This provocative comment came in via email, and I thought it worth sharing.
It suggests we should not assume that key proponents of the city’s rail transit project are actually wholeheartedly behind the proposed rail system, but driven by other external pressures/demands.
What do you think?
As for Carrie Okinaga, I suspect that she, like her boss Carlisle, is not really in her heart a rail advocate. In fact, she may be a rail opponent who, like Carlisle, is now pushing for the rail but simultaneously dedicating their lives to cleansing the City of all the most troublesome (and loathsome) rail advocates (e.g., Hannemann, Rollman, Caldwell). I do not even know if Don Horner is really for rail, at least in its present form. I suspect that Horner as a banker is a man of conservative temperament (like Carlisle, Lingle and even Obama) who is personally disgusted with that mix of hype, lies and union patronage that makes conservatives blanch.
But of course, as a banker, Horner would support rail. That’s the punchline. The biggest rail supporters today outside of the labor unions are actually very similar to Cayetano in outlook — in private. But whenever there is a big project, the local banks would support it or they would lose out to the banks that they compete against. That’s just like Goldman Sachs, which at the height of the feeding frenzy in 2005 (of loaning money to poor people to buy overpriced houses and then bundling all these mortgages and selling them as stock) figured out that it was all just a massive house of cards; yet Goldman Sachs kept on engaging in this sham for a while because it needed to compete against other banks, even as Goldman Sachs tried to get out of what they realized would be a self-destructive activity. If the local powers-that-be decided to build a massive $10 billion swimming pool out on the lava flats of the Big Island, First Hawaiian would get behind it because they would want all that money to cycle through their own bank rather than through another bank. It’s funny but also sad, like a leftist governor (Abercrombie) resurrecting the old guard that his political career was supposed to vanquish. It’s the dynamics of the system that will ultimately undermine and destroy the system. We all need to read Marx.
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Conservatives “blanch” at their own shadow. Nothing like an anonymous email to nail an issue.
If you look at the responses to this post, it does not seem that most of the pro-rail responses are by professional p.r. experts. Much too crude. Doug Carlson might be the last of the Mohicans. I wonder who pays his salary.
When I used to go online, I used to always see an ad stating “The rail means a college education.” WTF? I thought it was a transportation project. The ad was from Pacific Resources Partnership, the developer and union mouthpiece. So the carpenters want to send their kids to Harvard? But I do not see this ad anymore. Perhaps the union leadership knows that Carlisle has sabotaged the rail. But the rank and file have not figured that out yet.
The funny thing is, most educated observers noted that the rail would essentially be dead if Hannemann quit and ran for governor. In fact, Hannemann ceased promoting rail after the airport fiasco in late 2009. I think the political elite, at least the smart ones, figured out back then that this whole project was a white elephant, too big and too complicated for this small-town culture. It’s like someone who just cannot sing trying out for American Idol but they and their family still think that they will definitely win, when the judges know better. Or, like the way the American elite in 1968 figured out in the face of the Tet offense that this was not the war they thought it was.
So the rail project is like a gecko’s tail that has fallen off and keeps twitching for the longest time. But it was never a living creature to begin with, just a useless appendage of a clever animal that has long since moved on. But the union rank and file have not figured it out. Has Doug Carlson? It might be time for him to move on to Hawaiian Electric.
I guess the very word “rail” triggers in some folks an uncontrolled release in rant.
They like to say “can’t.” Maybe they’re not happy, or at least not content, unless they blow a gasket so to speak.
And as far as nuanced motives go, I guess that happens pretty much all the time for most of us. Big deal.
And we can find all the conspiracy theories, false linkages and convenient similarities that we want.
What about integrity, honesty? I would prefer that my bank state why they couldn’t support a project, rather than support because it would be “good for their business” rather than good for the citizens, city, and state. Ian has explained how Hawaii gets in such messes. Bankers forget common sense.
I’m closing my account with First Hawaiian Bank.
Other online banking gives better interest rates too.
Let’s not forget the motivation based on the business opportunities that will arise based on the rail. After all, in addition to amenities that will be added along its route, the project is usually described in terms of how it will open West Oahu to expansion.
Rail proponents do *not* believe in Honolulu Rail because City/HART’s objective is *not* to build it — if only because it is not possible to submit a *credible* FFGA application for the December 2012 FTA decision deadline — but rather to ransack the $500 million cash in the rail fund during the 2012 election year to reward/payoff paid-to-play campaign contributors (e.g., construction unions, engineering firms, land speculators).
