honolulutraffic.com

formerly The Alliance for Traffic Improvement

Seeking cost effective ways to reduce traffic congestion on Oahu

October 31, 2006.

Mayor: "We will take the frugal $3.6 billion route":

    The Mayor gives a whole new meaning to the word 'frugal.' And judging from the reactions we have heard in the past 24 hours, the public is not buying it.

     That is because the public knows that elected officials will not be satisfied until they build the entire $4.7 billion rail line.

     In addition, the public knows that there are going to be significant cost overruns of somewhere between 25 and 50 percent — now we are up to $6 to $8 billion.

     That is before we get to the interest since the City does not have much cash and will have to borrow all but the $500 million in federal money. This will come from the sale of bonds. If we just pay the 5.5 percent interest on the bonds, that will be $385 million annually.

     Only paying the interest would not be too wise since at 25 years out the bills for extensive multi billion rebuild and refurbishing will start coming due. Best we pay off the capital by 25 years out. Let's see, $7 billion paid off with interest at 5.5 percent will take $520 million annually. To that we have to add $75 million annually in additional operating losses over and above the $100+ million for TheBus. Altogether that is about $600 million annually or four times what the ½ percent tax hike will bring in.

     Dear God, somebody has to start getting real about this.

Just a reminder, sign up as a supporter of ours:

If you are in agreement with us, sign up by simply clicking the Join us tab to the left. Here are the latest members to sign up:
 

One of our problems is the Gridlock Gang:

The Gridlock Gang are all those people who tell us, “The more roads you build, the more you encourage people to drive. There needs to be other programs and incentives for people to get out of their cars.” They forget about H-3 and the congestion relief it brought, and still does for the folks on the Windward side.

October 27, 2006.

Please review upcoming event on the "events" tab to the left.

It is important that you do this in order to get support for our various speakers and show the Council and other elected officials that we have supporters willing to take the time to attend.

A glimpse into Portland's rail transit security problems:

Excerpts from Portland Oregonian reporting: "…the number of people banned from trains and buses on any given day has dropped from about 1,000 to a few hundred, according to the transit agency… Some [transit police] officers are so concerned they won't let their families ride light rail alone …. A frightened woman called 9-1-1 after a man followed her from train to train, leering and trying to engage her in conversation … But today they probably wouldn't have excluded the man because his behavior -- while disconcerting -- didn't appear to cross the line into criminal conduct …. deputy district attorney for Multnomah County assigned to prosecute transit crimes , advised TriMet in a strongly worded memo that, in his view, it was making its system less safe. “Prostitutes could loiter in your shelters and on your platforms but could not be excluded. Drug dealers and drug addicts could loiter on your system and nothing can be done to exclude them. Gang members could occupy these areas with no intent of using your system, but simply to hang out and wait for the next adventure or worse, the next victim." READ  MORE

HHUA gave us a week that was highly informative:

The Hawaii Highway Users Alliance brought the following people into town this week and they, together with Dr. Prevedouros, gave some 13 different presentations over a three day period:

• Robert Poole, founder, Reason Foundation and father of the HOT lanes movement;
• Dr. Martin Stone, AICP, Director of Planning, Tampa Expressway Authority;
• Randal O'Toole, founder of the American Dream Coalition and scholar with both the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation

For those of you who attended one or more of the PowerPoint presentations and wish to refresh their understanding of them, they are available below for downloading:

• Keynote Speech: Poole's Addressing Honolulu's Mobility Crisis
• Stone's Solutions for Urban Traffic Congestion,
• O'Toole's Overview of Portland's problems
• Prevedouros' Traffic Operations — Solutions to Traffic Congestion
• Poole's HOT Lanes: Congestion Relief and Better Transit,

October 26, 2006.

