480% of GDP. France, the second most insolvent nation in Europe, owes 549% of GDP.
• Under more realistic projections, the US official national debt is $137 trillion or 911% of GDP. Counting both official debt and unfunded pension and health care liabilities, the most indebted nation in Europe is Greece, which owes 875% of GDP.
• 48 of 50 states have annual deficits and large long term debt. Several states have insolvent employee pension and health care trusts. Of course Hawaii is one of them.
• Many US cities are in deficit, some are at or near bankruptcy and all face major infrastructure backlogs as well as their own employee retirement shortfalls.
• Unlike the huge debt of Japan or France that is owed mostly by their own citizens, US is more like Greece. Most of its debt owned by foreign countries and external lenders.

Why is the US not at the same position as Greece? The reasons are many and they include US' vastly larger economy, vast ability to innovate, vast natural resources compared to most EU countries, vast dependency of many countries on the US consumer to buy the things they make, vast military capability, and having the US dollar as the world's main reserve currency.

This reserve currency is also US' main tool for controlling a quick financial collapse. The devaluation of the dollar would slash the debt owned to foreign interests. At the same time globalization will come back and bite the US consumer since all imports will become 30% more expensive if the greenback is devalued by 30%, resulting in internal hyperinflation and market instability. Messy!

At the same time, this devaluation will cause substantial losses to US' global partners. For example, BMWs will be 30% more expensive in the US and Chryslers will be 30% less expensive in Italy, causing compounded losses in the demand of consumer products in the EU. Messy!

What caused all this mess? Policies and actions focused on the negative side of Capitalism and the negative side of Socialism. Capitalism focused on price and profit, not on sustainable production. Socialism focused on ever increasing and unsupportable entitlements instead of basic and sustainable security.

The path to the abyss is clear.

Greece is there but the US is near.

Do politicians hear?