For instance that is why the City/HART *delayed* until election year 2012 opening up 232 night/weekend overtime-pay trenches for the City Center Archeological Inventory Survey (AIS) that will be completed in summer 2012 rather than doing it daytime piecemeal as part of the EIS three years ago as demanded by the Oahu Burial Council. And of course HART wants to start Waipahu construction in March 2012 before the December 2012 FTA decision deadline because construction workers will be paid handsome Davis-Bacon wage rates mandated for federal projects while the rail fund still has a positive cash balance.
Note that according to news accounts, the City began soil testing & utility relocation in May 2010 continuing to September 2011 (14 months) for Waipahu — but HART has yet to award the Phase III & Phase IV design-build contracts to open up Nimitz Highway along Honolulu Harbor (which is all landfill!). HART will say that soil sampling is being done under the City Center AIS but it is doubtful that contractor Cultural Surveys Hawaii has the expertise of a Kiewit Pacific let alone the equipment [e.g., google “Giant rig drills test holes for rail” for HNN video]. Even more shibai is that without having done soil testing HART has yet to determine the design of the foundations for Phase III & IV – which may require driving piles down 100 feet to sit on the coral shelf topped by a massive 40 feet wide by 10 feet long by 5 feet thick concrete pile caps needed for landfill soil Honolulu Harbor and sand soil Kakaako rather than the slender 8 feet diameter drilled shafts that may have been used in Waipahu (rumor is that pile caps were needed there too). (For a description of the two types of foundation designs see Appendix E: Construction Approach of the Final EIS.) So how does HART get *credible* cost estimates when it has yet to dig a 40 feet wide trench smack in the middle of Nimitz Highway to *test* the foundation design for Honolulu Harbor’s landfill soil condition (like Kiewit Pacific did for Waipahu soil that took 14 months [again see above HNN video]) in time for a December 2012 FTA decision deadline?
Even more wasteful is that Cultural Survey Hawaii’s 3 feet wide by 10 feet long sampling trenches are nowhere near the massive 40 feet wide by 10 feet long trenches needed for pile caps thereby the AIS could well miss nearby iwi — and as for the City’s argument that “the columns can be shifted 30 feet either way. Each column is about 8 feet in diameter” [google this], what are the odds of shifting 40 feet wide by 10 feet long trenches either way without running into more iwi? Thus either project management is incompetent (doubtful) because proper sequencing would be to first do the soil sampling, then the design & testing of the foundation, and then do the AIS – or City/HART has intentionally *chosen* to be blissfully ignorant (likely) in *not* opening up the streets of downtown Honolulu to literally avoid facing “ground truth.” Thus for HART, ignorance is bliss! 🙂
Bottom-line is that the City/HART has *no* intention of building Honolulu Rail and its true purpose is to ransack all the cash in the rail fund for the 2012 election year (note that HART will soon be going before the Honolulu City Council for permission to float bonds because it will have negative cash flow in FY013 even with the 0.5% GET surtax cash flows) – and how “convenient” in the nick of time that FTA will deny Honolulu Rail an FFGA in December 2012 because its application was “sham” leading to an ultimate cancellation. Brilliant! …but what is happening is not right, not pono.
Don Horner is there to make sure that the real estate loans that First Hawaiian Bank made to land speculators are paid back through HART’s property acquisitions/eminent domain purchases to make way for Honolulu Rail.
Carrie Okinaga is at First Hawaiian Bank because if she went back into private practice her firm will be tainted when the scandal hits.
p.s., Of course the simple solution to avoiding the multi-billion dollar cost overruns from iwi-filled sandy soil Kakaako and landfill soil Honolulu Harbor (i.e., imagine digging massive 40 feet wide by 10 feet long trenches for concrete pile caps spaced every 120 feet from Chinatown down the median of Nimitz Highway through Kakaako to Ala Moana Center to support the slender 8 feet diameter columns that City/HART brags about) is Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi’s proposal to build *express busses only* elevated lanes on the Honolulu Rail route from Kapolei to Iwilei that like rail would improve corridor mobility, improve corridor travel time, improve access to the planned Oahu second urban center and improve transportation equity — but at 60 mph express busses would take only 16 minutes whereas the average 28.5 mph stop-and-go rail would take 34 minutes. Honolulu Rail versus nothing is a false choice because Kobayashi’s proposal is a faster, better, cheaper, easier and much lower risk alternative.
Honolulu is a Go Along To Get Along town. Squeaky Wheels have to eat lunch alone at The Pacific Club.
Of course it could be as simple as recognizing that paying $50,000 per foot for something that won’t mitigate traffic congestion is ridiculous.
But paying it to completely avoid traffic altogether — priceless.
Ian’s anonymous contributor closes with a suggestion that we all should be reading Marx.
I can only assume it is Groucho that he or she is referring to.