Orski: Trans commission gets down to business:

" After two meetings filled with tutorials on various aspects of the federal surface transportation program, the [new] National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission finally got down to the business of examining substantive policy issues. At its October 18-19 meeting, with newly confirmed Transportation Secretary Mary Peters in the chair, the Commission focused on three related topics: tolling, congestion pricing and the role of the private sector in transportation infrastructure. All three issues are of considerable relevance to the transportation community and are likely to influence the development of any future national transportation policy. They also are still capable of raising questions in the minds of the Commissioners, as became evident during the meeting." READ  MORE

Great explanation of what really happens with TODs:

    The author concludes, " Rail advocates purport that we must have expensive and heavily subsidized rail transit to attract transit riders. Then they say we need subsidized TODs to get more people to live along rail lines to get a few people out of cars. What we end up with is more congestion, higher taxes and declining urban services."

Kathleen Calongne, a research assistant for the Center for the American Dream at the Independence

Institute in Golden, Colo., wrote this commentary for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. READ  MORE

October 19, 2006.

Our rail transit projected cost is third highest in nation:

    Allowing for inflation, for post-1940 rail lines, only San Francisco's BART and Washington DC's METRO forecast costs higher than those forecast for Honolulu's rail line. The City, at one point, said rail's cost would be $4 billion then changed it to the cost of the No-Build Alternative plus $3 billion. In either case, BART and METRO are still the only ones that ever forecast greater costs.

    The next most expensive rail line was Atlanta's MARTA, which, in today's dollars, was forecast to cost $2.9 billion. It actually cost $4.7 billion. After Atlanta there is nothing else close among all the other modern rail lines in the U.S.

    Of course, we do not know what Honolulu's line will finally cost and so we cannot compare with other cities' final costs, only their forecast ones.

    Note: Our current forecast for rail is more realistic. Very simply, we took total rail costs for the 1992 proposal, deducted the No-Build cost, allowed for inflation on the balance using the Construction Cost Index, then divided it by the 1992 mileage to get today's cost per mile. We then used this cost per mile for the extension to Kapolei. The total comes to $4.14 billion — before cost overruns. For more detail on this cost READ  MORE

    (Sources: For cost projections of pre-1990 lines see the US DOT's Urban Rail Projects: Forecast versus Actual Ridership and Costs. 1990. For post-1990 see Dantata et. al. Trends in U.S. rail transit project cost overruns. Transportation Research Board. 2006.)

Texas DOT issues HORIZON, a new transportation magazine:

The blurb says: "The theme for this issue is “The Future of Transportation Finance,” and five experts in this area have contributed pieces. In “A Quiet Crisis in Transportation Finance: Options for Texas,” Dr. Martin Wachs of the RAND Corporation discusses the choices state and local governments should consider when determining how to finance transportation projects. Next, Robert Poole and Peter Samuel of the Reason Foundation outline the history and significance of tolling in “The Return of Private Toll Roads.” Dr. Joseph Giglio of the Hudson Institute, a keynote speaker at our annual Texas Transportation Forum, has provided “Mobility: All Roads Lead to Texas,” which highlights the need for innovative funding strategies for mobility projects. Finally, Kenneth Orski, editor of Innovation Briefs, offers “Thinking about the Future of the Highway Program,” a commentary that challenges all of us to engage in this important conversation." READ  MORE

How Seattle's monorail ballooned to $11 billion:

The project started off at a little over $1 billion and finished up with a total tab of $11 billion — and that was before any cost overruns. It is instructive to read the Seattle Times on this. READ  MORE

First Wachs Distinguished Lecture in Transportation:

Two days ago, UC-Berkeley honored Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor of Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark, with  the First Wachs Distinguished Lecture in Transportation. The title of his lecture was, Survival of the Unfittest: Why the worst megaprojects get built and how better policy and planning can stop it. A recent publication of his in the American Planning Association Journal was, Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?The abstract read, "Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts." " READ  MORE

Myths continue about 'induced demand':

That if you build more highways then the induced traffic immediately fills it up so it makes no difference. This despite the Texas Transportation Institute showing that if highway construction keeps pace with traffic growth, any congestion stays at the same level. On the local level, j ust ask folks from the Windward side about the difference that H-3 made to their commute. It has now been open for nine years and the commute times are still far better than they used to be ten years ago.

