2015 Traffic Accident Map of Honolulu

This is an interesting and useful result of an unofficial public-private partnership where the City and County of Honolulu provided a database of redacted accident records with geographic identification data and a private firm used geographic information system (GIS) expertise to provide a depiction and summary of these data by location. The 2015 Traffic Accident Map of Honolulu by the Law firm of Davis Levin Livingston lets one quickly identify traffic black spots.

For example, the portion of their map I captured above shows that the University of Hawaii area is generally light in crashes. Punahou Street near the freeway has a moderate amount of crashes. The set of blocks surrounding and including Ala Moana Cednter, one of the nation's largest shopping centers, is by far Hawaii's largest black spot, although, I guestimate that most of the reported crashes there are of low severity and the area depicted is of relatively low risk.

One must keep in mind , that high accident spots are not necessarily high risk or high danger spots. As you'd expect, locations with high traffic are also high crash and accident spots. Only if we divide the number of crashes by the amount of traffic occurring in a typical day we can get a better representation of risk.

For example, Location A has recorded 1 crash and gets an average daily traffic (ADT) of 10,000 whereas location B has recorded 8 crashes and gets an average daily traffic (ADT) of 100,000. In this case, B has a higher number of crashes but A has a relatively higher risk for crashes.

Center for Transportation Safety Equity for Rural, Isolated, Tribal and Indigenous Communities

UH-Manoa in collaboration with the universities of Alaska, Idaho and Washington was successful in receiving a 5-year Tier-1 University Transportation Center (UTC) from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Only 36 out of more than 400 proposals were successful.

UH's research budget share is $1.6 million over five years. The focus of the research is on Transportation Safety Equity for Rural, Isolated, Tribal and Indigenous Communities. The principal research investigators are Dr. Guohui Zhang and Dr. Panos Prevedouros.


The purpose of the UTCs is to conduct research that directly supports the priorities of the U.S. DOT to promote the safe, efficient and environmentally sound movement of good and people.  UTCs work with regional, state, local and tribal transportation agencies to help find solutions to challenges that directly impact their communities and affect the efficiency of the nation’s transportation system.

Brief Trump Presidency Forecast

It's about two months before Donald Trump becomes the 45th president of the US. Here's my forecast for his presidency.

Trump will be full of surprises. Folks who adhere to “traditional values” and have no love for Hillary and Obama will be disappointed. Other than appointing one or two fairly conservative Supreme Court judges, I don’t think that he will do much about changing the status of issues that liberals hold dear such as abortion and gay marriage. (But there can be future implications, as with any conservative or liberal leaning court.)

Trump is basically a real world-based businessman and deal-maker, a New York City "lite-liberal" with soft Christian values. He’ll show a high preference for government investment in infrastructure and low preference for government-centered money redistribution schemes like entitlements and ObamaCare. 

Trump will be more US-focused rather than tackle global issues. More so if an economic recession hits, which is almost certain to occur in the next four years. He will attempt regulatory changes, especially in the energy, transportation and heavy industry sectors. Many will have negative implications to pollution but positive implications to domestic economy and employment.

Trump's biggest challenges will be managing the defense budget and the interest on the massive national debt vis-à-vis his ambitions for job creation and the Congress’ funding preferences. Pentagon may wind up being on the losing end. I doubt that Trump will push for a tax overhaul, although he may attempt one.

Two areas of Trump's inflammatory campaign rhetoric that will be subject to some sort of action are Islam-related and the wall between the US and Mexico. Islam-targeted (re)action is very likely if he is provoked by international or terrorism events; this is almost inevitable.  Some form of the wall will happen, mostly as an expansion of the existing portions; see below. The deportation of illegal residents will see a boost, mostly targeting criminals, human traffickers and drug operatives. (Many states want their domestic marijuana production and dispensation to succeed.)

UH engineer: Speedier Traffic Lights Could Alleviate Congestion

Thanks to Jim Mendoza for covering the improvement of traffic signals yesterday on Hawaii News Now. Jim and Alan came to the intersection of Dole St. and University Ave. where I was with my 36 students in CEE 462: Traffic Engineering. 

Pleased to see it trending as a popular story: UH engineer: Speedier traffic lights could alleviate congestion

Better Ways to Fix Traffic on Oahu

Many thanks to the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and Aaron Lief for this great summary of my recent presentation on traffic solutions for Oahu: Better Ways to Fix Traffic on Oahu.

55 All Around

55 year old driver driving his car through the 55,000 mile mark at 55 mph in a 55 mph speed zone at 1:55 pm. It took a bit of engineering and planning to get all these done legally and safely on I-55*!

* Alas, there's no I-55 in Honolulu, so I did it on the H-3 Fwy.

New Commuting Data: Same Old Trends

The informative summary below was developed by Robert Poole at the Reason Foundation.
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Last month brought the release of the 2015 American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census. The data on commuting from ACS are generally accepted as the most-representative national-average figures. And what is most notable about these latest numbers is how little change they reveal, compared with their counterparts over the past decade.

Commuting expert Steve Polzin of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida posted an excellent summary, with 10-year graphs, on Planetizen.

Most of the commuting mode-share data show very little change over the decade from 2005 through 2015. Drive-alone remains the choice of slightly over three-fourths of all commuters (76.6%), with virtually no change over this time period. Interestingly, nearly as many millennials (age 20-24) drive alone (72.5%), despite all you read about them being new urbanists who walk, bike, or use transit.

The two most significant trends over the decade are the continuing decline in carpooling and the ongoing increase in telecommuting. Despite all the guff about the sharing economy and future "mobility as a service," there is no sign of this so far in terms of increased willingness to share rides with others; carpooling is down to 9.0%, from nearly 11% a decade ago (and from just under 20% in 1980). Telecommuting has increased from about 3.4% in 2005 to 4.6% in 2015 and seems to be catching up with transit's mode share of 5.2%. Biking (0.6%) and walking (2.8%) are largely flat over the decade.

Polzin notes that average commuting time (heavily influenced by the drive-alone super-majority) is now 26.4 minutes, up from 25.1 minutes a decade ago. But he also provides some useful perspective by comparing the 2005 U.S. figure with average 2005 commute times in other OECD member countries—e.g., 33 minutes in Spain, 36 minutes in France, 40 minutes in Belgium, 45 minutes in Germany, and 46 minutes in the U.K. These countries all have a higher transit mode share than the United States, and since transit trips generally take longer than driving trips, that may help to explain the difference between the U.S. numbers and Europe's.