Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle spoke at yesterday’s Think Tech/Venture Capital Association of Hawaii luncheon. He was followed by two panels on the theme, “”The Press weighs in on Rail,” at the Plaza Club.
The mayor likes to tell audiences Honolulu is the country’s 10th largest city. I’ve heard the claim made before. The mayor says it, in part, to imply that such a large city can afford the high price of the proposed elevated rail system, and that being on the Top 10 list means we need to have these flashy projects to prove our standing on the national and world stage.
The problem is that Honolulu isn’t the 10th largest city in the country, unless you cook the numbers by comparing apples and oranges.
Here’s a list of U.S. cities ranked by population.
Pay attention to the fine print:
Note that this list refers only to the population of individual municipalities within their defined limits, which does not include other municipalities or unincorporated suburban areas within urban agglomerations. A different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metropolitan area populations.
So, on this list of cities, Honolulu ranks as #47, tucked down there between Tulsa and Oakland.
But there’s another, perhaps more realistic way of comparing “Metropolitan Statistical Areas,” that is, adjacent urbanized areas that are related but may include more than one incorporated jurisdiction.
The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as a Core Based Statistical Area having at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more population, plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties. The OMB has defined 367 MSAs for the United States as of March 29, 2010.
Among the ranks of metropolitan statistical areas, Honolulu sits at #53, between Tucson and Tulsa.
Here’s where the apples and oranges come in.
Carlisle’s reference to Honolulu as the 10th largest city only works if we include not just the urban core, defined by the Census Bureau, but Honolulu’s entire metropolitan statistical area, but compare the population of that larger area with just the urban core of other cities.
This is important because urban rail systems are most often regional, serving the larger metropolitan area and sharing the costs among the larger population.
The population of Honolulu’s metropolitan statistical area, which includes not just urban Honolulu but all of Oahu, is listed at 963,607. Other areas with light rail systems–generally less costly than Honolulu’s planned “light metro” train–include the metropolitan statistical areas of Dallas (pop. 6.5 million), Phoenix (4.2 million), Seattle (3.5 million), St. Louis (2.8 million), Denver (2.6 million), and so on.
You do the math. It isn’t comforting.
Carlisle’s second major point was that we can’t afford to walk away from the $1.5 billion in federal funds Honolulu hopes to receive.
That argument sounds a lot like pitch made for a sale at the mall. Shop today and save! In order to get the “savings,” of course, you’ve got to spend a lot. Same with rail. In order to get those federal funds, Honolulu taxpayers still have to at least come up with the balance. And since the funds are not guaranteed, we may still have to pay the entire tab.
To tell the truth, I don’t know if the projected cost is a deciding factor. However, there are clearly opportunity costs involved that have not been openly discussed. If you spend something over $5 billion on rail, we don’t have that money available to spend on something else. We are already seeing the initial rail spending squeeze existing bus services. The cutbacks in our area, for example, will mean only one bus per hour between Kaaawa and downtown Honolulu. If you miss that bus, or if it’s full, you will have to wait another full hour. That’s not a realistic level of service for our area, and other parts of Honolulu are facing similar cutbacks.
Someone at the city will say that there’s no connection to rail. Right….
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a small town. where everyone knows each each other. and it’s not what you know (all to often, sad reality) but who ya know.
and yet, it’s the 10th largest city in the US???
doesn’t meet the laff test!
😛
t
The City and County of Honolulu is around the 12th largest municipality in the U.S. (not city). Unlike mainland cities, the City and County of Honolulu are combined, not limited to the arbitrary U.S. Census city boundaries. Our city government therefore covers the entire island of Oahu (about 640 sq. mi.) .
Also, our media market share is still in the 70s, didn’t Green Bay, Wisconsin pass us recently?
Carlisle also noted that Honolulu is the largest city in America surrounded on all sides by the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, spending a mega-brazillion dollars on rail is justified by size alone. It’s all in the 500,000 pages of documents recently released in the name of transparency. Go look it up if you doubt me.
On the other hand, on a really good day, our schools almost rank above Mississippi.
Ha, ha, and on a good day I can see Molokai from my front porch. That has about as much relevance as Carlisle using “the 10th largest city” as a talking point. I really hate his deceiptfulness.
I think that as a community we have a sociological issue with admitting that we’re relatively small and can’t afford what larger areas have. This is John Burns’ “subtle inferiority of spirit” at work 50 years later. We don’t take pride in our difference from other places. We’re always succumbing to “world class” pretensions” when we should be thinking about “Hawaii-size” possibilities.
Sorry, Ian, but you are the one comparing apples and oranges.
Comparing apples with apples, the population which is under the jurisdiction of our city government covers the entire island of Oahu and should be compared with the populations under the jurisdictions of other city governments.