October 16, 2006.

Discover Magazine: "Is Urban Sprawl an Urban Myth?"

    High-altitude photos combined with satellite images show that modern American cities are just bigger versions of older American cities.

    As cities spread into surrounding territories, roadways clog, pollution increases, social inequities expand, and the costs of municipal services like sewers and the police rise. Or do they? University of Toronto economist Matthew Turner and his colleagues decided to quantify one component of change: urban sprawl. They compared satellite images of the entire continental United States in 1976 and 1992, the most recent year complete data were available, and divided the country into 8.7 billion 98-foot squares to examine the question in unprecedented detail.

    Predictably, the photo evidence revealed that America has grown: Nearly 2 percent of the country was paved by 1992, for example, a third more than in 1976. Not so predictably, the percentage of growth that is sprawl is not increasing. "Although there is more development, on average, that development isn't any more scattered," Turner says. In other words, modern American cities are really just bigger versions of older American cities. READ  MORE  w/PHOTOS

October 14, 2006.

Just a reminder:

    We can sometimes forget some of the byproducts of building a rail line. First, there is the obvious chaos of construction. Think of Dillingham being torn up from one end to the other, Ward Avenue from Halekauwila to Kona Street, and Kapiolani to University Avenue, none of which have median strips.

    HOT lanes, on the other hand,  will stop on Nimitz and not cross town. It will be mostly built in the median strips of Nimitz and Kamehameha Highways. If built like the Tampa Expressway, it will use a new technology never before used for highway construction. The pedestals were built at night and much of the above ground work was done without bothering motorists on the highway below.

    In addition, one of the results of building rail along roads that have no median strips, is the removal of valuable road space presently used by motorists, which will have a significant effect on in-town traffic congestion. Cartoon by John Pritchett.

October 13, 2006.

Salt Lake Tribune: HOT lanes are for ordinary commuters:

    As an interim measure before the installation of electronic tolling, Salt Lake City began selling decals for using their new HOT lanes. They found that "It's not luxury vehicle motorists who are buying permits to drive solo in Interstate 15 carpool lanes but rather ordinary commuters, whose e-mails and survey comments are helping the Utah Department of Transportation refine their tolling experiment.
   A statistical breakdown of those who paid $50 for High Occupancy Toll lane permits shows nearly 43 percent drive Fords, Toyotas, Chevrolets, Hondas and Dodges. Only two traditionally luxury makes, Lexus and BMW, cracked the top 10 on the 34-make list of cars of drivers who bought their way into the diamond lane." READ  MORE

October 9, 2006.

Check the events on the top left tab frequently:

 Last month was an all-time record for hits on our website. Speaking engagements are being requested, talk radio of all kinds wants us, and Neighborhood Boards are asking us to show up. The issue of rail transit vs. HOT lanes is really heating up. The politicians may think this is a done deal but that is not what the voters are thinking.

Nearly all bus routes will be changed by rail transit:

At the monthly Citizen's Advisory Committee of the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization held on September 20th last, Daisy Murai asked about the effects on bus routes. City officials responded that bus routes would be affected by the rail system. The routes would need to be changed in order to create a more efficient total transportation system. Buses that now make long runs would have their routes truncated so that they operate in neighborhoods with shorter, more frequent runs. The entire bus system will be restructured.

This has happened in most cities that have built rail transit. The kind of changes they make often really inconvenience regular riders. For example, if you regularly commute by taking the Route B Express bus from School Street in Kalihi to Downtown, they undoubtedly plan to convert that to local bus service to a rail transit station on Dillingham where you will change to the train that will take you to the station at Fort St. and Nimitz.

  October 4, 2006.

