U.S. Infrastructure Projects Cost Way More Than They Should, Explained

The Atlantic Cities magazine published a condensed analysis of seven main reasons that explain why U.S infrastructure project cost more than elsewhere. They are:

 1. Davis-Bacon Laws: Passed in 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act mandates that laborers for federal public works projects receive local prevailing wages. (+22%)

2. Project Labor Agreements: In 2009, President Obama signed an executive order mandating that contractors for federal projects exceeding $25 million sign Project Labor Agreements, which guarantee the hiring of union workers. (+13~15%)

3. 'Buy America' Provision: For decades, this provision has discouraged projects from being built with manufactured goods made outside the U.S. Obama strengthened it in the 2009 stimulus package to include projects besides just highways. (+10~500%)*

4. Lengthy Environmental Reviews. (+10~25%)*

5. Transportation Alternatives Program: Everyone can agree that walking trails, complete streets, historic renovations, landscaping, and bike lanes are public goods, but should they be paid for with highway fund money? This is the current policy of the FHWA. (+5~20%)*

6. Administrative Costs: Currently, U.S. transportation revenue is like a boomerang, going from the states to Washington and back. Naturally, this process adds bureaucratic costs. (+10%)*

7. Toll Bans: Although tolls exist along some stretches of interstate, they are generally not permitted by the federal government. This has stripped the government of a key revenue source that could be used for repairs, and for cheaper borrowing. (+10~50%)*

Note: (*) Author's estimates.
SOURCE: 7 Reasons U.S. Infrastructure Projects Cost Way More Than They Should

2010-2013 U.S. Metropolitan Area Changes

This domestic migration three year snapshot indicates that Americans are moving out of Democrat, cold and mismanaged cities with expensive transit systems to Republican, warm and business-friendly cities with small or medium transit systems.  Smart!

See more in New Geography: Special Report: 2013 Metropolitan Area Population Estimates

Hawaii's Electric Company Suffers National Humiliation (Forbes)

On September 6, 2013 Hawaiian Electric Company or HECO changed the rules for connecting solar systems. Based on DBEDT data, the number of residential permits in December 2012 were 2,452.  With the new rules in effect, the number of residential permits in December 2013 were 1,218, a 50.3% reduction.

FORBES:  A Hawaiian utility has tried to slow the growth of solar. In December, Hawaiian Electric Company shut down rooftop solar installations, citing “grid stability.”

“That’s another bullshit argument,” said Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who served as energy secretary from 2009 to April, 2013. Solar installations don’t threaten grid stability until they approach 20% of the customer base, Chu said. In Hawaii solar is at 2%.

(Hawaiian Electric disputes Chu’s 2% figure, and spokeswoman Lynn Unemori says the company has not halted solar installations, but has adopted “a more cautious approach to applications for new PV systems on circuits with a large amount of PV already installed, solely for reasons of safety and reliability.” ) END QUOTE

But Roy Skaggs of Alternate Energy, Inc. won't let Lynn's "word-smithed" response stand:

Lynne,

To quote Mr. Chu above, that’s a bullshit response. The only thing I agree with you on, is that rooftop solar has exceeded 2%. The rest of your canned response is the same vomit regurgitated by Scott Seu and sadly what we have been sometimes even seeing from the PUC. HECO has blocked many people, including ones who you were supposed to grandfather. This “approving new installations daily” statement is so exaggerated that you would have to work for HECO to believe it. But hey, I guess if you approve 1 installation a day and block 20, then you can get away with that line!

How can you say HECO “strongly supports” PV? Since September, the entire industry has been cast away by HECO. How many hundreds of lost jobs and millions of dollars does it take before HECO admits they do not support anything but their own profit margins? You have hundreds of customers stuck in limbo for months who signed contracts and committed to PV before Sept 6th, and HECO has still not resolved those poor families troubles. Many are paying bank loans AND HECO!

And let’s talk for a second about this “grid saturation” that HECO holds onto and tries to pass off as truth. Scott Seu admitted in front of Senators and Representatives in October that there are grids over 200% DML. Where are the voltage spikes of record? Surely, with such “unsafe” levels, HECO would have examples to provide, right? The newest delay HECO is pushing is something already in place. The inverters being used by most, if not every single company, have protection in place from the bogus claims of “voltage spikes” that HECO has been spewing. These fast trip invereters are there and have been there. So why are solar companies just now getting word to provide proof that the inverters do indeed have this in place? We have been telling you they do for months.

What is HECO’s next delay tactic? The jig is up. More and more news outlets and industry professionals, like Mr. Chu, are calling you on your bullshit. If HECO doesn’t work with solar and the customers who want it, you will soon go the way of the land line.

