OCCUPY'd by APEC 2011

Latest update: 11/19/11

Big events are critical for obscure regions because "they put them on the map." Everyone knew Greece quite well before the 2004 Summer Olympics. The Olympics were a success. What did Greece gain in tourism? A minor temporary bump, if any. (And a whopping debt from infrastructure preparations.)

Mature tourist destinations do not have much to gain from large media exposure. At least the Olympics was a long sports event and many people watched it here and there. Do you think people in China, Russia, Australia and the US paid much attention to APEC politicians?

Despite what hyperbola Abercrombie and Schatz serve for APEC, there will be very little gain for Hawaii from APEC. The tourist growth market for us hinges on visa rule relaxation for Chinese, Russians, etc. But that can be done only with prolonged bilateral negotiations.

So what did APEC 2011 do for the 99.9% of us?

• Cabbies were given hospitality training and told them to expect lots of fares. Hawaii News Now reported that they got much less than a regular day!
  
• The APEC name for Wai-kiki: Barrier-kiki or Fence-kiki.
• The beach was fenced off. Thankfully without barb wire.
• Congestion and security closures.

• 
• And loss of business. Several small stores closed during APEC due to loss of access to them. Either the workers could not get to the store, or the customers were on the other side of the barricades.
• And now, a week after APEC, several small businesses plan to file claims and/or a lawsuit for significant business losses for a week. Of course one week or 1/52nd means very little to a callous politician. (Gov. and LG statements come to mind.) But that 2% annual loss is a big part of the profit margin for some businesses.
  
• And reallocation of emergency services.
• And political visitors who do NOT pay the hotel tax.
• And tremendous loss of tourism because agents did not book Waikiki for their clients.
• And lost bookings from the 11/11/11 wedding extravaganza.
  
• And mounting bills for security and other detail paid by local taxpayer.
• And all those APEC shirts, last minute beatifications, free tickets for the "in crowd," etc.
• And the top two of Honolulu's parks are police and security depots: Ala Moana and Kapiolani Parks.
  
• And one APEC-related murder. Auwe!

Sample UH alert below...

.ALERT!

Find alternative routes/options if you were traveling or planning to travel on

UH Mānoa East West Road or near the APEC – Hawai‘i Convention Center.

THERE IS A LOCK OUT IN THESE AREAS FOR APEC SECURITY.

1 Army Humvee, 2 motorcycle Honolulu Police officers and 100s of motorists caught in a jam...

APEC 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii -- Embarrassments 1, 2, 3 and 4

Honolulu made a late, sketchily planned and underfunded effort to host the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in 2011. APEC 2011 was largely forced on Honolulu by President Obama in 2009. Another beltway unfunded federal mandate, as usual.

This series is a partial tally of embarrassments during APEC 2011 (November 6 to 13).

1. SOPOGY at APEC's "See It" Exhibit at the Hawaii Convention Center. What an embarrassment! Not only they are not making energy at a cost effective rate they are a technological dead end as well given the 2011 dive in photovoltaic pricing.

2. Terrible road pavement on Ward Avenue between Kinau and King Streets, and the same on Beretania Street in front of our Police main station. What an embarrassment! Last month George, Esther, Francis, Katherine and other low traffic streets in Kaimuki got done. By George! This speaks volumes about messed up priorities.

3. The traffic lights on Kapahulu Avenue and McCully Street are out of sync. These are the only connections of Waikiki with the H-1 freeway. What an embarassment! We can't use computers to actuate green lights along arterials for motorcades so we spend thousands of dollars on police to block the flow of cross streets. I guess we might tell them that we apply third world-friendly traffic management.

4. Obviously the City has messed with the traffic lights. Now for no reason whatsoever Ward Avenue is gridlocked from the top of the hill to Beretania Street. Unbelievable mess this morning. See the 8:30 am snapshot below.

The Scariest Halloween Story: The Debt per Hawaii Resident

I am particularly jittery with the financial maelstrom in Greece, but our own back yard in Hawaii seems to be in a very bad financial condition.