The full costs of the rail proposal are staggering:

We have a new article containing a spreadsheet with the $4 billion initial estimate for building rail, upgraded 25 percent to $5 billion to allow for cost overruns, and adding reasonable estimates for bond interest charges and operating losses. When the tax expires we owe $6 billion.

Here's the Summary:

"The University of Aalborg, Denmark, conducted the most extensive international study ever of actual versus estimated costs in transportation infrastructure development. They concluded:

"Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts."

Other distinguished and authoritative people have warned about cost misrepresentations. Dr. John Kain, Chair Emeritus of Harvard’s Economics Department, wrote “Deception in Dallas,” Dr. Don Pickrell, Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center, wrote what is known as the Pickrell Report, Dr. Martin Wachs, Chair Emeritus, Department of Urban Planning, UC-Berkeley, wrote “When planners lie with numbers,” and there have been many, many others. We have listed twenty of these studies in the footnotes to this article. We cannot say that no one has warned us about misrepresented costs.

Our spreadsheet contains no provision for capital costs of any kind beyond the initial costs. Nevertheless, it shows that when the additional ½ percent GE tax expires at the end of 2021, we will have spent $2.6 billion on interest and suffered operating losses of just over $1 billion and yet we will still owe over $6 billion in outstanding City rail bonds. That is because the tax revenues from the ½ GE tax are far less than the combination of bond interest and operating losses and so we will have had to issue additional bonds to cover this shortfall. The question is, as Mayor Hanneman is fond of saying, “Can we afford it?” and “Can we maintain it?” READ  MORE    VIEW SPREADSHEET    

October 3, 2006.

Shirley Highway HOV lanes give indication:

A recent Virginia DOT release shows that the two Shirley Highway reversible HOV lanes during the morning rush hours carry 14,700 passengers per lane versus 5,325 carried on the adjacent regular freeway lanes. There are 1.15 occupants per vehicle on the freeways vs. 3.72 on the HOV lanes. One must also bear in mind that HOV lanes are less efficient than dynamically priced HOT lanes because pricing allows managers to keep the lanes free-flowing but full. There is no way to fine tune HOVs since you can limit occupants two or three but as Bob Poole says, not 2.7. READ  MORE

  October 2, 2006.

GAO reviews congestion pricing:

The U.S. General Accounting Office has a new publication out reviewing the history and recent activities in the various states in highway and bridge tolling of various kinds. A most interesting publication. HIGHWAY FINANCE: States’ Expanding Use of Tolling Illustrates Diverse Challenges and Strategies. Publication #GAO-06-554. You can order it from GAO HERE or read it online.  READ  MORE

The "no highways" crowd is losing the battle nationally:

Everything we see lately coming across our desks is a complete change from only a year ago. Then the "no highways they just clog up" crowd were in the ascendancy. We heard that congestion was inevitable and that all we could do was offer people "mobility" — a euphemism for public transportation of some kind, usually rail transit.

Now that has all changed. USDOT Secretary Mineta said in May launching the new initiative,

"Congestion is one of the single largest threats to our economic prosperity and way of life. Whether it takes the form of trucks stalled in traffic, cargo stuck at overwhelmed seaports, or airplanes circling over crowded airports, congestion is costing America an estimated $200 billion a year. Each year, Americans lose 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel sitting in traffic jams and waste $9.4 billion as a result of airline delays. Worse, congestion is affecting the quality of Americans lives by robbing them of time that could be spent with families and friends. Congestion is not a fact of life. It is not a scientific mystery, nor is it an uncontrollable force. Congestion results from poor policy choices and a failure to separate solutions that are effective from those that are not." (emphasis added)

Ken Orski and Robert Poole have both written about the new climate. Orski who only a short while ago said that transportation was at a 'tipping point' is now saying (see below) that we are way passed the tipping point. Today, all the talk is about PPP and congestion pricing of various kinds.

