Monday, November 26, 2012

EPA and Caldwell Are Costing Honolulu $4.5 Billion for Sewers



October 2012 was the 40th anniversary of the landmark Clean Water Act (CWA). On this anniversary, the U.S. Conference of Mayors voiced concerns with what is seen as an increasingly unequal partnership with the federal government. The nation’s towns and cities face a “fiscal crossroads with affordability” as a result of the costs associated with the CWA.
  
Jim Suttle, the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska and former director of its public works department states that the EPA’s reliance on consent decrees is a factor that has impeded the search for innovative solutions to sewer overflows and other problems pertaining to clean water. He argues that the federal government must stop pursuing consent decrees and instead rely on the permitting process to manage water quality problems.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors brings up as an example Lima, Ohio, a town of 39,000 residents. To comply with the Clean Water Act, Lima devised a $60-million long-term control plan, but in 2005 the EPA rejected the plan, and has sought to impose a consent decree that would entail $104 million in capital costs. As a result, Lima’s population will face sewer rates amounting to 4% to 7% of their household income. The CWA compliance costs come to about $2,700 per Lima resident.

Honolulu is in a similar predicament with the overreaching consent decree that Mayor Hannemann signed with the EPA for secondary sewage treatment which is expected to cost no less than $2 billion (The $1.2 billion figure in this article is old and partial.) The same consent decree mandates a number of other replacements and upgrades that will cost about $2.5 billion for an approximate total cost of about $4.5 billion. The CWA compliance costs come to about $4,600 per Oahu resident, almost twice those for Lima residents.

These figures indicate that EPA has gone wild with its requirements for small and large cities. Michael Bissonnette, the mayor of Chicopee, Massachusetts has requested revisiting the consent decrees that are already in place. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is calling on Congress to amend the CWA to make it less burdensome to local governments. The group wants a cap placed on costs to ratepayer associated with unfunded water mandates.

In Honolulu, KITV has already reported that local residents are calling the Board of Water Supply because they can’t afford to pay the rapidly escalating water and sewer rates. (View KITV story.) Therefore, high on the agenda of the new mayor of Honolulu should be the revisiting of the exorbitantly expensive EPA consent decree. This however, would be highly unlikely with mayor-elect Caldwell because he considers this outrageously expensive agreement as an accomplishment.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Dr. Panos Prevedouros Honored by Honolulu City Council



Dr. Panos Prevedouros is being honored here today because of his expertise, his service to the community and its elected officials, and his willingness to act on the simple fact, that when traffic moves, the economy does so with it.

Certificate text by Councilman Tom Berg:

 In 1990, Dr. Panos Prevedouros received his doctorate in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University and in that same year, became an Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr. Prevedouros became a Professor in 2005 and continues to this day to teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in the discipline of Traffic and Transportation Engineering.

Dr. Prevedouros may be best known locally for his advocacy for cost effective traffic solutions such as synchronizing traffic signals, utilizing grade separation at congested intersections, the implementation of managed lanes and other bottleneck relief solutions. In the community of Ewa Beach alone, Dr. Prevedouros has held over four town hall meetings at the calling of area officials.

In addition to countless invited speeches in Hawaii, Dr. Prevedouros has lectured at several US Universities as well as Universities in Austria, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Nepal, Singapore and S. Korea. He was instrumental in establishing a cooperative agreement between the Engineering Colleges of University of Hawaii and University of Saitama, Japan. In June 2009, Dr. Prevedouros organized and chaired a Transportation Research Board and Federal Highway Administration sponsored scientific conference in Honolulu. The 2nd International Symposium on Freeway and Tollway Operations was attended by over 300 experts.

Dr. Prevedouros is a court-qualified Traffic and Transportation Engineering expert in the State of Hawaii, has chaired the transportation committee of the local Chapter for the American Society of Civil Engineers, and was a founding member of the Hawaii Chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He developed and advised the UH chapter of the Institute of Transportation engineers and he developed and managed UH’s Traffic and Transportation Laboratory. He’s subcommittee chair on traffic simulation at the National Research Council since 2006.

Dr. Prevedouros has received a number of international awards including Transportation Research Board awards in 1995 and 2009 (TRB is a unit of the National Academy of Engineering), Outstanding UH Faculty award in 1996, Van Wagoner Award for Urban Underpasses by the Institute of Transportation Engineers in 2005, and Best Paper on Transportation Sustainability Award from World Road Association (2011.) He co-authored the 2nd and 3rd editions of internationally adopted textbook Transportation Engineering and Planning (Prentice Hall, 1993 and 2001.)