How can a monopoly tell hard working Americans that they cannot capture the free sun on their own rooftops? You can’t. This is a losing battle for HECO. Innovate or go extinct.

Roy Skaggs

PS--Also recall that HEI president Connie Lau lead Move Oahu Forward... the big bucks lobby that is inflicting heavy rail on Oahu.

Preserving the American Dream: Lessons in Beating Boondoggles

A summary by Gini David.

In late October, I attended the Preserving the American Dream conference in Washington DC, sponsored by the American Dream Coalition (ADC, http://americandreamcoalition.org), a  coalition that promotes freedom, affordable home ownership, property rights, and mobility. To combat big government boondoggles, the ADC provides strategic and tactical counsel from planning experts like Randall O’Toole (Cato Institute), demographer Wendell Cox, ADC’s executive director Eileen Bruskewitz, transit expert Tom Rubin, ethics analyst and writer Stanley Kurtz, and others.

...

What’s more, Panos Prevedouros, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Hawaii, told the ADC audience that rail projects are rife with corruption and fraud, quoting   Bent Flyvbjerg, the renowned Chair of Large Program Management at Oxford University:  “Rail projects are the projects most fraught with delusion and deception.” As Prevedouros explained, “Deception because proponents lie to constituents and overstate ridership and understate costs.  And delusion because proponents believe that their projects are better and different than other failures from the past.”

AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 33 – American History 2000-2016: Early Summary of the Barack Bush* Era in 200 Keywords

• 9/11, Al-Qaeda, Taliban and IEDs.  Patriot Act, TSA, Homeland Security, drones. WikiLeaks and the Snownden-NSA leaks.
  
• Appointed Czars: Bush 33, Obama 38.  Executive orders: Bush 146, Obama 147. (First term only.)
• TEA Party and Occupy Wall Street. Universal Health Care (Obamacare) and Sequester. Debt ceiling.
• Bailouts and cash-for-clunkers.  Retro cars: Mini, VW Beetle, PT Cruiser, Chevy SSR, Toyota GT86.
• Big Presidential lies: “Saddam has WMDs” and “You can keep your plan.”
• So long Ronald Reagan, Steve Jobs and space shuttle.
• Gates Foundation. Gay marriage. GMO labeling.
• Kyoto protocol, and (less) global warming.
• “Smart Growth” and “Livability” = Pack people in condos and trains. U.N. Agenda 21.
  
• I-35W bridge collapse. D grade for Infrastructure. Hurricane Katrina, BP Deepwater Horizon.
• Green energy black holes: Electric car/Fisker, solar/Solyndra, corn ethanol and wind farm subsidies.
• Oil at $147/barrel in mid-2008. Frack it! Natural gas to the rescue. Keystone XL pipeline.
• Infrastructure finance, PPP, open road tolling, road concession, EZPASS, HOT lanes.
• Google car and Google glass. Toyota Prius, Twitter, and tablets. Nanotechnology, carbon fiber, and composites. 
• Boom: Android, Bitcoin, e-cigarettes, iMac, iBook, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Made in China, Marijuana,  Facebook, Lipitor, Smart Phones, Tesla car, Viagra.
• Bust: AOL, AltaVista, Pontiac, Plymouth, Lehman Brothers, BlackBerry, HealthCare.gov (?)

Around 2016: The Baby Boom social security and other social net overloading, the large pension underfunding of several states, and ObamaCare direct and indirect costs come to full bloom (and gloom.)

Notable International: The economies of BRICs and PIIGS *** No “Arab Spring,” Egypt, Syria and Benghazi *** ~270,000 dead by 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami *** 2004 Athens Olympics *** 3/11 Tsunami and Fukushima disaster in Japan *** Castro, Chavez, Gaddafi, Kim Jong-Il and Bin Laden gone *** So long Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela and supersonic passenger flight (Concorde) *** Full double-decker 550-850 passenger A380.

Notes (*): The Economist, Barack Hussein Bush, Dec 17th 2008 *** The Wall Street Journal, Barack Hussein Bush, June 5, 2009

PPP = public-private partnership (or P3)

BRIC = Brazil, Russia, India and China

PIIGS = Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain

This summary does not include Entertainment and Sports highlights.

The Public and Private Versions of Solar Power, in Brief

Private version: The installation of photovoltaic panels to generate electric power utilizes unused rooftops and provides free building cooling. (Y. Hata Co., Honolulu, HI.)