Why we use Census data rather than "boardings":

We were recently asked why we use Census journey-to-work data rather than the "boardings" data typically used by transit agencies and certainly by rail proponents. It's quite simple. The "boardings" data can lead to large increases in apparent ridership when there may have been none. READ  MORE

Ken Orski releases text of speech to IBTTA:

Ken Orski of Innovation Briefs, and former Deputy Administrator at FTA, spoke to the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association on September 19 on "The Road Ahead." In it he speculates on the incredible changes in transportation policy taking place at both the state and federal levels. READ  MORE

Top DOT official opens Denver's HOT lanes:

Note: We now have a new tab at top left, "Coming Events."

New National Transportation Board meets in Texas:

The first meeting of the new National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission met in Dallas ten days ago. The San Antonio Express-News reports that they met there because Texas has "unplugged from national efforts" and is going its way with emphasis on tolling and public-private partnerships (PPP), which is now the national policy (See May 17 post).   READ  MORE

Sunday Star-Bulletin features "Lanes, not trains":

Dave Rolf wrote a masterful piece on the advantages of High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes and the disadvantages of rail transit. This is an absolute must read to pass around. It has several photos of the Tampa Expressway. READ MORE

October 1, 2006.

Reason Foundation's Poole has new presentation:

September 30, 2006.

Urban density and rail put in perspective:

Print out the chart below and next time someone says that rail transit works in Hong Kong, Singapore and London, you can take out the chart and show them why; Hong Kong has density ten times that of New York. Put another way, For every hundred people per city block in New York there are one thousand in Hong Kong.

September 29, 2006.

San Francisco traffic signals go digital:

Says the San Francisco Examiner, " The answer to gridlock in San Francisco just may reside in a room filled with computer monitors and projection screens showing live video and virtual simulations of The City’s streets. After years of planning, $9 million and the collaboration of several city agencies, The City unveiled the future of its transportation brain on Tuesday. A new system called SF Go will allow The City to use computers to quickly respond when traffic signals need repairs, to monitor traffic flow in key city hotspots and better plan for large events by making changes to traffic signals and pedestrian crosswalks electronically instead of by hand. Muni Executive Director Nathaniel Ford said the system is the future of the industry and just one phase of what his department hopes to do. READ  MORE

          Dr. Prevedouros opined for us that, "Honolulu's traffic signals operation is comparable to San Francisco's.  They have about 1200 intersections with traffic lights, we have a little over 800.  We also have direct communications with the local traffic controllers, most critical intersections have CCTV surveillance cameras, and all intersections have sensors to detect traffic and respond to it.  So most of the infrastructure needed to run an efficient operation is there.  What we do not have enough of is traffic and electronics engineers specializing in urban traffic control (UTC) operations to make the most out of the infrastructure.  Our small and overburdened staff barely make the system work.  They can't make it work well.  Honolulu needs at least a half dozen experts added to its UTC operation.  Once this is done, it should not surprise anyone if travel times on some routes are cut by one third or more.

Tam pa traffic now rolling out congestion free:

This photo, courtesy of the designers, Figg Engineering, shows an aerial view of traffic going into Town in the morning. At this time Tampa is only charging a simple $1 toll because the expressway has given them excess highway capacity. However, Tampa is one of the nation's fastest growing cities and the idea is that in time they will convert to High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes with dynamic pricing.

         The elevated expressway is reversible and so from very early morning on all three lanes run one-way into downtown Tampa. At the middle of the day the traffic flow is reversed. In the process, off ramps become on ramps and on ramps become off ramps.

         Dynamic pricing is used on San Diego's HOT lanes to fine tune traffic so that they run full but congestion-free at all times. Computers anticipate what tolls will have to be every six minutes and the price is posted one third of a mile before the entrance to the HOT lanes.

          The Tampa Expressway opened ahead of schedule in July to offer one way trips into town and the reversible feature was opened at the end of August.

