The March 31, Zip-geddon

The disablement of the Zipmobile on H-1 Freeway cause a major lane imbalance for the afternoon commute in west Oahu by reducing available freeway lane capacity by two lanes.

My immediate reaction od Facebook got over 160 "likes" as of this writing:

I am sorry folks. I am at home now watching the rivers of red lights all over town. They'd be the same with or without rail. We used to have two or three of these a year. Now its a half dozen per year and getting worse... Just wait for the prolonged lane closures for the rail stations. So sorry that our place is run by smooth talking lawyers and uninformed voters. What an avoidable lose-lose!

Hawaii News Now's Ben Gutierrez interviewed me for a piece on After traffic nightmare, other options may be reconsidered:

University of Hawaii civil and environmental engineering professor Panos Prevedouros has advocated reversible express lanes from the H-1/H-2 merge to the downtown area, which he calls a critical stretch for commuters.

"If we had it yesterday, two or three lanes, express to the H-1/H-2 split, it would be like nothing happened," he said.

Star Advertiser's  Kristen Consillio quoted me extensively in her article Jam costs $1 million in lost gas and time:

The economic loss of more than 75,000 vehicles carrying more than 100,000 people stuck in an hourslong traffic jam was estimated by Panos Prevedouros, professor and chairman of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Hawaii.

Prevedouros, a former mayoral candidate, calculated the loss based on a typical one-hour trip growing to four or more hours, and using the minimum wage and current cost of gas to value the time and energy wasted.

"Obviously it's disruptive to people's schedules so it's a waste of time and money," added UH economist Carl Bonham. "At the end of the day, it's really wasted time when people could've been doing something productive."

The severe congestion that started around 2 p.m. delayed deliveries, while some flights were missed.

"Some people arrived home so late that they were planning to call in sick the next day — that's another loss," Prevedouros added. "Every major event has both positives and negatives. Yesterday's horrendous congestion was no exception."

Many bus drivers gained extra overtime, some taxi drivers had some large fares and many restaurants in town had an unusually busy Tuesday dinner business, Prevedouros said.

"Of course, idling for hours makes drivers fume and it is highly polluting, but empty tanks is more business for gas stations," he said.

Ugly Traffic Poles

The city must stop installing these huge, ugly and expensive light poles. They are wider than a car door! These ugly poles and masts have already defaced Kailua and Puck's Alley. The Caldwell administration has no sensibility and environmental sensitivity. Cease and desist!

What Can We Do About The Rail? Nothing. Tackle Traffic Congestion!

Originally published in the Honolulu Civil Beat.

Various groups are energized and urge me and each other to do something about stopping Honolulu’s rail project.  The recent commotion has been brought about by (1) the large delays;  the project is roughly three years behind schedule because the city did a poor job with the archaeological inventory and then deliberately delayed and obstructed the two lawsuits; (2) the revelations last December that the project is already about $900 million over budget, and (3) the City Ethics Commission’s investigation on the non-disclosure of rail project related gifts to five City Council Members, which could potentially reverse some important pro-rail votes and approvals.

So what can be done about stopping the rail project now? Nothing, other than holding HART and the City accountable for project expenditures. Unfortunately this is easier said than done given that between FY 2008 and FY 2012 more than $550 million were spent and hardly any project was laid on the ground!

Other agencies on the mainland can complete a 10-mile multilane freeway including all planning, design and clearances for this sum of money.  But for $550 million we got TV and newspaper ads, building and office rentals, salaries, travelling expenses for planners and officials, piles of Xeroxing and plain and 3-hole paper, laptop and desktop computers, cellphone and courier bills, and magazine subscriptions.

And a lot more traffic congestion since 2006 when the rail project started.

What’s the bottom line on traffic congestion on Oahu?

Honolulu has among the worst traffic flow conditions in the nation because it is grossly lane deficient, that is, Honolulu has too few lane miles for its population and travel patterns.

Honolulu rail will never provide any congestion relief for the traveling public. By the time some usable portion of the project is done, say, Kapolei to Pearl City, its (tiny) traffic reduction will be already surpassed by traffic growth given the tens of thousands of planned new homes west of Aloha Stadium.

Starting this year, there will be extensive lane closures to build the guideway and the street-spanning stations.  HART can’t build 21 roughly football field sized concrete stations 30 ft. in the air and leave lanes open to traffic under it during construction. In a typical scenario, half of Farrington Fwy., Kamehameha Hwy., and Dillingham Blvd. will have to be closed for many months at a time.  

Next year the project may be in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor and Aloha Stadium. As a result, word will get out in the tourist market that Oahu is one huge traffic and construction mess.

Assuming that construction progresses normally, around year 2017, construction by the airport will have major impacts on the access and land-side operations at the Honolulu International Airport. This will be quite annoying to frequent interisland travelers and on occasion it may result in missed flights.

Around year 2020, several street blocks in downtown and Kakaako will be closed for months at a time. A long, dissecting portion of Kakaako will be an active construction site. Neither shop owners nor patrons can be allowed in a construction site. Mauka-makai movements between Chinatown and Ala Moana will be critically affected. Kakaako’s revitalization will be heavily impacted.

Despite all this, given Hawaii's political and decision making reality, at this time there is no point to “fight the rail.” But there is a clear need to fight for traffic congestion solutions. This is what Oahu needed to begin with.

What can be done about congestion?

First let’s not forget that the Hawaii State DOT added a lane on each side of the central part of the H-1 Freeway in 2014. This has helped a lot!

Also, the Hawaii State DOT is adding a lane on each side of the Pearl City viaduct on the H-1 Freeway. It’ll help somewhat, but this one lane per direction addition is not enough for the current, let alone future levels of demand to/from west Oahu.

There are also some plans to add a lane at the H-1/H-2 merge.  This lane addition, if implemented, will be “too little too late” but will provide some congestion relief. The long queues and long periods of stop-and-go congestion will get a little shorter.

There are many more options. Here is a sample of past suggestions, many of which are readily applicable today:

• Slideshow of sample solutions and initiatives.
• Descriptions of short and long term solutions.

How can Oahu get congestion relief?

Fundamentally, we must:

• Get a grip with reality and stop believing that rail will reduce traffic congestion on Oahu at any time in the future.
• Aggressively install lane additions, contraflow lanes, bypass lanes and bus-on-shoulder operations before the impacts of rail construction choke west Oahu’s mobility.
• Realize that Saudis and fracking will keep the cost of fossil fuels at moderate levels, and Congress won't tax transportation fuels in a substantial way. Economic brakes to driving won't apply for several more years.  Thus traffic will grow and so will congestion.
• Promote effective solutions for traffic congestion relief through the government channels. Additions of new traffic lanes should be a priority.
• Create a non-governmental Oahu Mobility Group. Currently businesses and business organizations are asleep at the wheel when it comes to traffic congestion, which costs them dearly, while government is relying on silly projections of congestion relief with public transit, smart growth, TODs and complete streets. The government is working on improvements for the 10% of the travelers with “alternative transportation and life styles.” It largely ignores the 90% of the travelers that use cars, carpools, mopeds, motorcycles and buses on congested streets. A strong voice is needed to set transportation priorities right.

Once again, what can be done about Honolulu’s rail project?

I think that in a few years there will be substantial appetite to terminate the rail at the airport or at the Iwilei end of Dillingham Blvd. and to continue the rail's original Ala Moana, Waikiki and University routes with bus circulators on priority lanes. The powers that be may adopt this as a win-win compromise if the effect of rail construction is too much for locals, and for tourism arrivals and operations. Or if the electorate (finally) gets mad at them.

As the Nation Turns, Hawaii is Still Driven

As the Nation Turns, Hawaii is Still Driven is an comprehensive and detailed article in the November 2014 issue of Hawaii Business Magazine, by Carlyn Tani. I am quoted extensively throughout the article as follows:

• “Hawaii’s driving never really went down – it just flattened out and then started going up again as opposed to the mainland, which made a U-turn,” observes Panos Prevedouros, who teaches civil engineering at UH-Manoa and chairs the freeway operations simulation subcommittee of the Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Research Council. He projects that Hawaii’s thriving economy and tourism sector will buoy VMT even higher.

• Prevedouros cites three economic forces driving Hawaii’s trend toward more vehicle miles driven per capita: a rebound in tourism, which puts more visitors on the roads; the construction boom on Oahu, which stimulates the transport of people and materials; and the large number of Hawaii residents who hold more than one part-time job and drive between workplaces.

• According to Prevedouros, the general tolerance threshold for congestion is 75 minutes for a one-way trip by car. When commute time exceeds that, people are more likely to move, change jobs or relocate to another region or state.

• But what does Hawaii’s transportation future look like? Prevedouros predicts that cars will continue to dominate because of the state’s tourism-dependent economy, high private-schools enrollment and large number of people holding more than one job.
  “We don’t have mass transit that is flexible and quick enough to take you to drop off your kids or take you to your multiple jobs. You cannot be a resident in Kailua with kids at Punahou and try to do these things by bus,” he explains. “The only mode that can deliver that is private transportation.”
  
  Prevedouros predicts we will see more cars on the road in the future, but says traffic congestion will eventually be reduced by autonomous cars that drive better than people-driven cars, while more energy-efficient cars will ease environmental concerns.

Ho'opili Development on the Island of Oahu--Comments to DPP

This is a picture of today (left) and the proposed development of Ho'opili (right.)  DPP is poised to issue permits for Ho'opili to begin construction on prime agricultural lands on Oahu.

I sent the following comments to the Department of Planning and Permitting of the City and County of Honolulu.  The bottom line is that with or without rail, the Ho'opili Development will be a traffic impact disaster for Central Oahu and no meaningful road capacity accommodations are planned, therefore no permits should be granted. My main comments against the (untruthful) assessments of Ho'opili's traffic impacts are as follows.

• The traffic models used to assess the impacts of the Ho'opili development are too limited in scope relative to the size and regional impacts of this very large development. Most outputs in the TIAR are unacceptable underestimations.
• In Ho'opili-related traffic analyses, the H-1/H-2 freeway merge which is a critical bottleneck in the region was completely ignored and no mitigation to the existing severe congestion has been proposed.
• Most analyses I have reviewed present year 2020 projections with only about 1/3 of Ho'opili developed. Comprehensive analyses with the full 100% of the project developed are not available. This is an obvious “salami” tactic and under-representation of the development’s full scale of impacts.
• The Ho'opili TIAR claims that the OMPO model allows them to take an up to 30% trip reduction in trip generation by the development due to the “integrat-ed character” of the Hoopili community. However, there is no proof that this is a valid or prudent assumption. I cannot think of a more integrated community than Kalilhi with its rich mix of light industrial, services, offices, storage, retail, food, school and residential land uses. Arguing that Kalihi folks make 30% fewer trips than the rest of Oahu is wrong. At any rate, there is no proof, so Ho'opili taking such huge “discounts” in traffic generation is wrong.
• Ho'opili’s generation of trips by transit is not large. For example, the number of trips made by rail is the equivalent of a few bus loads in the morning peak. Regardless of whether rail is fully operational by 2020 (which is unrealistic in my opinion,) Hoopili’s traffic impact will be immense with or without rail. Well over 90% of the commuting trips generated by Hoopili residents will be made by auto, bus or bike, all of which require lanes. Only localized but no regional lanes are proposed to be added, therefore Hoopili will cause huge increases in traffic congestion in the region.

Honolulu Traffic Lights: 12 Minutes for One Half Mile in Waikiki!

On Good Friday I had the opportunity to observe the typical gridlock traffic conditions of a busy Friday in Waikiki.  Then I found a perfect object to monitor.  An articulated (bendy) city bus with the number 154 stencilled on its roof. I tracked it as it motored along on Kalia Street, made a left turn onto Saratoga Street and eventually crossed Kalakaua Avenue and disappeared from my view.

The total distance from the Hale Koa hotel to Kalakaua Avenue is 0.55 miles.  An acceptable speed for buses is 7 miles per hour including stops so this distance would have taken 4.7 minutes.

Bus 154 took 6 minutes to reach Saratoga at an average speed of 3 mph, and took another 6.5 minutes to cross Kalakaua Avenue at an average speed of 2.3 mph which is much slower than walking speed for most people (3.1 mph according to Google.)

Fantastically, a day earlier I get a call from KHON2 News. They wanted my opinion on the city's new multimillion dollar proposal to synchronize its traffic lights.  So I marvel at the fact that instantly upon getting elected to City Council, Stanley Chang knew that rail will be Oahu's savior for traffic congestion.  (I met him and he told me that.) Yet it took Stanley three years and a candidacy for U.S. Congress to figure out that Honolulu's traffic signals work poorly and now he wants to fix all of them at once with a five million dollar study!

Ineffective hyperbola rules the day in Honolulu. A day before the traffic project announcement, the president of HART promised to deliver 10 miles of elevated rail with ten stations and operating trains 36 months from April 2014.  I'll bet him $36,000 that this is NOT possible!

What can I say?  We certainly need more lawyers like Kirk Caldwell (Mayor), Stanley Chang (City Council), Ivan Lui-Kwan (HART president) and Mike Formby (City Transportation Director) in charge of Oahu traffic and mobility. All blah-blah and promises while traffic and buses crawl at 3 miles per hour.

Honolulu Traffic Contraflow Operations

The Honolulu Civil Beat article Finding the City's Flow: Why Honolulu's Traffic Goes Against the Grain summarizes the state of contraflow in Honolulu. Contraflow on lanes during peak traffic periods is a practice that is used extensively both by the city and state transportation agencies to squeeze more capacity out of the lane-deficient road network of Honolulu.

I wish that the city had actually something more useful to say. Their comment about potential future contraflows on Dillingham Blvd. and King St. is borrowed from my mayoral campaigns during which I promoted these ideas. At least they are on record that the rail won't reduce the need for contraflow lanes.

The city's practice of using crews and cones is relatively risky for the crew, and expensive. The photo is from the Honolulu Star Bulletin newspaper in an article dated Tuesday, August 24, 1999.

Flyover Traffic Rings

One in Athens, Greece connects two arteries to a freeway (Attica Tollway, top.)

The other in Shanghai, China removes pedestrians from a complex 5-approach roundabout (bottom.)

City Transport 2020: The Future Can't Come Soon Enough

Here is a sample compilation of technological breakthroughs reported in the second half of May 2013:

CNN: The future of travel: How driverless cars could change everything

The Economist: The future of the car -- Clean, safe and it drives itself

The Economist: How does a self-driving car work?

The Economist: Tesla "General Electric Motors" has high hopes for its high-spec electric cars

Daily Caller: Tesla electrifies the auto market (This week American electric auto manufacturer Tesla Motors (TSLA) broke $100 per share.)

INRIX Expands Real-time Traffic Coverage: US, EU. Traffic conditions in Honolulu at noon on May 29, 2013 compiled as a digital layer that can be used by in-vehicle, broadcasting and other means are shown at the end of this article.

New Geography: Driving Trends in Context
Figure 4: Drive alone, carpool, motorcycle and telecommuting are over 90%.

I foresee an epic battle: Google and the Technologists vs. Sierra Club and the Greenies.

Where are the Planners and Transit in this bright future? They are largely Irrelevant!

Back to now: Sadly greenies, liberal politicians and urban (transit) planners continue to waste a huge portion of public and transportation funds on Smart Growth, Rail Starts and Complete Streets. Like the current Plan Bay Area 2040 plan that allocates 62% of the transportation funding to the 10% mode of transportation.(1)

The new wave of automated urban transportation cannot come soon enough!

---------------
Note (1) Plan Bay Area Report: “The analysis for the most recent regional transportation plan, Transportation 2035, suggested that the region’s transit system is not sustainable based on current projections of transit costs and reasonably anticipated revenues. Transportation 2035 identified a region-wide transit capital deficit of $17 billion and operating budget deficits of $8 billion over the next 25 years.” These are staggering deficits for a transportation mode used by 10% of commuters and less than that by non-commuters.  Planners acknowledge that these deficits are not sustainable for the community. Yet Plan Bay Area calls for more deficit-making transit.

Honolulu’s Poor Economic Growth and What to Do about It

The Brookings Institution, rated No. 1 think tank in the world, published the Global Metro Monitor update which “provides economic growth data.” Where does Honolulu rank among 300 cities? It ranks 284th for the 1993 to 2007 period, and 217th for the 2007 to 2011 period. Honolulu ranks 54th in terms of population in the U.S.

While Honolulu ranks 284th, for the same period Portland ranks 93rd, Tucson ranks 100th, Tampa ranks 106th, Salt Lake City ranks 130th and depressed Cincinnati ranks 206th. Honolulu is much closer to 297th ranked New Orleans than any of its peer cities.

Why is Honolulu ranking so low? In large part because of the excessive waste of funds on unproductive endeavors. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that has not been learned. Here is a list of 10 large mistakes:

1. We invested in the 2nd city and more housing. As a result we get worse congestion and continuously escalating housing prices because of land controls. Creating a 100,000 population city on prime agricultural land is a mistake that Honolulu county will be paying for, for centuries.

2. We invested in buses: 200 more buses, express buses, and HandiVan in the last 30 years. Yet we got flat ridership. In 1980 Honolulu had 760,000 residents and TheBus carried 71.6 million trips, or 7.5 trips per resident per month. In 2010 Honolulu had 960,000 residents and TheBus carried 73 million trips, or 6.4 trips per resident per month, a 15% drop in per capita productivity. Transit is a declining business.

3. The last thing we need is a multi‐billion dollar investment in transit. But that’s a local priority!

4. We invested in high-occupancy and zipper lanes but we don’t do anything to manage the flow on them.  As a result drive alone and carpool share was 81% in 1990 and 81% in 2012. More people drive alone now than 20 years ago, despite the tripling of fuel prices. Carpooling has lost share because the freeway HOV lanes provide a low travel time benefit.

5. We invest in government. As a result we get over-regulation and slow innovation. Many government operations in Hawaii still use carbon copying and physical walking of papers from place to place, then pay extra workers to enter the information on a computer.

6. A private consortium launched the Superferry. The supermajority of people loved it.  Corporatist politicians and special interests killed it.

7. We invest in junk renewables like concentrated solar. Taxpayers paid millions in tax credits to a company on the Big Island that installed 1,008 panels on four acres of land to produce 0.1 MW which is mostly used internally and no power is sold to HELCO!

8. We do not invest much in tourism, infrastructure upkeep, congestion relief and park cleanliness. Despite the brouhaha about our banner 2012 year for tourism, the fact is that growth in tourism has not kept up with Honolulu’s modest growth in population: In 1990 we had about 8 visitors per local resident. In 2010 we had 7.25 visitors per local resident. Taxes generated from tourists do not keep up with local needs for services on a per capita basis.

9. Now we want to invest in "one iPad for each public school student" as if Apple can stuff knowledge in pupils’ brains.

10. We also want to invest in one super-casino so we can collect voluntary money losses from gamblers. We seem to know how to get from 284th to 300th.

What if we wanted to improve our ranking (and our quality of life)?

First we need to place our trust on data and not on “visionaries.” Given Hawaii’s great loss in Congressional seniority, an economic decline followed by bumpy stability will be the trend as I explained previously. Honolulu’s basic 0.5% annual growth will be flattened by local, national and international pressures.

Then proceed with this sample half dozen of economically productive actions:

1. Plans focused on growth for Oahu must be abandoned.
2. Top Priority: Maintain, Rehabilitate, Replace, Modernize.
3 Scrap rail. Use $3 billion to fix roads and add express lanes and urban underpasses.
4. Scrap wind. Focus on natural gas, waste‐to‐energy and geothermal.
5. Scrap the EPA agreement for secondary sewage treatment. (Many cities are taking EPA to task for its unreasonable consent decrees.) Focus on accelerated replacement of water and sewer lines.
6. Manage current and future budgets to sustain item 2.

[Also published in Hawaii Reporter.]

Transportation and Energy Infrastructure Projects: Forecasting is Unnecessary

I enjoyed Dr. Martin Wachs' brief article Planning for High Speed Rail (HSR) in California. It centers around planning and forecasting: "The current debate is divisive precisely because improved data and models cannot provide a better glimpse into the future" Wachs says.

After nearly three decades in planning and policy, and six years involvement in local politics I have come to believe that forecasting is unnecessary as a primary decision making tool. Why?

Because transportation infrastructure deployment lags demand by decades. Why do we need to forecast 20+ years into the future? The need is present (or not.) Current data are the best quality data we have. So instead of making numerous uncertain assumptions about a future we do not control, let's assume that the project is built overnight and assess its benefits at the present time.

In the case of Hawaii, when I first relocated here in 1990, traffic congestion was the No. 1 issue and has remained in the top 10 ever since. Twenty three years later, roadway capacity addition has been marginal and most major bottlenecks have not been addressed. So why does the city's planned rail project have a 2030 horizon?

I think the answer is this: The proposed rail does not generate enough ridership with the current population so artificial demand balloons for population and jobs in 2030 are "forecast" to justify the system.

Similarly California has a population of 38 million with huge concentrations in Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas. If HSR does not work for 38 million, then it won't work. Why is a 20 to 50 year projection needed?

Worse yet, the typical  planning models lack credibility because they are never tested with back-casting.  If Parsons Brinkerhoff's model is trusted to predict transit ridership (bus and rail) in Honolulu with year 2006 as baseline and 2030 as the horizon, does it also predict transit ridership for 1982?  In other words, we should check the model's ability to project forward by using the 24-year period from 1982 to 2006; for which we have perfect information. How does the model do?

I think the answer is this: It does very poorly and for this reason back-casting is never applied.(1)

Obviously, since the inception of a project, several years go by for environmental studies, design,  engineering, funding, bidding and construction. So a 10 years-out plan and forecast is needed. But multi-billion dollar energy and transportation infrastructure projects should be justified by their "now" value and not by future demand balloons.

If the projects are beneficial "now" then long range forecasts can be performed for selecting the proper size for them. For example a reversible highway sized at two lanes for sufficient congestion relief may need to be built with three lanes to accommodate future demand. Similarly a 1,000 MW power plant may be engineered with a 1,200 MW capacity for the future.

Projects funded with private capital, fully or partly as in Public-Private Partnerships, sophisticated risk analyses that protect investment from foreseeable risks are conducted. These meticulous and carefully inspected forecasts of project costs and revenues have little in common with the manipulated forecasts for taxpayer funded and subsidized systems, primarily transit systems.

For taxpayer funded projects forecasting is unnecessary and indeed misleading for decision making. It is commonly used a tool for deception, particularly for rail projects.(2)


Endnotes

(1) My students and I investigated the accuracy of traffic volume forecasts primarily in the agriculture-to-residential mega developments in Ewa between 1976 and 2002. We found this:

The study compared forecast traffic levels from Traffic Impact Analysis Reports prepared between 1976 and 2002 to actual traffic volumes recorded by the Hawaii State DOT in the city and county of Honolulu. The information extracted uniformly from 11 reports included year of report, consultant, type of project, location, movement, forecast horizon, forecast traffic volumes and forecasting method.

This study focused on road and residential developments and examined the accuracy of traffic demand forecasting, the conservative or optimistic tendency in traffic forecasts and the potential factors affecting accuracy. The results revealed that traffic forecasts are on average overestimated by 35% and there is a clear tendency to overestimate future traffic volume. Errors ranged from -40% to +200%.

SOURCE: Caroee, Maja, Panos D. Prevedouros and Alyx Yu, Volume Forecasts for Environmental Impact Statements and Traffic Impact Analysis Reports: Accuracy of Road and Residential Developments in Honolulu, Paper 13-1398, 92^nd Annual Meeting of Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 2013.

(2) Flybjerg, Bent, et al., Delusion and Deception in Large Infrastructure Projects (2009)