The $7 billion rail project is slowly chugging along. The city has started some preliminary construction work like digging the road up along Farrington Highway, moving trees to different locations and acquiring one property to ram the train through. The project's official cost is reported to be around $5.5 billion but will probably cost more than $7 billion to build and much more to maintain.
Hawaii taxpayers cannot afford the high cost of rail.
Professor
Panos Prevedouros offers the following status updates to this most costly public works project in Hawaii history. The following is taken from Dr. Prevedouros' email list:
1. Rail Bond Float? PLEASE DO NOT!
It appears that several of you are misinformed about the status of the rail project. Here is a five line update:
1. The city does not yet have FTA approval to enter Final Design.
2. The City has not completed Final Design. It is still collecting the necessary samples.
3. Only after Final Design is completed, the city can enter into a Full Funding Grant Agreement with the FTA.
4. Only then the actual dollar commitment of the feds will be set in terms of monies and year of expenditure.
5. At that point Congress has the prerogative to cut the funding, reduce the funding or grant it as stated.
See for yourself:
http://www.apta.com/gap/legupdatealert/2011/Pages/2011April20.aspx
- Congress cut FTA's New Starts by a whopping 20% for 2011.
- The 2011 New Starts funds for the whole nation is $1.59 Billion and Honolulu is asking for $1.55 Billion!
Floating bonds before federal funds are secured is a dereliction of your fiduciary duty and lack of due diligence.
2. Council Member (Stanley) Chang on Public Trust
(1) Most city charter amendments pass with well over 70% majority.
HART did not.
Bikeways passed with over 75% six years ago. Where are they?
(2) The HART amendment came with promises that HART will be free and that it will take politics out of rail. We now know that HART will cost several million dollars every year. Multi-billion dollar contracts for the rail have already been signed by politicians. All HART members are political appointees with zero rail experience. The public voted for NONE of this!
(3) Sewers and water mains are primary and imperative components of public's health and safety. Rail is not.
(4) Fixing sewers, water mains and installing two (2) very large secondary treatment plants will cost well over 10 billion dollars. This project package is by far the largest state project. We cannot afford it but we have to do it. (We cannot afford anything else.)
(5) Ignoring the state's financial analysis which was done by a truly competent and independent firm, and instead believing the city's customer-focused consultants and empire-building FTA is serious avoidance of due diligence. The evidence is abundant. The ears are deaf.
Having Carlisle meddle with infrastructure costs and priorities is already bad enough. We do not need more lawyer math and "public trust" smoke screens to hide fundamental inability to grasp reality, lack of relevant knowledge, and council votes based on backroom dealings (or worse.)
3. Portland's "High Capacity Transit" -- Lessons for Honolulu
Interesting excerpts of an actual evaluation of Portland's MAX light rail in 2011:
SOURCE:
http://cascadepolicy.org/pdf/pub/5.2.11HighCapacityTransitStudy.pdf
High Capacity Transit is desirable when there are large numbers of people moving to geographically constrained destinations within a short period of time – such as commuters traveling to downtown San Francisco or midtown Manhattan.
(Nothing in common with Honolulu.)
MAX was supposed to be a “catalyst for transit-oriented development” (TOD) at Cascade Station near the airport, but IKEA, Target and Best Buy are built away from the MAX stop and serviced by large parking lots. RESULT: 2.2% use MAX.
(This will happen to the Ewa mall by Bishop Estate, Pearl Highlands, Pearl Ridge and Ala Moana Center.)
Gresham Civic Station is a suburban location that has been intensively planned for more than 25 years, with expectations that this would be a showcase for suburban TOD. The entire area was bare dirt when MAX opened in 1986. Eventually, much of the site was built-out. RESULT: Although there are hundreds of apartments close to the newest MAX station at Gresham Civic Center, only 2.25% the tenants actually use light rail.
(This will happen to Ho'opili and other pie in the sky TODs.)
The two-day observations at Cascade Station were perhaps the most revealing in terms of assessing the oft-made claim that light rail is a “catalyst for development.” Light rail is not only irrelevant to the commercial success of Cascade Station, it is a barrier to continued development due to density requirements near rail stations.
(Maybe Honolulu developers will wake up to reality.)
LINKS TO MORE INFORMATION
HonoluluTraffic.com - keep elevated rail out of Honolulu.
HART Members Announced - HawaiiReporter.com
The Case Against Rail - from HonoluluTraffic.com
City's Rail Plan Financial Update - HawaiiReporter.com