Today the central part of the H-1 Freeway runs at least 10% better than it did 12 years ago. Every improvement to the H-1 freeway done between 2000 and 2012 has been analyzed and justified by Dr. Prevedouros, including the upcoming PM Zipper lane and the lane addition at the Middle Street merge. He has testified at several hearings, helped modify bills and served at Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization’s TAC.

Dr. Prevedouros was appointed to the City Council Transit Advisory Task Force in 2006 and was the only member out of seven that did not approve elevated rail as the LPA. He was appointed by Council Chair Barbara Marshall to the Transit Technology Expert Panel in 2008 and was the only member out of five that did not approve the steel wheels on steel rail technology for Honolulu. He ran for Honolulu mayor in 2008 and 2010, and assisted mayoral candidate and past Governor Benjamin Cayetano in 2012 based on his expert opinion that elevated rail for Honolulu is a boondoggle.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Obama Re-elected. Market Drops 2%. So What?

I am sure that my Obama loving friends celebrated well last night. I'm glad they did because it's pretty much downhill from here.  This market reaction is only a tiny harbinger of what's to come.


Nothing personal with the President, but as Margaret Thatcher put it, Socialism lasts only as long as other people's money last. The math is both simple and brutal.

I hope you don’t think that only the top 1% of income earners lost a bit of wealth overnight.  Government and private company retirement funds, individual 401Ks, university endowments and most other savings and investments of the remaining 99% are in the stock market. (And in US bonds and T-bills that pay less than inflation so people's savings diminish with time while pension under-funding is growing.)

Of course Californians voted for added taxation to themselves. The outcome of this will be none other than ... Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound..."

These days the world is running at the speed of the Internet. Trends develop and bubbles burst quickly. So all of us under 75 stand a good chance in finding what Greece is all about where, among other things, unemployment for people under 25 yo is at about 50%.

Celebration will quickly turn into sequestration. The Treasury has quietly informed the President that the debt limit will be reached before the year is out.

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On November 7, the day after the election the DOW dropped from 13,300 to 13,000. Some said that this was a temporary knee-jerk reaction. By November 15 the DOW had slid further to 12,500.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Rail Is Not a Path to Prosperity for Honolulu

ENERGY.  Rail may be electric but 85% of electricity production on Oahu comes from oil and coal. This won't change much with the current intermittent renewable energy schemes. So rail does not reduce our economic dependency to imported fuels but it increases our dependency to imported sole source equipment and parts for which knowledge base is absent throughout Hawaii.

DEVELOPMENT.  Rail is not needed for TODs and other development. To be done successfully, these need a solid business foundation and strong demand. Neither is present for major development. US Census statistics clearly show that Oahu and Hawaii are in prolonged and perhaps permanent "sideways" trends.  See here [link].  How can a place prosper when prime agricultural land is turned into cookie cutter sprawled homes and fake gentleman farms?

JOBS.  It is bad policy to develop transportation solutions in order to provide jobs, particularly by selecting a type of transportation that will take the transit subsidy share of the city budget from 11% to 19%. This is the path to bankruptcy, not the path to prosperity.

TRANSIT SHARE.  It is counterproductive to develop a form of transportation that will take the current mass transit share from 6% to 7.4% at a cost of over $4 billion for the local economy. Unsurprisingly if one looks at the Final EIS, all freeway and main arterial screen-lines are shown to have similar or worse congestion with rail. Congestion chokes our economy. Fake relief will provide fake results.

CONGESTION.  Honolulu has a modest tax base and it clearly cannot support mega-projects such as the proposed rail. Honolulu has relatively severe congestion because it is among the most lane deficient cities in the union.

ECONOMY.  Despite having the best bus system in the nation and very expensive fuel pricing, the demand for independent travel is very strong, partly due to tourism, military and people having multiple jobs. A single rail line does very little for tourists, too little for people with multiple jobs and nothing for the military.

MOBILITY.  A lot of our traffic is school and college based and rail does really nothing for these trips. Over half of the traffic on the roads is pickup trucks and SUVs of plumbers, electricians, distributors, repairmen and soccer moms. Rail does nothing for them too.

PRODUCTIVITY.  Adding a lot of nothing gets us nothing. In fact the FEIS clearly shows that 70,000 daily riders will switch from bus to rail.  Add a few carpoolers and the 1% who may abandon their car and that's how the rail ridership comes about. Where is the productivity in this?  Even of rail had no construction cost, one would be hard pressed to come up with positive productivity for it.

GUT TheBus.  Last but not least, the rail will dismantle the No.1 system in the nation. All TheBus routes listed below (copied from the rail FEIS) will be terminated at the nearest train station or eliminated altogether: B, C, E, 3, 9, 11, 20, 43, 53, 73, 81, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98A, 101, 102, 103, 201, 202.

