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Do not forget to allow for operating losses, less federal funding than what they are counting on, less GE tax revenues, etc.

Light rail costs in comparison to population size
	Cost in	Metro area	Cost
Metro area	millions	population	per
	2006$'s	(thous.)	capita
Dallas	$1,067	5,222	$204
Denver	$358	2,582	$139
Portland	$1,643	2,265	$725
Sacramento	$307	1,797	$171
Salt Lake City	$376	1,334	$282
St. Louis	$464	2,604	$178
Pittsburgh	$1,051	2,571	$409
Honolulu	$6,400	980	$6,531

Sources: U.S. General Accounting Office http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01984.pdf for cost data for the top six rail cities with population data from FHWA's msacomparison.xls Pittsburgh data : Pickrell, Don H. Urban Rail Transit Projects: Forecast Versus Actual Ridership and Costs. U.S. Dept. of Transportation. October 1990. U.S. CPI change 2000-2006 is +17.3 percent see State Data Book 2005.

For Honolulu the City forecasts $4.6 billion while we believe it will more likely be $6.4 billion — see our December 7 entry below.

Mayor "Can we afford it?" Mufi is continually trying to convey to the public that this transit process is a done deal. However, it has at least three years to go before a shovel hits the dirt. Scoping has yet to be done, The Draft Environmental Impact Statement has to be drafted, public hearings held, and comments taken and addressed. The FTA has to approve the City's projections in the DEIS, assumedly there will be an SDEIS and hearings, then RFPs will be issued, etc, etc, etc, all leading up to an FTA Record of Decision (ROD). Our altert readers may remember that at the end of the multi-year BRT process, the FTA withdrew their ROD and that was the end of that folly. The 1992 effort ended six months after the Final EIS had been issued.

There was so much turmoil at City Council yesterday that it appeared that no one knew what was going on — least of all the Councilmembers. However, in the end the resulting Bill 79 CD2 FD2 was better than we had been expecting at the beginning of the month. The word "rail" has been taken out of the bill and that was as much as we could hope for. READ MORE

Professor Prevedouros spells out traffic relief in this new article: "HOT expressways are primarily express high-occupancy-vehicle and public transit highways with the ability to zip traffic along at 60 miles per hour. As a result, buses can travel 10 miles in about 10 minutes. To put this in context, imagine a city bus which can go from the Waikele Shopping Center to Aloha Tower in about 20 minutes at the height of morning rush hour! No other mass transit facility can provide such as high level of service that will actually persuade some people to leave their private vehicles at home and choose the express bus. On HOT expressways all buses and vanpools travel free of charge at all times." In addition, he spells out how the traffic is dispersed from the HOT lanes in the morning rush hour. READ MORE

In 1977, Governor Ariyoshi sponsored a two-day Conference on mass transit. Speakers included Dr. Melvin Webber, Chair Emeritus, UC Berkeley School of Urban Planning and Dr. John Kain, Chair Emeritus, Economics Dept., Harvard, and then Senator Ben Cayetano. This is must watching as they discuss the biased HART Alternatives Analysis, the underpriced rail transit, the overpriced Bus Rapid Transit. WATCH VIDEO

Honolulu Needs a Respectable Analysis Report to Make the Right Decision About Mass Transit:

By Panos D. Prevedouros, PhD., who was a member of the Transit Advisory Task Force and was the lone dissenting voice in the final vote of 5-1 approving the Alternatives Analysis as fair and reasonable. Quote: "The city administration is pushing ahead with a $6 billion transit project whose tax will economically affect every consumer on Oahu for years to come. Yet it is apparently skewing the Alternatives Analysis (AA) report to show heavy rail as the preferred alternative when in fact the managed lane alternative might do a much better job of reducing congestion and could be constructed without raising taxes. A faithful public discourse of this immensely important issue cannot be conducted without a fair and accurate analysis of the alternatives. The numerous flaws of the current managed lane alternative make it impossible to choose what’s best for Honolulu unless the administration to amends the AA with a managed lane system that will be respected by authorities in the field." READ MORE

One of the difficulties we have is convincing some elected officials that transit use is in decline nationally and locally. We found a very useful chart in the National Household Travel Survey that assembles data from several federal surveys and it shows the decline clearly. Local data can be found in the Hawaii State Data Book for 2005 (table 18.25). Ridership is drifting slowly down and has been since 1984 despite a significant population increase. As a percentage of population, bus ridership has declined 20 percent since then.

