If the city budget scheduled to be passed next month includes the more than $1 Billion requested to fund the first large contracts for transit cars and initial construction of the elevated guideway and stations, it will be a major political coup for Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann achieved as much through political trickery as political muscle.
The trick is simple and often relied on when manipulating policies and contracts: You don’t have to “fix” the final decisions if you quietly control and set the specifications. Tailor making the specs to “fit” a particular bidder or technology is often a way to throw business to a favored party in what otherwise appears to be competitive bidding.
It’s hard to tell whether that’s what’s happening with Honolulu’s transit system, but it is clear that the Mayor Hannemann’s administration has defined the system through specs shoved into the design requirements. While distracting the public with the debate over “steel wheel on steel rail”, a category which actually includes a range of different transit technologies, Hannemann has slipped in a small number of key specifications which predetermined the specific choice of perhaps the most expensive type of steel-on-steel system running on an intrusive elevated guideway, essentially a mini-freeway of concrete and steel, from one end of the island to the other, interrupted periodically by stations the size of football stadiums in the sky.
Those limiting specifications inserted by the Hannemann administration include the call for a grade-separated system using “hot” 3rd-rail power.
These key specifications have been quietly inserted at key points by the administration and not by the council, and instead have constrained the council as it has tried to move forward with transit.
The council’s selection of a locally preferred alternative and a “fixed guideway” using a form of “steel rail on steel wheel” technology is consistent not only with the system pursued by Hannemann, which might have been state of the art in 1985, but also the light rail systems used most of the urban systems built since that time.
While the public, the council, and key constituencies were being told that the final choice of technology was still open, the choices were in fact being narrowed to one.
These differences are important. In private correspondence, one experienced transit planner described the differences in available transit technologies, very subtle from the public’s perspective but extremely important in terms of the profile of the resulting system.
Although the city describes its proposed system as “light rail”, he says this repeats “the classic mistake of confusing something else with light rail transit; it’s a common mistake but one that can lead the non-technical person to reach a misleading conclusion.”
This is in part, the result of a marketing decision made a couple of decades ago by Bombardier – a lead, if not favored competitor for the HHCTC Project – when light rail transit was emerging as a viable option for new start rail systems to call its fully-automated rail transit technology, which uses linear induction motors, “Advanced Light Rail Transit” or “ALRT.” [Who was the fictional character who said “It isn’t what it is; it is what I chose to call it.”]…
The technology that the City Administration proposed to use… is best described as an “automated light metro,” as is consistent with the definitions recorded in the attachment. It is its inability to operate on the surface in a right-of-way that is not secure, i.e. fenced-in, that makes it a light metro and not a light rail transit system. That is a result of two facts: 1) its operations will be fully-automated and 2) it will have an energized “hot” third rail for traction power distribution, in both cases throughout its 20.5 miles-long alignment, as well as 8.9 miles of proposed future extensions to West Kapolei, UH Manoa and Waikiki.
In contrast, “real” light rail transit – as defined in the attachment – has as its defining characteristic the ability to operate safely on the surface of city streets in mixed traffic lanes, in addition to in reserved transit-only lanes, transit malls with intersecting streets, roadway medians intersecting cross streets, on open or fenced-in railroad type rights-of-way with or without grade crossings, on elevated structures and in subways.
No other fixed guideway mode – heavy rail, light metro,commuter rail, magnetic leviation, monorail, personal rapid transit systems, etc., has this flexibility. At the same time, some LRT systems do have characteristics shared with other rail modes.
The “attachment” referred to can be found here.
Cynics say Hannemann has thrown his support behind the most expensive type of system in order to reap the harvest of campaign contributions from current or prospective contractors. Others only a bit less cynical say the system is Frank Fasi’s legacy, carried forward with few changes from the system Fasi proposed two decades ago and promoted within the administration by city engineers who worked on Fasi’s project and are now in leadership positions in the current transit project.
To be continued…
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For more on Personal Rapid Transit all are welcome at http://www.prtstrategies.com.
PRT is a FULLY computerized transit mode which routes driverless vehicles (we never call them ‘podcars’) per the rider’s choice of destination. Rides are non-stop, unshared and will average about 35mph.
With sophisticated automation, vehicles not waiting for new riders can be re-distributed (sent empty) to other stations on the grid that are void of them, or do not have enough to meet usage patterns easily determined by computer databases. With sufficient vehicles on the grid based on usage models, vehicles wait for riders, and not vice versa — a modern reversal of the traditional and unfortunately still acceptable transit model.
Given the extraordinary costs of light rail and limited number of actual vehicles, computerization produces little savings. A computerized PRT system produces significant savings given the significant number of low-cost vehicles (privately and publicly funded) which can be placed on the system for 24/7/365 operations.
I’ve lived in DC and spent a lot of time in SF, which both have basically the same transit system. Grade separated and underground in the city itself. The above-ground stations that I’ve been to haven’t been eyesores, but maybe I have a different definition of eyesore. DC Metro and SF BART are both, clean, fast ways to get around and into the city. And traffic doesn’t slow them down.
I’ve also stayed in Portland, OR. And I love their transit system. The Fareless Square concept is very convincing. What with the trolleys running one direction and the MAX running the other, plus buses, it’s the most walkable city I’ve ever been in. OTOH Portland is also one of the most compact cities I’ve been too, not stretched out like Honolulu is over half an island (greater Honolulu including west and central O’ahu). That and those giant MAX cars are a definite hazard to addled pedestrians, cars, and everything else due to the lack of grade separation. Sure supporters say they can be given priority in the right-of-way, but that’s a big chunk o’ something to be moving down the street.
I’m certainly open to innovation (see above) and neither of the aforementioned systems is perfect, but I like both of them. In DC, SF, and PDX driving was optional. I had a car in DC and lived out in Prince Georges Cty and I only drove in once the whole time I was there. Honestly, as long as the system we build can accomplish that it could be made out of bubble-wrap gondolas for all I care. From what little research I’ve done on transit system implementation it’s rare that there is any significant consensus on technology and routes, it’s a messy process no matter how you slice it.
You’ve made the critical point, Ian–the “debate” is a facsimile of a true debate, arranged for PR purposes. It may well be the engineers are convinced they’re ‘right” about this choice but it’s certainly not the transparent political process promised.
For another view on the Portland streetcar system, I recommend: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8643.