Public version: The installation of photovoltaic panels to generate electric power wastes productive land, wastes taxpayer funds, and lies about sustainable green jobs; there aren't any. (DHHL, Kalaeloa, HI)

AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 32 – Here’s Wishing for a Helmet Law and Jones Act Repeal

The magic of Fibonacci numbers. Simple series. Fascinating creations!

Biologist Mohamed Hijri brings to light a farming crisis no one is talking about: We are running out of phosphorus. (TED talk in French, subtitled.)

 

As 2013 comes to a close it is worth remembering that Honolulu's $5.2 Billion rail project is a testament of the power of government and special interests to get their way.  The Honolulu Civil Beat's multiple polls over the years show that the rail project never had a public approval of over 35%. Here’s a link to a slideshow summary I presented at the ADC conference in Washington, D.C. in mid-October.

My first transportation wish for 2014: Hawaii needs a motorcycle helmet law. It’s a no brainer! Just read these few lines about the impact of injuries of motorcyclists without helmets: “The helmet-less are distinctive, says Dr. Lori Terryberry-Spohr: they suffer ‘diffuse’ internal bleeding and cell death across large areas. Such patients typically run up $1.3 million in direct medical costs. Fewer than a third work again. A study of helmet-less bikers admitted to one large hospital, cited by the Centers for Disease Control, found that taxpayers paid for 63% of their care.”

My second transportation wish for 2014: Hawaii gets an exemption from the Jones Act which artificially inflates the cost of living for all of us. BusinessWeek observes that “when large container ships filled with bicycles and sleeper sofas leave China for the U.S., they don’t stop in Hawaii to unload cargo bound for that state before continuing to Los Angeles or Seattle.” Unfortunately status quo politicians such as Hirono, Schatz and Hanabusa are strong supporters of the Jones Act. And fake energy solutions. They cost Hawaii dearly … expensive gas, expensive power, expensive groceries, and extra taxation on everything for the rail.  Other than that, Hawaii Democrats are all about support for the little guy ;)

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for 2014!

Mayor Enrique Peñalosa: Why buses represent democracy in action

1998-2001 Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa: "An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport."

In this TED talk, the former mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the system in the Colombian capital.

"Buses have great capacity. For example this system in Guanzhou is moving more people per hour than all subway lines in China, except one in Beijing, at a fraction of the cost."

Senator Schatz is Wrong about Wind Energy -- Part 2: Sample Responses

Most people dislike irresponsible calls for "improvement at any cost" although some accept cost-ineffective renewables. The quotes below are a sample of the responses I received to my AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 31.


Alexa: Thank you for the informative email. But I still do not know what we the poor residents can do to help ourselves and Hawaii from the increasing expense.

Patty: They surely are an eye sore.  Did not appreciate seeing them as I toured visiting friends around the island.

Teri H.: “No” to liquefied gas. At some point, someone has to have the courage to advocate and implement renewable energy.

Robert: 3 cents per kw, does that include the cost of Columbia river dams and lost salmon runs?
No such thing as a free lunch but you are right about distributed pv.

Greg W.: Tell them to come to South Point on the Big Island. Are they trying to finish off the Nene and the Io?

John D.: wind energy, in my opinion is better than solar, or at least compliments it. just note all of us who have blue water sailboats- sun by day, and wind by nite- at nite, the sun is gone, but the wind blows, continuing to give energy. i like that. i don't like the idea of huge turbines in my immediate neighborhood, but small individual ones like i mentioned, are fantastic... keeps the beer cold.

Thomas S.: What is wrong with a Babcock and Wilcox 300 MW nuclear plant?  The most ecologically sensitive plant and with power storage that will keep Hawaii lit a for a long time.
        Liquefied Natural Gas is replacing the Kewaunee, Wis. Nuclear Plant that my father helped build in 1960......my mom, still gets 10 cent per KWH retail power out of that plant as of this moment.  (I checked her electric bill).

Bruce: I also agree with you that rooftop solar can make it on its own, without any state or federal tax credits, which are expected to expire in a couple of years.  We were fortunate to take advantage of the credits and our $50K system cost us just $17.5K.  It should pay for itself in 4 years.  Without tax credits, it would still pay for itself in 12 years and, because we purchased well-designed panels, I expect the lifetime to exceed 30 years.  We installed PV panels on our cabin in Colorado 20+ years ago, and they are still working fine...even being exposed to snow.

Patrick P: how about wind turbines, pv, and rain turbines on all erected light fixtures across the state?