Compared on that basis, our 2010 population of 953,207 makes us the tenth largest city in the US.
Please note that some of the other city governments on the list such as Los Angeles (469 square miles), Houston (599), Phoenix (517), and San Antonio (461) are close to the size of the island of O’ahu (600 square miles) while Anchorage (1,705), and Jacksonville (747 square miles) are bigger.
This confusion of the city of Honolulu with the CDP which stretches from the Airport to Kahala has been driving local statisticians crazy for years because most reporters and commentators don’t understand the difference between the Honolulu CDP and the City and County population count and make the same erroneous comparison of the CDP count with Mainland city counts that you are once again promulgating.
Finally, to end this confusion, we got the Census in 2010 to call the CDP covering the Airport to Kahala area, Urban Honolulu.
We created CDPs for each of the island communities like Kailua, Kaneohe, etc. so that we can have Census statistics reported for those communities. Without the CDP designations, the only reports that we would have received from the Census Bureau would have been counts by census tracts and for the entire island.
And yes, the Honolulu MSA is not the 10th largest MSA but that is not what the Mayor was saying.
Route 55 of The Bus indeed is scheduled to change into an hourly service in June (see: www1.honolulu.gov/dts/bus+service+route+changes.htm.
Transport for London (TFL) confronts such temporary over-capacity situations as you mention by using “the smarts”, smart option plays and two-way intercommunication.
The Bus is an utter delight in all ways. The only thing that has ever concerned me is exactly some of the current tidbits of overcapacity and some clear need for specific fiscal paring, which is precisely what these published proposed route changes do so wisely address. This stuff costs.
I guess instead of getting distracted we could simply focus on the $5.3 billion rail project costing $5,500 for each of the 963,607 people on Oahu.
Well now, that makes this thing a real bargain, doesn’t it?
Look at the daily ridership numbers of cities like Phoenix and Denver. Then compare to projected Honolulu rail ridership. That research alone should show any rational person that the fix was in from the beginning.
Gosh, is this man from Mensa?
Before you insult the ethics of the various people involved in the projections of ridership and the credulity of the readers of this blog by claiming that “the fix” was in, you should explain why the difference between our projections and the daily ridership for systems in Denver and Phoenix leads you to that conclusion.
And please explain how all the various people who participated in those projections from the State level civil service to City civil service to independent private transportation modelers to Federal analysts and administrators under several administrations were induced to fix the numbers.
You always seem to keep it real, a lot like that Shapiro guy.
Carlisle, just another deceptive comparison to justify this rail abortion. How about a cost per mile for this “train wreck” and then a estimate of the population and area of the island it will service? A REALISTIC estimate of prospective users would be helpful.
Using those figures Hawaii should go to the #1 spot for “Worst Boondoggle” in America. And I am sure this hui of business leaders promoting rail (aka “Big Brother”) are looking out for the best interests of (who else?) Big Brother.
I understand that people do not agree on the wisdom or lack of wisdom in building the rail. I respect that and believe everyone is entitled to, and to voice, their opinion. What I don’t understand is why people resort to personally maligning their opponents in the process of making their arguments pro and con – if they don’t agree with you they have to be crooked?
Through almost three decades of service to the people of Honolulu, Peter Carlisle has earned and deserves the reputation as an honest citizen dedicated to upholding the law and forcing the criminals among us, regardless of who they are or who they know, to pay the price for their crimes. A person does not change their lifelong values overnight. To those who accuse him of graft or corruption I say you are doing a great disservice to a man of principle.
As far as I can see, Carlisle has been the first and only mayor in several generations who is genuinely concerned with fixing the financial condition of the city by publishing the entire budget, paying down unfunded retirement accounts, creating a savings account, limiting future debt service, employing technology to intelligently repair roads instead of throwing good money after bad, holding the line against pay raises and inviting the wrath of the unions in the process (did you know that while the rest of the administration voluntarily took a 5% pay cut, the Mayor voluntarily took a 15% pay cut? fact check it, Ian, it’s true), and opening up the voluminous records of the city to the public, just to name a few.
What I haven’t seen is any evidence that Carlisle has attempted to amass a personal fortune or has scratched the backs of other politicians in his year and a half on the job as mayor. If you have proof otherwise, you owe it to all of us to bring it on. So put up or shut up: prove it, or stick to the facts pro and con in debating the rail project.
Unsubstantiated charges and outright slander is pretty much what unidentified blog trolls do. That said, I disagree with you on the overall performance of Peter Carlisle as mayor. He’s a delegator who has a “hands off” approach to management…which is the same as no management. When major decisions, like raising the city debt ceiling, are made while he’s out of town and uninformed is a sign of fatal administrative irresponsibility.