Take a look at this article: Hawaii State Liabilities Climb by 60 Percent in Two Years; Expert Calls the News 'Shocking'

So the Hawaii State Health Fund liability comes to ... "a total of $14.0 Billion. (These numbers are for July 1, 2009)" and likely much higher right now. The article does not cover the government employee pensions liability which takes this total to over $23 Billion.

Budget & Finance Director Kalbert Young: "Credit downgrades impact taxpayers because they translate to higher interest rates and borrowing costs. As a result, taxpayers will have to pay more for government or they will have to accept a larger portion of their taxes going towards debt."

Actually his statement sounds like a single blow although it is really a quadruple blow to us:

1. We need to pay more taxes so we'll have less take-home income.
2. More of our taxes must go to pay down the debt and less will go to services and infrastructure maintenance and expansion.
3. The lower bond rating and the corresponding higher finance charge means that the same infrastructure projects will cost more.
4. In addition to their direct impact, points 1, 2 and 3 combined mean fewer jobs because we will have less to spend as individuals and families, have less to spend on projects, and less to pay for services.

To sum it up, the two major state liabilities combined (that is, health and pension which are constitutionally promised to government workers) mean that each person in Hawaii now owes more than $50,000. Then there is the federal debt which is approaching 15 trillion dollars. Simply divide by 330 million for your own share of $45,500.

But wait! The City and County of Honolulu has signed a Consent Decree with the EPA to fix its sewers and provide Secondary Sewage Treatment. The cost is no less than $4,500 per person on Oahu.

I bet you did not know that today you carry a "mortgage" in the amount of $100,000 (and climbing). But in reality only about a third of people pay substantial taxes and it is these same people that will shoulder this burden. A household with two high income earners (say a combined income of about $150,000) and two kids should face a "mortgage" of roughly one half million dollars. Lucky, you now "own" a second unit in Hawaii!

Right now in Hawaii, the only uku-billion project that is discretionary and deletable is the rail. If rail gets into construction, it will cost well more than seven billion dollars and open a hole to sink tens of millions of dollars for annual operations. And don't forget this: Given how tough things are going to get for us, a dollar spent on rail is a dollar not spent on a number of other far more critical needs.

Trick or Treat?
Kaboom!

(I am five days late relative to Halloween, but that shouldn't be a big problem. This scare will last our lifetimes.)

John Pritchett's Hawaii's Unfunded Liabilities cartoon:

Honolulu Vehicle Registrations -- Taken for a Ride

The increase in the cost for vehicle registrations in Hawaii has been staggering. Although the consumer price index would justify roughly a 40% increase, the cost of registration has increased by 140%!

Councilman Tom Berg has listed all the recent state laws and city ordinances that caused all the increases in vehicle registration fees but it's hard to assess the cumulative effect of them by reading the legalese and the corresponding vehicle weights.

Thankfully, my 1999 Mazda Miata is still around so I can use past receipts for an annual accounting of the changes. The Miata is one of the lightest light duty vehicles out there so it basically represents the minimum registration fee in Hawaii. While we are at it, let's compare the registration increases in 11 years with the corresponding insurance coverage which has remained constant. Of course the value of the Miata has dropped substantially in 11 years, but the biggest portion of car insurance is liability. Despite its age, the Miata can cause the same liability in 2011 as it could in 1999.

Here are the numbers for my car along with Honolulu's Consumer Price Index, or CPI. CPI is an approximation of inflation and it basically says that something that cost $100 in Honolulu in 2000, it would cost $136 in 2011.

I write these while the Occupy movement is in full swing… Occupy gives a perspective of the "poor little guy" versus the "insatiable corporate interests."

Interestingly, the multinational corporate insurance gave little guy me a net 68 percent break in insurance cost in the past 11 years. This despite two claims totaling about $8,000 in damages due to other motorist errors.

On the other hand, the government (that typically proclaims to take care of the little guy) gave me a net 100 percent higher cost for car registration. And thousands of potholes that these fees are supposed to fix.

Did Commuting Patterns Change in the First Decade of the Millenium? Only a Little.

A New Geography article summarized the commuting data and results revealed by the 2010 Census. The winner was Telecommuting and the loser was Carpooling. Despite higher prices and huge media hype over shifts to public transit, the big surprise was the continued growth over the last decade in driving alone to work.

