John White, director of the Pacific Resource Partnership, primary sponsor of a website bashing mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano for having been on the receiving end of illegal campaign contributions in his last campaign more than a decade ago, sidesteps an important point in his discussion of campaign finance ills.
1998 was a long time ago in terms of how special interest money flows into campaigns. The crackdown on contributors who bypassed contribution limits by giving money under false names, or using shills as intermediaries, resulted in a series of criminal prosecutions along with the Campaign Spending Commission’s administrative fines, and effectively broke the back of that kind of influence buying.
Then along came Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that bestowed personhood on corporations and took the lid off of special interest campaign money.
As a result of Citizens United, those corporate interests can legally spend as much as they want to support or oppose candidates as long as they are technically “independent” of the candidates.
John White and PRP are right there at the front of the line in taking advantage of this new campaign landscape.
PRP was one of the first “Super Pacs” to registered with the Campaign Spending Commission, allowing it to accept unlimited contributions from other corporations, individuals or organizations, and spend unlimited amounts attacking candidates of choice, in his case Ben Cayetano. It registered as an “independent expenditure committee” on June 1, a month after launching its “Imua Rail” campaign.
PRP and other corporate interests no longer have to use those clumsy old techniques of false names and accidental overages. Now they’re free to spend what they want to spread their propaganda and attack ads.
I’m afraid the contemporary form of money & politics is a lot more damaging to democracy than the old, nickel and dime stuff.
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At What Cost?
During the eight years of construction, the people of Hawai`i will send approximately $56 BILLION for fossil fuels out of state to private companies and foreign despots.
Reducing that figure by approximately 10% for coal and natural gas and then removing the amounts spent on airplane fuel, shipping diesel, Neighbor Island users, people who do not live along the train route, city and privately-owned buses, commercial trucks, construction equipment, electricity, AND setting aside approximately 40% of the amount of gas used for private vehicles for people living along the train route when they go shopping or visit family members living in East Honolulu or Kane`ohe, the taxpayers of O`ahu will still send approximately $12 BILLION dollars (current value) during the eight-year construction period for greenhouse gas-emitting, climate-changing, rising the levels of the ocean, killing environmentally-sensitive areas around the world fossil fuels.
In other words, we will spend over twice as much in fossil fuel along that route for people to travel to and from work than the construction costs.
Of the people commenting on this issues and supporting that person running for mayor who opposes mass transit, how many of you are under the age of 40?
I can well understand why young adults object to supporting Social Security payments to people who have already gone through what they contriibuted while working but are still getting $$$ from the government.
If you antis want that money from younger adults, then you should be willing to provide them with mass transit system services in return.
How many zero emission hydrogen fuel cell buses can you buy with $5 billion?
cwd, we should have mass transit, but maybe not this train.
Oh, I keep forgetting to put out that the supposed savings from not having a motorman could evaporate the first time a schoolgirl is groped or raped on a lightly traveled run. The current plan has so many opportunities to cost taxpayers more than they are saying.
“In other words, we will spend over twice as much in fossil fuel along that route for people to travel to and from work than the construction costs.”
Assuming your calculations to be correct, with 12 billion being spent on fuel for travel along the corridor on which the train would run over 8 years of construction, please tell me, how much less will be spent on fuel by travelers along that same corridor in the 8 years after the Hoopili – Ala Moana phase of the rail project is completed? And then the 8 years after that?
Please remember that the feis for the rail project was claiming a 3% per year fuel savings over… I can’t remember if it was for Oahu, or just the corridor, but let’s assume it was less consumption for Oahu. But since then, President Obama has raised CAFE standards to 50 miles per gallon or so by the year We are already seeing cars that get 40 mpg becoming common.
I’m not sure what CAFE standards the feis assigned to autos in the year 2030 but here are a few urls for stories between 2007 and 2011:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5448289
“According to the article, ‘The current standard for passenger automobiles is 27.5 mpg. The standard for light-trucks — a classification that also includes SUVs under 8,500 pounds — rose to 22.2 mpg for model-year 2007 and will get bumped up to 22.5 for 2008 models.'”
But then on May 19, 2009,
http://www.tflcar.com/2009/05/cafe-standards-will-raise-to-355-mpg-by-2016.html
“35.5 mpg that the new magic Cafe Standards number.
President Obama announced the new Federal fuel efficiency standards today at a White House press conference — that’s about 40 percent more fuel efficient and cleaner than today’s cars.”
And then on July 29, 2011,
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/fuel-economy/obama-announces-54-6-mpg-cafe-standard-by-2025
The new Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standard is now official, and it’s aggressive. Today, President Obama announced that the CAFE standard would increase from a target of 35.5 mpg in 2016 to 54.5 mpg by 2025.
Read more: Obama Announces 54.5 mpg CAFE Standard by 2025 – Popular Mechanics
So with the CAFE Standard raised to 54.5 mpg by 2025 from whatever it was in the feis, how much fuel will the train save over driving if it was only claiming a 3 percent saving before these fuel efficiency standards were in place?
