The Federal Transit Administration was delighted to receive our submission in mid-July.
The Transportation
Planning Excellence Awards Program is a biennial awards program co-developed by
the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). This program recognizes and
celebrates outstanding transportation practices performed by planners and
decision makers in communities across the country (see Award Criteria).
Cliff
Slater, Panos Prevedouros and Randall Roth nominate the City of Honolulu (City)
and Honolulu Authority Rapid Transportation (HART) for the following, barely
believable feats:
1. Against all odds
and at a time of record federal deficits and a slumping local economy, the City
and HART somehow managed to extract and divert more than $5 billion in local
funds (the upper range of which is still a mystery) and garner FTA support for $1.55
billion in federal funds – all to build an elevated heavy rail system that was
out-of-date before construction even began (Antiquated Rail System)!
2. Making the funding for this Antiquated Rail System all
the more remarkable is a population
of potential commuters on Oahu that is dramatically smaller than the smallest urban area in the U.S.A. that still has an Antiquated
Rail System.
3. One could perhaps argue that San Juan, Puerto Rico
pulled off an equally amazing accomplishment by securing its own Antiquated
Rail System relatively recently, but Puerto Rico is just a territory (so heaven
alone knows what really goes on there) and San Juan did not have itself to
point to as evidence that Antiquated Rail Systems invariably cost a lot more,
and attract considerably fewer riders, than self-interested planners and
politicians tend to predict. We now know that the actual cost of San Juan’s
Antiquated Rail System exceeded the final
funding agreement estimate by 78% and that actual
ridership is less
than a third of the projected number. In fact, the combined ridership of bus and
rail is now less than just bus ridership before rail (see p.
25 of 32 and
p.
23 of 29).
4. The City and
HART even managed to impede and then ignore the work of The
Infrastructure Management Group (IMG), an independent expert retained by
the then-governor for a second opinion on the likely cost of an Antiquated Rail
System. Here’s how IMG described its
experience and findings:
“[T]he IMG Team found the extreme
difficulty in being able to obtain information from the City and its
consultants both unique in our collective experience and [a hindrance to] our
ability to perform the project. This was
also a puzzlement – why would the City wish to restrict the team engaged to
review the project's financial plan from being able to obtain the information
necessary to perform its work?
“A multi-billion dollar transportation
improvement project, particularly one that is proposed to be operated in, and
funded by, an urbanized area that is far smaller than the norm for such
projects, should have its financial plan developed with methodologies that
incorporate the highest professional and technical standards and
techniques. As we demonstrate [in this
report], the financial planning and modeling process for [this] Project fails
this ‘best practices’ test in many ways.”
5. Making the
pursuit of an Antiquated Rail System all the more remarkable was the
discovery that senior
people at the FTA had commented in
interagency email about
the City’s “lousy practices of public manipulation,” use of “inaccurate
statements,” and culture of “never [having] enough time to do it right, but lots
of time to do it over.” FTA also
noted that the City had put itself in a “pickle” by setting unrealistic start
dates for construction, and criticized the City’s “casual treatment of
burials.”
6. Speaking of which, who could have predicted that the
City and HART could skirt federal burial laws, essentially by denying the high
likelihood of unearthing protected remains and promising to be “respectful?”
7. Equally noteworthy
was the City and HART’s mischaracterization of the viable alternatives to rail—you
know, the ones that would have been affordable and actually relieve traffic
congestion, protect the environment, and preserve the Hawaiian sense of place.
8. We would be
remiss in not mentioning that the City and HART managed to convince much of the
public that an Antiquate Rail System would actually reduce the current level of
traffic congestion despite an Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) that said the exact opposite. In all fairness to other nominees for this
award, however, the FTA assisted that particular ruse by stating in a press
release a belief that “this project will bring much needed relief from the
suffocating congestion on the H-1 Freeway.”
This statement from the FTA was directly contrary to the FTA-approved
Final EIS in which the City acknowledged that “traffic congestion will be worse
in the future with rail than what it is today without rail.”
9. On their
own, the City and HART started construction without even beginning to plan for
the eventual payment of operating costs.
Just imagine, more than $100 million per year in added operating costs
(roughly 5% of the City’s entire budget), and the City/HART does an Alfred E.
Newman imitation: “What, us worry?”
10. Similarly, the City and HART have not said
where it will find money for repairs and maintenance to the Antiquated Rail
System. With the Washington DC rail system
literally falling apart one might have expected someone in our nation’s
capitol—perhaps even someone with the FTA—to mention that. Likewise for the City and HART’s failure to
plan for security, fare collection, adequate parking, and accessible
bathrooms.
11. In 2004 Mayor Mufi Hannemann claimed it
would cost $2.7 billion to build a 34-mile Antiquated Rail System. The estimated cost is now $8.1 billion, and
climbing, while the planned length is down to 20 miles, and shrinking.
12. When an independent financial audit found in
2016 that HART had “failed to perform qualitative analysis” and had relied on
“insufficient cost-control,” HART called the audit “a joke,” and kept doing
what it had been doing. Booya!
We
hope that the FTA can detect satire, and that it will someday hold itself
accountable, along with the City and HART, for Honolulu’s rail fiasco.
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