There is no evidence suggesting that the contributor personally knows any of the people whose motives are so poisonously disparaged or that any interviews have been conducted with them or others with whom they work or do business to determine what motivations these people have for agreeing to take on leadership roles in creating the rail system
In Don Horner’s case, the idea that he is motivated by avarice or a need to protect First Hawaiian bank loans seems really loopy given the wide range of public service jobs he has taken on over the years.
Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to assume that most people supporting rail actually do believe it will improve transportation choices for those on the Westside? After all, I believe that you sincerely believe rail will not be an improvement, and aren’t just opposing it because it was something Mufi proposed and got approved
> In Don Horner’s case, the idea that he is motivated by avarice or a need to protect First Hawaiian bank loans seems really loopy
Except what if he if gave final approval in *signing off* on these loans as CEO (as history has repeatedly shown, what has brought down the high & mighty is *not* the crime but the *cover-up* of a “loopy” dumb error in judgment [e.g., Nixon & Watergate which prima facie would also be “loopy”])?
Addendum to Don Horner: In late August 2011 Senator Inouye lectured on Honolulu Rail, “If something goes haywire — say so.” Mr. Horner, if you want to preserve your *good name* I urge you to *distance* yourself from Honolulu Rail before the start of the Hawaii State Legislative Session because things may well go “haywire” on Honolulu Rail (desperately trying to *not* make me your enemy because I am all about pono — pursuing the common good, the public interest).
> There is no evidence suggesting …
Yup. That is why the Hawaii State House of Representatives & Senate should create special committees with *subpoena power* to investigate whether HART can indeed submit a *credible* FFGA application for the December 2012 FTA deadline given that the City Center AIS *won’t* be completed until summer 2012 and HART has *yet to award* the Phase III & IV design build contracts (which of course if awarded the State Department of Transportation will be tasked to evaluate whether their work plans for digging up Nimitz Highway and Kakaako can indeed lead to a *credible* FFGA application for the December 2012 FTA deadline [remember it took Phase II design-build contractor Kiewit Pacific 14 months for a much simpler Waipahu to soil sample, design, and test a design for the elevated rail foundation — all of which HART has yet to conduct for landfill-soil Nimitz Highway along Honolulu Harbor and sandy-soil Kakaako!])].
FYI
I do not get paid to respond to anti-rail comments on Ian’s blog. I sincerely believe that Westside residents deserve to have an alternative way of getting to town during the peak hour commute, that the elevated system will be very successful for the same reasons that the Vancouver BC system is, and that, like Vancouver’s system, it will be a generally unobtrusive and often elegant addition to the urban landscape.
> Westside residents deserve to have an alternative …
Uh, see Councilmember Kobayashi’s alternative above in which a peak commute express bus at 60 mph on an elevated *bus only* expressway would traverse Kapolei to Iwilei in 16 minutes versus 28.5 mph for Honolulu Rail’s stop-and-go taking 34 minutes.
Uh, the Dutch buses wouldn’t stop anywhere between Kapolei and Iwilei, but they might make it to Puck’s Alley, where her friends have big redevelopment plans she’s not telling anyone about. The bogus bus plan would also take years to launch, if it ever gained the political support it clearly lacks, and then many of the same people attacking rail would jump all over it and Honolulu would be back to square one again. Nothing to see here.
What makes more sense:
a) choosing something better than rotten traffic, even though it is not the No. 1 Perfect solution for rotten traffic.
b) letting thousands of working people live and die in rotten traffic for a few more decades, while we figure out how to give you your perfect solution to traffic, so you can have lower taxes.
A moratorium on new development until a consensus can be reached on how to prevent or minimize traffic’s worsening could do more to equitably help a far greater number of residents from West and Central Oahu than building rail would.
Rail provides a disproportionate amount of help for a relatively small group of people–the 6 percent of the traveling public that would otherwise take the bus and, according to the FEIS, about one percent of the driving public whose personal circumstances would cause them to find rail’s benefits compelling enough to switch to it by 2030.
But what about the other 80% of the traveling public who drive and for whom rail will not be a viable alternative? They only agreed to collectively pay billions extra in taxes for rail because they were told by the city that building rail would result in there being about 20 percent less traffic on the roads which meant that they would experience shorter drive times like they do when school is not in session.
But the city was lying to the 80 percent who drive. The truth is that rail will only slow the worsening of traffic not make traffic better. The 80 percent were willing to pay billions on a means to make their drives 20 percent faster than in 2008; the 80 percent never voted to continue to struggle through worsening traffic each working day so that a much smaller set of people could ride rail.
Is spending billions to give faster travel times to a smaller group of people that have lifestyles suitable to using rail, while at the same time leaving everyone else to “live and die in rotten traffic” that is even worse than today’s traffic — is that truly equitable?
I took a look on google and found this site, which appears to be sponsored by the City of Vancouver.
http://talkvancouver.com/transportation
Here is bit of what the page is about. Basically, Vancouver is conducting surveys in order to plan for their transportation future.