Kaniu, Big Island: Mahalo nui Panos for the truth

Linda P.: Panos, we appreciate you!  Thank you for fighting the good fight and for keeping us informed.  Wish the good senator (and many others) had your intelligence, logic and values!

Valere: Thank you for always telling it like it is and for doing such credible research. I do disagree, however, about the PV systems because most of the panels are constructed in China and the mining of materials used in the panels is extremely toxic. Firefighters in California can refuse to fight a fire on building that has solar panels. And these projects survive on subsidies. It is fallacious to say that the tax benefits received by individuals and corporations are not subsidies. It's just a different name for the same thing.

S.V, Pukalani: I speak from looking hard at rooftop solar installations on Maui.  It is a wonderful and economic problem.  The only sticking point here is that Maui Electric has limited the number of penetration circuits allowed for home solar.  Reason - it impinges on their base load generation.

Tim D.: How about something simpler:  Cut demand by tax credits (and building code) for simple, non capital-intensive technologies like insulation, attic fans, and best-practices lighting (Say Energy Star Gold rating).  Mandate homes (single family & up to 4-plexes) convert to solar power hot water over the next decade.

Gordon K., Retired HECO: In November 2012 I attended the Hawaii Health Dept. hearing on Greenhouse Gas regulations.  Everybody was there--Health Dept., engineers, regulators, utilities and refineries, and environmentalists.
     I asked a question.  We live in a highrise apartment, and electricity costs us $200 per month.  I asked how much our electric bill would be after all of the solar and wind farms, rooftop solar, and undersea cables are built.  There was total silence.  A few people pointed up at the ceiling.  Afterward an engineer told me, "That was a novel question you asked.  No one ever asked that question before."
     In other words we all accepted the renewable energy without question or regard for cost.  Now that we're retired and living on pensions, cost matters a lot.  I intend to ask that question a lot more in the future.

AIKEA FOR HONOLULU No. 31 – Senator Schatz is Wrong about Wind Energy

A TV ad started last week shows U.S. Senator Brian Schatz promoting “energy that’s moving Hawaii forward. Senator Brian Schatz is leading the effort to harness our incredible wind energy potential with tax credits to grow wind energy production that would create thousands of new jobs and clean energy.”

Hawaii residents from Waianae to Kahuku, from Molokai to Lanai, and everywhere in the between dislike wind turbines. Senator Schatz promotes more taxpayer monies for special interests who are peddling a technology that cannot make it on its own. He is wrong for the following reasons.

Independently from any politics, a Punahou and UH-Manoa graduate student and I conducted detailed research on cost effective energy solutions for Hawaii, by examining all major energy sources available to Hawaii.  A summary of our work was accepted by Pacific Business News last month, and was published this week: Making the Case for Liquefied Natural Gas.

Our research concluded that wind and solar power plants are ineffective; they require multimillion dollar subsidies. The solar energy in our research was the power plant type that consumes land in order to produce some daytime electricity, similar to the 36 acres wasted by the Pohoiki plant at Kalaeloa to produce only 5 MW!

On the other hand, solar photovoltaic panels have been locally accepted by thousands of homeowners and businesses. Rooftop PV is an incremental, distributed power source with near zero visual or other negative impacts for Hawaii, as I explained here: Big Rooftop Solar Panels Make Sense in Hawaii - without Any Subsidies! Rooftop PV supports dozens of local small businesses.

Recently BMW decided to locate its electric vehicle chassis assembly in a region of Washington State because the local electricity rate is 3 cents (!) per kilowatt-hour.  HECO’s rate on Oahu is over 33 cents and thanks to Senator Schatz’s flawed advocacy, our electricity costs will increase, and Hawaii will become increasingly uncompetitive.

I urge Senator Schatz to review the three page summary of our research titled The Next 100 MW Power Plant for Oahu and modify his views about renewable energy. America’s future cannot be supported by intermittent, unreliable and expensive energy.

Hawaii does not need unsightly turbines and cannot afford their cost and flaky reliability. And please stop bragging about the jobs. Hawaii has fewer than 50 turbines and fewer than 50 people are located here to manage them … that is, when the turbines are not down due to fires or other self-inflicted damage.

Plan Bay Area: Urban Planning as a Form of 21st Century Illogical Dictatorship. Part 2

Part 2 is lawsuit galore. Barely two weeks after its acceptance by Bay area planning and transit agencies, Plan Bay Area was Sued From the Right and the Left!  Of course the myopic view of Sierra Club forces them to sue the Plan for daring support some highway transportation.  As I have demonstrated in my critique of the Plan, its emphasis on transit is totally wrong. Sierra Club wants more emphasis on top of emphasis on transit. It is quite clear to me that the title Lunatic Left is becoming a fundamental characterization.