In summary,there has been no major change in commuting, even with the huge gas price increases. As the shift to personal mobility continues, the largest increases will like take place in telecommuting, which is the most energy-efficient form of transportation. Gains in transit have been minimal and should be expected to stay at around 5% on the mainland and around 7% in Honolulu.

Clearly these numbers indicate that a city like Honolulu with 950,000 people investing on a $6,000,000,000 heavy rail system is nothing short of ridiculous.

International Award on Sustainability Research

I am very pleased to have received this international award along with my research collaborators.

Out of 2,000 scientific papers submitted for the 2011 international conference of the World Road Association (also known as PIARC), 620 were selected to be presented at the conference and 8 received awards. One of the 8 was ours!

Lambros Mitropoulos is one of my doctorate students; he will be graduating at the end of 2011. Professor Teti Nathanail of Thessaly University spent summers 2009 and 2010 at UH-Manoa. Another paper with Dr. Nathanail was published the U.S. Transportation Research Board: "Risk Assessment for the Transportation of Hazardous Materials through Tunnels." (Transportation Research Record, No. 2162: 98-106, 2010.)


The full paper is titled: LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT THROUGH A COMPREHENSIVE SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK: A CASE STUDY OF URBAN TRANSPORTATION VEHICLES

Honolulu Heavy Rail Is an Energy Black Hole

Energy and Honolulu rail is an angle that I did not have time to look at in detail, until last week when my students did some energy analysis of Honolulu’s proposed rail. They discovered this June 2008 article by Sean Hao: Rail's use of energy subject of debate in the Honolulu Advertiser.

Of note is that the rail will consume about 20 MW of energy which is about 20% of the capacity of HECO’s new palm oil plant. Unfortunately peak rail travel coincides with peak demand for electricity around 6 PM, which means that rail will stress HECO’s generators.

Now if you believe the city’s numbers which are based on incredible ridership projections and substantial bus route eliminations, Table 4-21 of the Final EIS shows that the rail project will save 2,440 million British thermal units (BTU) of energy each day, or about 610,000 million BTU per year.

Hao correctly added that: “Any evaluation of the energy savings generated by rail also needs to consider the massive amount of energy required during construction. For example, construction of the fixed guideway will require between 3.7 trillion and 4.9 trillion BTU of energy, according to Parsons Brinckerhoff.”

This quote reveals two startling facts:

First the unnamed Parsons Brinkerhoff source clearly lied to Hao by stating roughly half the correct amount of BTU. The 2008 Draft EIS, Table 4-34 on page 4-159, shows that the rail’s Airport alignment will require 7,480,000 MBTU. That’s 7.5 trillion BTU, not 3.7 trillion.

Second, by dividing 7,480,000 by 610,000 we get 12.2. That’s how many years it will take to make up the construction energy loss by the purported energy savings. But in reality these 12 years are an understatement because Hawaii's vehicle fleet is much smaller in engine size (more economical) than mainland fleet and the adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles is vastly bigger on Oahu. In addition the national averages are based on low vehicle occupancy, whereas Oahu has among the highest transit and carpooling rates, so BTU per passenger mile is way lower than mainland.

The City's BTU savings estimate may be wrong by a factor of 3 or larger, so it will take so many years for rail to "make up" its construction energy waste that before break-even is reached, rail will need multiple component replacements, repairs and refurbishments. So an energy black hole it is!

On the other hand, our 2008 simulation estimates using the DEIS traffic numbers show that rail is a net energy loser without even counting the huge energy consumption during construction. In comparison, a properly designed and operated HOT lane system will save energy (motor fuel and oil.)

Fuel Consumption for One Peak Hour (in US gallons) Change from Base of ~97,000 gallons
ALTERNATIVE	Motor Fuel	Motor Fuel plus Diesel at HECO for Rail
Rail: 6.5% traffic reduction	-2.6%	-0.3%
Rail: 3.25% traffic reduction	-0.4%	1.9%
HOT Lanes and Four Underpasses	-40.5%	-40.5%