Begin Quote:
Thank you for your input! We have now completed Phase 1 of the Transportation 2040 consultation that examined Vancouver’s transportation successes and challenges to date, high-level concepts, best practices from around the world, and proposed goals and targets. During this phase, we heard from many residents, businesses, industry groups and regional commuters about values, priorities and ideas for Vancouver’s transportation future.
End Quote
Here is a sampling of survey results of the page’s choosing, not my own.
*BEGIN QUOTE*
Phase 1 Survey Results: Transportation Choices
One of the questions we asked in the Phase 1 consultation survey was about individual transportation choices, and reasons for choosing or not choosing a particular mode of travel. Specifically, we asked people why they chose to drive and what discouraged them from using sustainable modes of transportation (walking, cycling and public transit) more often. Some of the most common responses people gave were:
Reasons For Driving
It’s faster than other ways of traveling around
It’s convenient
Often need to carry kids/parents/heavy loads
Factors That Discourage Walking
Lack of time/my usual destinations too far away
Often need to carry kids/parents/heavy loads
Feel unsafe due to close proximity of high-speed traffic
Factors That Discourage Cycling
Feel unsafe riding in traffic
No safe place to park bike/worried about theft
It’s too rainy/too cold
Factors That Discourage Taking Transit
Transit isn’t frequent enough
Lack of time/transit is too slow
Transit is unreliable
A full breakdown of the responses to this question is available here.
While some of these factors are out of our control (the City of Vancouver doesn’t directly provide transit service, and we can’t control the weather), there are clearly things we can do to remove some of these barriers and encourage people to walk, bike and take transit more often.
The complete set of Phase 1 consultation survey comments is available here.
A copy of the UBC Facebook Event Report is available here.
by Kenji Komiya 12 Sep 2011, 10:50am
*END QUOTE*
While the Vancouver Skytrain is more popular than most transit systems, most people there, like most people here, get around by car. Transit doesn’t work best for most people, even in Vancouver.
“the project is usually described in terms of how it will open West Oahu to expansion.” I also want one of these crystal balls that foretell to the populace definitively, what will happen in the future.
To all you rail supporters: Look, the power went off for 45k people today – a wonderfully typical winter day – on Oahu. No storms, no big wind, no rain… so tell me, o wise people, hth is HECO going to run a train without it blowing a few breakers or generating stations along the way, save & except if they build a power plant just for it & it alone? You want money SO badly that you’re willing to disregard every single good point made for the case against rail. Why is that? Money isn’t going to buy you out of the ill will the near-majority of voters have for your incessant demands that this rail get built, come hell or high water. Too bad, so sad.
@Lopaka43 – Westside residents? You mean tourists at Ko Olina/East Kapolei? Train stops (or starts rather) out in a field there somewhere, doesn’t it? How many Waianae or Nanakuli or Ewa residents are going to drive to East Kapolei to catch the train – and still yet, where are they going to park? Last I checked, parking spaces were going to be few & far between because this train is for TOD, right? Which is it? TRaffic solver? TOD? Nope, this train isn’t for ‘Westside’ residents to do squat. It’s for Unions & bankers & politicians & landowners to make money – that’s it.
Excellent, aikea808. It is painfully obvious, this thing people find as a handy solution for the mainland, (supposedly) can not be, at all. It is sooo ill suited for Oahu. Too many reasons for no rail. Not the least of which; our infrastructure can not handle it at all. And of course, going by past history will not be able to support it in the future.
“because things may well go “haywire” on Honolulu Rail” well, if the whole danged bloody mess is not a pile of hay wire now, I don’t know how much people with their head in the sand want to see a this clusterf#*k grow until it is, in their eyes…
Conflicts of interest, slam dunking of heavy grade steel on steel and and the route from AMC to the fields of Ewa aside, I have long considered the project designed to not be built. It seems the $500+ million in pr, studies and preliminary contracts doled out by Hanneman and the corresponding return donations to the candidate were the whole point of the pie in the sky project. Like a stone stone soup of patronage to be share by a limited cadre of businesses and politicians. The lack of materialized Federal funds only makes this scheme even more naked. What might we have done with $500 million on O’ahu? And now we get to send Mufi to Congress… the rewards for failure in Hawaii astound.
That’s such deliberately deceptive nonsense, from top to bottom. The project has received millions in federal funds, and all indications are that it will receive everything that’s been requested, at the appropriate time. You didn’t get paid today because pay day is scheduled for next week. Is that supposed to prove something?
The rest of your post isn’t even worth addressing, except to say that it’s the kind of baseless and gratuitous cynicism that’s just as corrosive and harmful to society as actual corruption.