Plan Bay Area: Urban Planning as a Form of 21st Century Illogical Dictatorship. Part 1

Part 1 by Wendell Cox explains why the well intentioned Plan Bay Area makes the wrong assumptions and picks the wrong solutions. As a result it barely makes the pollution targets they are after!  Sample estimates by Cox are shown the picture below.  Telling people what to do is not the way to do it.

Light-Rail to Nowhere: Honolulu, Hawaii's Train Boondoggle

The Reason Foundation provides succinct coverage of Honolulu rail. It is, of course, about politics, development and money. Lots of money. Only the gullible and the railigious believe that heavy rail from the middle of ag land to a shopping center will have any traffic relief.

Panos Prevedouros, one of the state's leading transportation experts, says the rail plan that the feds approved will siphon off state funding for the area's bus system. The project's own report, which Prevedouros says is filled with overly optimistic estimates of rail ridership, still shows that Honolulu's congestion will be worse in the future with rail. “The point of doing any cost effectiveness type of analysis is out of the window,” says Panos, “the benefits are not there.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered an expedited hearing for the federal rail lawsuit on August 15th.

Watch the well-made 8 minute video by Sharif Matar.

Brief Insight on the Kakaako Development and Honolulu's Trifecta of Failures

Up to 5,000 new apartment and condominium units are being planned by the HCDA in Kakaako, Honolulu. This section of Honolulu is already the most traveled and congested. What would be the likely impact of such concentrated, high density development?

In the field of transportation planning and engineering we rely on the Trip Generation Manual produced by the Institute of Transportation Engineers headquartered in Washington, D.C. I have the 8th edition issued in 2008. 

It says that High Rise Apartments (land use 222) generate 0.30 trips per unit during the peak hour between 7 and 9 AM. The peak period in Kaka'ako is roughly the same. Of these trips, 75% are outbound (leaving the building) and 25% are inbound. Given that Kakaako is at a location near the center of the city and Waikiki, quite a few of these trips will be on foot, bike or bus. So instead of assuming that 90%-95% of the trips will be by auto, let's assume that 80% of the trips will be by auto.

If 5,000 new units were occupied in Kaka'ako "tomorrow", then there would be: 

5,000 x 0.30 x 0.75 x 0.80 = 900 new vehicle trips during the morning peak hour

If we stack all of them on Kapiolani Blvd., this estimate means that an exclusive new lane would be needed just to maintain similar congestion conditions as now. But there is no room for lane additions so the traffic impact will be immense.

This is similar to the situation prevailing today: Because of sewer work, contraflow on Kapiolani Blvd. was not in effect until past McCully St. (town-bound from Kaimuki) so it took me three cycles to go past the Kapiolani/Date traffic light. Over five minutes to traverse one major intersection! 

As I have frequently mentioned, Honolulu is the most lane deficient city of about one million people in the US (per capita, it is worse than LA, Chicago, etc.) Adding more density will cause the central road network to seize. It already does when there is major rainfall or a couple of typically uncoordinated lane closures on major streets.

The "Establishment" supported and thrived with the quick profiteering from the Second City. Second City profit-making has subsided due to the lack of road capacity and it will collapse with the mess of 10+ years of rail construction due to lane closures. After destroying the Ewa Plains, and causing major infrastructure liabilities, now it is time for the Establishment to come back and densify Kakaako and Kalihi. 

A dense urban ribbon between Waikiki and the airport should have been the original plan instead of the Second City 22 miles away from Waikiki. That plan should have come with high rises, urban underpasses, large underground parking, and possibly a 10-mile underground metro from Waikiki to Airport and perhaps to Aloha Stadium. The plan should have had new utility lines installed in secondary streets such as Waimanu Rd. and Queen St. instead of under major arterial streets such as Ala Moana and Kapiolani Boulevards. 

If you recall, since 1995 Kapiolani Blvd. has been a continuous construction zone. Now Ala Moana Blvd. is another work zone. As long as main utilities are under them, labe closures will never stop and pavement will be a patchwork. 

With the 

1. Second City/Ewa Development Plan, 
2. The Rail and,
3. The HCDA/Kakaako Development 

the Establishment has created the ultimate trifecta of (predictable) failures at a time when Honolulu can least afford to make mistakes and start new massive liabilities while the massive liabilities of

• Sewer EPA consent decree
• One water main break a day
• The worst pavement condition in the last 30 years
• Public employee pension unfunded liability
• Public employee health coverage unfunded liability

are here and 100% real.