          Total cost of the project will depend what the courts award the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority for the errors made by one of the sub-contractors who made some serious errors in their soil assessments. The remedial construction necessary to fix the errors cost about $100 million and they are confident of recovering this amount. If that is the case, total cost of the 9-mile project will $320 million.

September 25, 2006.

New Surface Transportation Innovations out:

Robert Poole of Reason Foundation has just released the September Issue of his Surface Transportation Innovations. It is must reading for those interested in the latest developments of urban transportation. Bob sends it by email and is free for just signing up.

This issue deals with, among other items:

• Peter Samuel’s new study in the Mobility Project series, Innovative Roadway Design: Making Highways More Likeable. New ways to fit highway capacity in built up urban areas. An absolute must read for anyone with an interest in increasing highway capacity.
• Portland Confronts Goods-Movement Congestion. Poole details how Portland forgot about goods movement in developing its land-use and transportation policies. Now it is paying for it. Congestion has added 20-30 minutes to the daily travel times for its electric company’s trimming and line crews adding costs of $30-$50 per day per crew. Intel has shifted outgoing shipments back two hours to be sure they get to the airport on time and so on. This study foretells what Honolulu is in for since we are following the same path. This is all detailed in a new study from the Economic Development Research Group and available U
• Brookings Institute’s transportation scholar’s new study, On the Social Desirability of Urban Rail Systems in the Journal of Urban Economics. The study weighs the contribution of U.S. urban rail systems to social welfare. Considering everything, the study concludes that only the Bay Area’s BART produces net social benefits. All 23 other rail systems are net losers. For example, Dallas is a net loser of $457 million a year, Sacramento $106 million, and San Jose $210 million annually. (Note: The operators of these three losers will be at the Mayor’s Symposium on October 5 to tell us about the advantages or urban rail (?).

September 24, 2006.

City admits traffic congestion will get worse with rail:

The city is finally making it clear that traffic congestion is going to get far worse than it is today — with or without rail transit.

First, here is the what was said to the Advertiser as reported a week ago Friday:

“The latest projections show that by 2030 a rail transit line could ease traffic congestion by 10 percent overall — as much as the school summer break now helps the morning commute — city transportation officials said yesterday. By then, however, traffic congestion will likely worsen since 30 percent more people are projected to be on the island. And the situation would be even worse without transit improvements, said Toru Hamayasu, chief planner in the city's transportation services department.”   READ  MORE

Second, the city’s slide presentation last Thursday to the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization showed a significant increase in “Daily Islandwide Vehicle Hours of Delay” for 2030 if the rail transit line was built. This, of course, would only occur with significant increases in congestion.

Third, this is what the City says in their website's Frequently Asked Questions:  

" Traffic has been increasing rapidly on Oahu. No single project will be able to relieve congestion far into the future. When built, the transit project will help take some drivers off of H-1 and other corridor roadways, whether the managed lanes or fixed-guideway alternative is selected. This will reduce congestion in the short-term, and also help reduce the rate at which congestion grows in the future, but not eliminate traffic congestion in the corridor. All urban areas inevitably experience some level of traffic congestion; however, an effective transit and/or managed lane system provides users mobility despite traffic congestion.”   READ  MORE

What this spin answer really says is that congestion will get much worse in the future with rail transit in place. The projected growth in population together with the new 60,000 homes already planned will completely overwhelm any minor positive effect of rail transit. This is because neither the city nor the state plan to build any significant new highways as rail transit will use up all the money.

We suggest that you politely ask the city representatives, whenever you have the opportunity, this specific question, “If we build rail, will islandwide traffic congestion in the future be worse than it is today? Yes or no.”

September 20, 2006.

The size of rail stations:

          The diagram below is from the 1992 Final Environmental Impact Statement, p. 2-26, and shows the cross-section of a generic rail station. Points to be noted are that:

• Each station must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires that, for example, people in wheel chairs have full access to the rail cars.