One of the problems is that the national boardings data shows an increase from 1997-2001. This increase is an increase in boardings but not linked-trips. It was caused by rerouting buses to feed rail transit and, as New York did in 1997, issuing monthly passes good for bus and rail at no extra charge. This resulted in increased use of one or the other by commuters who formerly walked from the subway station to work and then switched to a bus instead of walking. Two boardings but still only one trip. READ MORE

Regardless of anyone's position on the rail issue, they should demand that the process be even-handed, which it has not been so far. As we expected, the advantages of the HOT lanes (aka Managed Lanes) were totally gutted by forecasting absurd costs for its construction and adding in 5,200 parking spaces and bus stations. Of course they have understated the cost of the rail alternative. To get the full story READ MORE

Today's Wall Street Journal carries a wonderful description of Smart Growth from the perspective of the capital of India, Delhi. The story is by Ms. Shikha Dalmia who is a Senior Analyst with Reason Foundation in Los Angeles. We can all learn a great deail from this op/ed. We urge everyone to read it. READ MORE

"The editors seem to have been mislead into believing that urban rail would somehow make Ottawa a "World Class" city, it will not.

That was the same lemming argument fed to Houston voters by the special interests and the editors of our local newspaper. Three years later many taxpayers have come to realize we were shouldered with an unsafe, unreliable, and underutilized boondoggle. It is too late for Houstonians, but Siemens got their money, and we are now stuck footing the on-going bills for a 3rd-world-class tram.

I wish to offer the sage opine from our own Mayor Bob [Lanier], long before he became Houston's Mayor:

(Houston Metropolitan Magazine, November 1990, page 49) about

one year after he resigned as Chairman of the METRO Board:
"First they [rail's supporters] say, `It's cheaper.' When you show it costs more, they say, ` It's faster.' When you show it's slower, they say, `It serves more riders.' When you show there are fewer riders, they say, `It brings economic development.' When you show no economic development, they say, `It helps the image.' When you say you don't want to spend that much money on image, they say, `It will solve the pollution problem.' When you show it won't help pollution, they say, finally, `It will take time for rail to do some good.'

After a marathon 15-hour Transportation Committee Meeting yesterday ending just before midnight, the Council settled on a "fixed guideway," rail or bus, from UH to Kapolei with the caveat that project must be funded out of existing sources. That would appear to eliminate a full scale rail line since the funding is clearly inadequate. But what does it mean? It may mean that a major rethinking of the issue is in the works. One part of the Council's thinking does seem to have been settled yesterday: We simply cannot affored the cost of the UH to Kapolei rail line. Stay tuned.

The passed Bill 79 CD2, the amended version that says the Administration may go ahead with the planning of a section of the LPA,

This may be in conflict with the subsequent section which says the revenues are “to be used for purposes of funding the operating and capital costs of public transportation” (emphasis added).READ BILL

The way we calculate it is capital costs of $3.3 billion costs could be undertaken if the funds are to be used for capital costs alone, or $2.45 billion if operating costs have to be paid for out of the tax revenues. Assumptions are that federal funding would not exceed $500 million.

Either way, the tax revenues are nowhere near the amount needed to fund the full alignment and are unlikely to fund anything like the shorter lengths that have been discussed. We will await the next act in this drama.

"More than 70 percent of drivers said in AAA's Pockets of Pain survey that the U.S. transportation system is not keeping pace with the demands in their communities and that the country has to examine alternative financing methods to accommodate growth.

