honolulutraffic.com

formerly The Alliance for Traffic Improvement

Seeking cost effective ways to reduce traffic congestion on Oahu

September 5, 2005.  Brennan was more than just wrong:

The Mayor's press secretary, Bill Brennan wrote an article for the Advertiser three weeks ago, "Rail enemy doesn't know what he's saying," in which he hammered Cliff Slater for saying the 1992 plan was heavy rail, not light rail. Brennan said, "It was light rail by any industry standard. Ask the real experts. Check the newspaper clippings."

We did better than that we checked the city's website and also the 1992 Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). Here's what the city's website says:

       Light rail transit (Or LRT) 1. An electric railway with a "light volume" traffic capacity compared to heavy rail. Light rail may use shared or exclusive rights-of-way, high or low platform loading and multi-car trains or single cars. Also known as "streetcar," "trolley" and "tramway." ) 2. Lightweight passenger rail cars operating singly (or in short, usually two-car trains) on fixed rails in right-of-way that is not separated from other traffic for much of the way. Light rail vehicles are driven electrically with power being drawn from an overhead electric line via a trolley or pantograph 3. Streetcar: urban transit which uses predominantly reserved but not always grade-separated rights-of-way with electrically powered rail vehicles that operate alone or in trains. 4. A rail transit system that can operate on a variety of rights-of-way, from on-street to grade-separated. It typically uses articulated vehicles powered by an overhead electric catenary and connects activity centers within an urbanized area.

       The City's 1992 FEIS, pages G-4 & 5, has the same definitions as does the American Public Transportation Association and the federal government; these are accepted urban transportation definitions.

       The FEIS, page 2.23, also makes it clear that the 1992 trains were to get electricity "from a third rail" and "operate on exclusive rights-of- way."

       Another reminder: When Councilmember Gary Gill got his first look at what they were actually going to get when the spin was all over, he cried, "My God! It's a train. A Godzilla of a train."

       Of course, it was a train. Just like the next one has to be a train.

       Do these City people have no shame at all?

August 24, 2005.  City's HOT air about HOT lanes:

At yesterday’s media event for the signing of Bill 40, the Mayor issued “The Facts Behind HOT Lanes,” a two-page commentary on the HOT lanes proposal. We believe he is wrong about the number of vehicles it will carry, wrong that it will cost twice as much as rail, and wrong about its value to average families. READ MORE

 July 11, 2005 — We sent the media detailed comments on the Mayor’s op/ed, “We must take a bold step toward rail transit.” Star-Bulletin, July 10, 2005. READ MORE
 

June 30, 2005. Mufi muffs it again:

According to this morning's Advertiser, "The Mayor said he believes the time is right to move forward with mass transit to relieve Honolulu's traffic congestion." At the Chamber forum last week, Councilmember Okino allowed that rail would not relieve traffic congestion and Councilmember Garcia said the same thing during the May Chamber forum. But, they said, rail transit would give commuters a choice.

EDITORIAL:  The Mayor needs to level with the voters. First, no city in the United States has relieved traffic congestion by building a rail line. That's a fact that can be easily confirmed by reviewing the data from the nation's leading authority on traffic congestion, Texas A & M's Texas Transportation Institute.   READ MORE  The Mayor has to stop making these grossly misleading statements or soon he may acquire the same reputation for truthfulness that our last Mayor had.

July 3, 2005

Straightening out the City's disparaging remarks:

During the recent Chamber debate we said that the operating cost increase of bus and rail combined was $57 million more than the bus alone. City officials said they had a different calculation but did not say what. This has been the City's latest response, "We use the same data source as Cliff Slater but we come up with a different answer." But they never divulge what they come up with. Maybe it's worse than ours? Anyway we have recalculated the data again and find that we made a small error. We now show it as $59 million. For the benefit of our more detail oriented readers (and the City) we have put it up on the website.  READ MORE

May 16, 2005. Top 12 reasons for the Mayor's staff to do their homework.

March 29, 2005. Abercrombie misleads again:
Congressman Abercrombie told a Senate hearing that we needed rail to reduce traffic congestion and that anyone opposed to rail was stupid and a member of the Flat Earth Society (see March 22). He told the Star-Bulletin (3/23 editorial) that he expected " the federal government would contribute more than half of the total cost, estimated at $2.6 billion." The fact is that the Federal Transit Administration has placed a limit of $500 million on each fixed guideway project as they told the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization last year. READ MORE   Abercrombie might say that he can get special legislation passed to circumvent this. However, it's a Republican Congress, 71 projects around the country are vying for funding and the FTA only has New Starts (Sec. 5309) funds of $1 billion annually for the entire country. Good luck!