An abbreviated TV editorial of this article appeared on Hawaii News Now on October 29 and 30.  Mahalo to Rick Blangiardi, General Manager of KGMB and KHNL for this opportunity.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Nimitz Flyover Cost Estimate Suggests that Rail Will Cost $7 Billion

In comparison, the structural and construction cost of the rail viaduct per mile will be similar or higher than $270 million per mile. So 20 miles of rail at $270 million per mile will cost $5.4 Billion. The rail's budget is $5.16 Billion. This means that the rail project will have no money left for trains, stations, a rail yard, etc. after 20 miles of viaduct has been built. Or that the rail will cost well more than $7 billion to complete.

Read full article in Honolulu Civil Beat.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Bus vs. Rail – 2007 Comparison and 2012 Opinion from Los Angeles


2007

The Gold Line BRT opened in 2003, the Orange Line Rail in 2005. Each is about 14 miles long, and each has 13 stations, about a mile apart. How do they compare?
  • The BRT line was expected to start out at 5,000 to 7,500 average weekday boardings, growing to 22,000 by 2020. It actually achieved the 2020 goal by its seventh month.
  • The LRT, by contrast, was supposed to start off with 30,000 weekday boardings and double that by 2023. But its actual ridership has been lower than that of the BRT line—well below projections.
  • The capital cost of the BRT line was $349 million. The Light Rail cost was $859 million.
  • The operating costs also favor BRT, with the Orange Line costing $0.54 per passenger mile compared with $1.08 for the Rail. On a cost per boarding basis, it’s $3.79 for BRT versus $7.54 for Rail.
  • Lesson: A high-end BRT is far more cost-effective (bang for the buck) than a typical LRT, meaning you get a lot more transit per dollar spent.
  • If a city is short on transit dollars, then a simple express bus service on a major arterial can provide tremendous value per dollar spent.

Source: REASON FOUNDATION’S SURFACE TRANSPORTATION INNOVATIONS ISSUE NO. 45 - JULY 2007



2012
"When you look at the size of Honolulu (and) you look at the transportation problem they're seeking to solve, BRT is almost certainly a better investment,"
UCLA Prof. Brian Taylor said.


Taylor's research shows one of the greatest factors in determining a transit system's appeal is the ease with which riders can get to a transit line, whether it's BRT or rail. If a rider needs to go through various steps like walking, driving or transferring to get to a final destination, the less likely he or she is to use public transportation. "So, making the vehicle a little bit faster is not nearly as important as having a cutting down of the wait time," he said.

While the overall number of projected riders appears impressive, Taylor says it's not nearly enough to offset the tremendous capital cost needed to build the system, as well as the additional expenditures required to operate and maintain it. Heavy rail is much better suited for large, metropolitan cities like Tokyo, New York and London, which generate extremely large numbers of riders.

Source: UCLA expert weighs in on transit debate, Andrew Pereira, KITV
 




Monday, October 15, 2012

Honolulu Transit Megaprojects Compared


The same consultant conducting transit system estimations 6 years apart for the City and County of Honolulu has produced the figures tabulated below.

The conclusion is clear: BRT would provide the same transit ridership for about one tenth the cost.

All these figures are from official Final EIS documents.

 













 The final word is that the Rail Emperor truly has no clothes.

A Train Has the Capacity of Five Buses. So What?

Published on page 3 of Honolulu's Filipino Chronicle.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

B, C, E, 3, 9, 11, 20, 43, 53, 73, 81, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98A, 101, 102, 103, 201, 202

The title of this article is not the code for a very nerdy version of the Hawaii-based LOST television series.

These are all the bus routes that will be eliminated or terminated to the nearest rail station. See Final EIS appendix D.

We all know how the public reacted to the relatively manini changes to TheBus last summer. Wait until two dozen routes are drastically changed.

Several of these routes are express providing a competitive service. Many of them are heavily used.

In addition several new and confusing "feeder" routes will be added. So basically the No.1 transit bus in the nation will be dismantled and reconfigured to provide life support for the rail.

Rail's ridership would be much closer to zero than the projected 90,000-some riders per day in the opening year, without dismantling and rearranging the majority of TheBus as we know it today, given that (1) nobody lives at the stations and (2) the whole rail line will have only four park-and-ride lots.

The total bus ridership that will be forced to transfer each day is found on page 46: 69,480 rail riders daily will come from the bus.  That's round trip.

So, over 30,000 bus riders daily will be forced to get out of their bus and transfer to rail going to their destination. They may also need to catch a bus at the other end to get to their final destination (i.e., from Ala Moana Center to UH, Waikiki, and from other stations to all the ridges and valleys that the rail does not serve.)  Coming home they will have the reverse transfers from bus to rail to bus. There will be chaos.