'In previous surveys and focus groups, we've seen more reluctance to increasing funding for transportation,' AAA President and CEO Robert L. Darbelnet said in a speech given at the National Conference of State Legislatures Transportation Leaders meeting in San Antonio.

Motorists in previous surveys said that they already are paying enough, or existing funds aren't invested efficiently, or they don't trust their state Department of Transportation to do the right thing, according to Darbelnet. However, drivers nationwide increasingly are looking to a toll-road option to help raise money to fund the transportation system, based on the AAA survey. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents in the recent poll chose toll roads as a viable option. Of those in favor of more toll roads, most said they would support tolls only on new roads and highway lanes, not existing lanes." READ MORE

This has been the growth of our website over the past year. We naturally want to get more people to find out about it and it would be really valuable if you can turn your friends onto www.honolulutraffic.com.

It is difficult to know who has found us but we do know that we are used as a resource by, for example, talk show hosts, the Federal Transit Administration and our local media. That is not to ignore the thousands of local people who have come to us for informaton about Gargantua — our local money-eating dragon to be.

Few people understand the numbers and logic fueling high housing costs as does Wendell Cox. Today's San Francisco Chronicle op/ed is right on the money — especially as it concerns Hawaii. READ MORE

Long-time transportation executive in Honolulu, John Brizdle, co-founder and former operator of Enoa Tours and the Waikiki Trolley, weighs in on the rail vs. managed lanes debate with a simple table showing the differences. READ MORE

Check the Events! tab to the left to get the latest updates. We need you there.

The hike in the GE tax, which takes effect on January 1, is going to have a very uncertain outcome we learn in today's Advertiser. Lowell Kalapa, head of the Hawaii Tax Foundation, is quoted as saying, "The truth is that nobody knows what's going to happen. Anyone who tells you they can predict the results within $100 million is just not being honest."

A major reason for the uncertainty is that the tax increase is levied only on Honolulu County transactions and a great deal of what is currently reported from Honolulu companies are taxes collected on sales made by their Neighbor Island subsidiaries. No one has ever even surveyed that situation to even make an intelligent estimate of what will be collected. This is therefore another uncertainty for rail transit financing. READ MORE

In today's Advertiser we learn that Stephen Colbert, the Comedy Central satirist, has become famous by coining what Merriam-Webster Dictionary calls, the word that "best defined 2006 in its core and essence." The word means truth arrived at by gut feeling; truth that feels "goodly or truthily, without any regard to evidence, logic or something as stupid as actual facts. In short, it is the language of American politics."

We at Honolulutraffic.com know better, 'truthiness' is the language of rail proponents. It is the language of political 'visionaries.' It is the language of all those who discard inconvenient truths in favor of 'truthiness,' which has the overwhelming advantage that it feels good.

The problem with this rail poll, like most of the others, is that they assume that participants have reasonable knowledge of the costs and benefits of the project. For example, few of Honolulu's residents are aware that the City Alternatives Analysis forecasts that traffic congestion will be far worse with the rail line in place than it is today. That fact is a) counter-intuitive to the general public, and b) has not made it above the fold in our newspapers. Thus, most of the respondents to the City Council poll are assuming that rail will relieve traffic congestion and so results that are favorable to rail should not be surprising. Here's the first question:

"1. The city’s 10 million dollar study on an alternative to solve the traffic problem on Oahu has resulted in a recommendation that the City and County of Honolulu build a rail system. To build a system from Kapolei to the University of Hawaii is estimated to cost $4.6 billion and transit projects often have cost overruns. We’d like to know how you feel about a rail system. Which of the following statements most closely matches your feelings:

But not by much. And we weren't really wrong, we just were not using the latest data. So here is the absolutely latest up-to-the-minute word on passenger energy use.

You will notice that automobile occupants use much less energy than bus passengers. Light rail riders uses only 9 percent less energy than the auto passenger. That is certainly not what most folks think.

Mode	Btu's per passenger mile
Automobile

honolulutraffic.com

formerly The Alliance for Traffic Improvement

Reminder: The coming rail tax burden vs. other cities: