Interesting little rail item in today’s Advertiser story by Sean Hao (“Honolulu rail project will have to pick up tab for airport route fix“).
Hao reports the city used an outdated plan when designing the airport route.
The airport layout plan used by the city for its analysis was drafted in the mid-1990s and had not been updated to reflect subsequent changes in runway protection zones, Morioka said.
“The city was using the older version that is currently in existence,” Morioka said. “It did reflect an RPZ — runway protection zone — of a thousand feet, but my understanding is … the FAA had made the change to the RPZ requirements for the larger aircraft to 1,700 feet back in 1994 or 1997.”
What isn’t clear is whether the state has been using the outdated plan and made it available to the city’s contractors, or whether the city simply dusted off and reused its Fasi-era rail plan, which would have been written before the changes in those FAA requirements.
I suspect it’s the latter, and reflects the same limitation on design that has prevented the city from ever considering modern light rail, which has also changed substantially since 1990.
Two other rail-related items of note.
I was nosing around in the database of Congressional earmarks and noted that the federal funding for the city’s rail project to date appear to have come from earmarks. The database at LegiStorm.com lists $65 million in earmarks for Honolulu’s rail project over the past three budget years. While this shows the current clout of Hawaii’s senior senator, it does not reflect an ongoing competitive advantage for the Honolulu plan once it has to compete on a level playing field with other projects.
Finally, back on the question of what happened to the light rail alternative…The analysis of alternatives included a screening memo, which was to identify a number of potential alternatives meeting general criteria which deserved further study, and then a final alternatives report after those alternatives were whittled down to a few meeting the criteria for final consideration.
When I looked at the question of alternatives, I had looked at my notes and saw one report was filed in October and the other in November, and subsequently referred to them as being issued a month apart.
But take a closer look.
The Final Alternatives Screening Memorandum, prepared by Parsons Brinckerhoff for the City and County of Honolulu, was dated October 24, 2006. The Alternatives Analysis Report, also prepared by PB, was dated just a week later, November 1, 2006.
These two documents were dated a week apart, not a month, as I had initially thought. Given their size, this suggests they were prepared in parallel, not in series, and the findings of one did not serve as the starting point and initial basis for the other. Instead, it appears, the conclusions were predetermined and the two assessments were written at the same time.
In such a set-up, the light rail alternative was just squeezed out of sight and out of mind.
When I read the letter from Wayne Yoshioka in yesterday’s paper I thought someone should look into his claims about a change in the FAA standards.
Sure enough there was a change, back in the 1990′s. I am glad that Sean Hao did the research. I wished that he had given a link to the old and new standards. It would be interesting to see when they were published and if any state or city agencies were on the distribution list.
Yoshioka’s comment that it was too early to be worried about the airport conflict reminds me that it was too early for the AIA and then too late. The EIS should look at all of the impacts for the project as proposed including the impact on the airport operations. It is silly to say that the C & C (the next administration) will deal with the subject just 30 days before the construction of the elevated line at the airport begins.
I do not think this issue should be used to stop the rail, it should be used to allow time for the C & C to finally give light rail a careful review. Not the one week whitewash that you discovered.
Light rail would solve the current conflict at the airport, for less money too!
The studies were prepared not by “the City” but by the City’s consultant.
Why don’t you ask them why they used the “outdated” RPZ map? Maybe they got it from the State DOT or the FAA?
After all, the DTS Director reports that nobody at the State or FAA indicated a problem with the RPZ in their review of draft submittals.
Your hypothesis that they “just dusted off the Fasi-era rail plan” is just a hypothesis until you provide some documentation or reporting that substantiates it. Do you have mappings of the Fasi-era rail plan that show it going along the route proposed for the current plan? Inquiring minds want to know.
It is becoming clearer and clearer that there is insufficient talent [setting aside ethics and corruptability issues] in local government to pull this project off. It’s like asking a dog to do math, they simply don’t have the ability and they they either don’t recognize their own limits or feign non-recognition in order to allow their local buddies to feed at this largest of troughs of money.
The community gets what the community wants.
I’m just hoping to direct some of your readers to Honolulu Weekly’s recent rail coverage. I obtained a copy of the as-yet-unreleased FEIS, and thought for sure you would blog of it! Last week, we did a side-by-side overview of the November 2008 Draft EIS compared to the 2009 FEIS. Check out tomorrow’s Weekly, too, for more on the contents of the latest document. Thank you.