What is the logic of providing such a disservice to the loyal transit riders of TheBus?

In conclusion then, B, C, E, 3, 9, 11, 20, 43, 53, 73, 81, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98A, 101, 102, 103, 201, 202 is the code for transit failure by design in Honolulu.

Fixing the Basics on Rail for Hawaii's Pro-rail Politicians

Full article in Hawaii Reporter. It closes as follows:

If Hawaii's pro-rail politicians are really interested in improving transit in the county of Honolulu, they may begin their education on the history of elevated rail in sunshine cities by simply reading about Miami's Metrorail, and San Juan’s Tren Urbano. Here are a few highlights for Metrorail and Tren Urbano.

Miami’s Elevated Heavy Rail: They got 80% Federal funds but still they run out of money due to cost overruns. (Honolulu gets only 30%).  Ridership forecast was about 200,000 riders (Honolulu's is about 120,000 riders).  When the first segment of the single line opened ridership was only 10,000.  In 1990, six years after opening, it reached only 25% of its forecast ridership or about 50,000! They too ordered trains from Ansaldo and there were allegations of conflicts in the procurement.

San Juan, Elevated Heavy Rail: They got 50% Federal funds but still there was a 74% escalation of construction costs (+74% over budget!)  There was a huge escalation of combined bus and rail operation and maintenance cost after the line was opened. Combined costs shot up by +250%!  There was a downgrade of Puerto Rico’s bond ratings and new taxes were enacted to pay the debt. There was a dramatic decline of total transit ridership (bus and rail) because the train dismantled their bus. It is now more than six years since its opening in 2006 and the train has not reached 50% of its opening year forecast ridership!

Bottom line is that trains are like wind mills. Their theoretical capacity is high and the promises for power and ridership are full of hype.  Once installed reality kicks in and they prove to be only ~25% productive...

Monday, September 24, 2012

Less Traffic Thanks to Telecommuting and Young Adults

"In 1888 Bertha Benz, wife of the carmaker Karl, drove 66 miles from one German city to another to prove to the world that the “horseless carriage” was suited to everyday use. Mrs. Benz succeeded beyond her wildest dreams."

This is The Economists' introduction of an article on urban transportation and the evolving trend of less car travel: "The road less travelled: Car use is peaking in the rich world. Governments should take advantage of that." Less travel? Can this be right? See Figure 1 below.



A few more quotes from the full article "The future of driving -- Seeing the back of the car -- In the rich world, people seem to be driving less than they used to" are as follows:
  • Modern life is unimaginable without the car. The automobile has powered the growth of cities and steered their sprawl. Its manufacture has created millions of jobs and eased the development of many millions more.
  • Cars are integral to modern life. They account for 70% of all trips not made on foot in the OECD, which includes most developed countries. 
  • In the European Union more than 12 million people work in manufacturing and services related to cars and other vehicles, around 6% of the total employed population.
  • The equivalent figure for America is 4.5% of private-sector employment, or 8 million jobs.

An interesting revelation of the research reported in The Economist is that current and future young people tend to travel less. There are several reasons for this:
  1. Young people tend to socialize more via digital media and meet less often.
  2. Car use has become more expensive for young people's parents to afford a car for them or for the young people to afford the sky-high insurance fees.
  3. At least some of young people's college or professional education can be via distance learning.
  4. Job opportunities for young people are less and lower rewarded in the stagnant economy of the EU and of several debt-laden states in the US.
  5. Young people are getting their licenses later than they used to (see Figure 2 above.)

In addition the full democratization of the automobile (meaning that women own and use cars at rates similar to men) concluded at the end of the last century. So this "catch up" trend leading to traffic growth has ended.

More and safer bikeways, subsidized vanpooling, supported telecommuting and, in some cases, clean and reliable mass transit chip away at the dominance of the car. See for example below the gains in vanpooling and telecommuting in Washington State.



Recall that Honolulu rail will increase transit share roughly from 6% of TheBus today to 7% for combined bus and rail. It would be much easier to obtain this 1% with more vanpools and telework!  There is a real world example  for this: Portland, the poster child for light rail. From 1980 to 2011, working at home (mostly telecommuting) increased by 55,000. This is more than three times the growth in rail transit commuting (17,500). During the last decade, working at home passed transit as a work access mode in Portland, and with virtually no public expenditures as opposed to the billions spent on rail lines.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Car or Train? The Choice is Yours.

A picture is worth 1,000 words. 

Two pictures are worth 2,000 words.



Picture 1: A 2013 new mid-size car.
















Picture 2: Typical rush hour train commute.












 Any questions?