I’m not sure myself. I don’t have a firm handle on this part of the rail debate but the numbers above suggest to me that rail will be worse on gas than no-rail, at least until it can be weaned off fossil fuels.
If someone has a better grasp of this, please feel free to chime in. Am I misunderstanding where the 3 percent from the feis comes in?
And to the second half of your comment, if rail had been in place a few years ago, with its higher overall operating costs than the bus alone (to go along with increased service levels I admit), how many more furlough days would public sector workers and the public have had to endure? Is it possible to give an answer that does not involve speculative economic gains that may or may not have occurred?
“This seems to be the case in the rail battle since neither side seems to adhere much to veracity.”
In my view, the lies from one side amount to a trickle, from the other, a torrent.
A torrent that is funded, in part, with taxpayer dollars.
There’s an article in today’s SA that seems to fit in with one of my other comments to this entry by Ian Lind.
“Council targets rail PR contracts” is the title.
The article explains that several City Council members are seeking to “determine whether all of the [PR] employees are needed, and whether the money being spent for rail public relations and public involvement is justified.”
HART executive director Daniel Grabauskas is quoted as saying “What I aim to do is just understand what those activities are, why they were contracted for, and what exactly it means,” he said. “If they are too high and not necessary to effectuate this project, then they’ll be cut.”
If I may offer my opinion of the items Daniel Grabauskas is aiming to understand:
1) I believe that the primary activity of the Public Relations/Involvement staff is to deceive the public into supporting the rail project.
2) I believe they were contracted because the use of the unvarnished truth alone would have led to the project’s demise years ago.
3) I’ll get to “what exactly it means” momentarily. In fact, just after the snippet below that includes a quote from Council member Ann Kobayashi.
“Kobayashi said the mayor’s office has a representative who attends neighborhood board meetings, while HART also pays people to attend. ‘Why do you need so much PR in the first place?’ she asked.”
To Ann Kobayashi: Please see reaction to Dan Grabauskas’ aims above… and then see below.
From the article’s list of PR subcontractors with Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc.
“CONTRACT AMOUNT $430,540”
So, what did taxpayers get for our $430,540?
Below is a transcript of a portion of an audio recording of a recent neighborhood board meeting. I’m afraid I neglected to take note of where in the recording the portion transcribed below appears. But I think it can be located more easily by searching on “waipahu neighborhood board” with google, which should turn up the board’s webpage, and then using the posted agenda or minutes to the March 2012 meeting to track down the words transcribed below.
http://media-05.granicus.com:443/ondemand/olelo/olelo_3913391d-7ac2-491c-9f24-c582a6fc840c.mp3
A PR subcontractor speaking before the Waipahu Neighborhood Board at the March 2012 meeting:
Some have asked about the number of future rail riders, and whether or not it would make a difference. Predictions state and city planners say island’s population will grow in 20 years by as much as 14 percent and that’s anywhere between a 150 to 200,000 residents. many who have lived, who will live in Leeward Oahu where much of the new affordable housing is being built. In comparison Oahu’s population increased by about 9 percent or by 80,000 residents from the year 2000 to 2010 during a decade, during the decade that was considered a down economic period. Ridership projections are anticipated to be 116,300 daily riders this amounts to roughly four, 40,000 vehicle trips per day. To put it in perspective, when our ah, *cough*, excuse me, when our traffic engineers point out that when schools are out, that’s UH, all of the colleges, the public and private schools k-12, you experience about a, *seems out of breath*, 10 percent increase? decrease in traffic. Most agree that’s beneficial. Rail will reduce future traffic by 18 percent and so this reduction is significant in getting these cars off the road. And this forecast does not take into consideration Transit-oriented development or future zoning. Uh, I passed out a brochure Mr. Chairman. There’s uh Hart will have a series of five town hall meetings. The public is welcome to attend. Learn about rail up-to-date information. Talk to project staff and ask questions.
Keep in mind that both the city rail project and the Hoopili development project have repeatedly attempted to justify their advancement by claiming the support of neighborhood boards representing project impacted neighborhoods including Waipahu. And how did the project gain that support? By telling Waipahu residents that in the future after rail is built traffic would be reduced by 18 percent and offering the example of “when schools are out” as representative of what a “10 percent… decrease in traffic” would be like. There is no need for Waipahu residents to object to increased traffic from the Hoopili development if you have a multibillion dollar rail project to negate it, right?
A question that comes to mind is “how long has this been going on?” With that question in mind I decided to look further back. Because every major pro-rail player I can think of, including both Daniel Grabauskas and Peter Carlisle, has cited the outcome of the 2008 rail related vote as justification for “moving forward” with the rail project, I decided to examine the months before the historic vote that has so far led to hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures, and this is what turned up among many other questionable claims.
B. Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor – P. Lee reported: On July 10th, the US Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to approve $20 Million for Honolulu’s rail transit project. This follows last years’ appropriation of $15.5 Million. The funds will be used for preliminary engineering and other initial work on the rail project. Today (July 24) Honolulu was named 7th out of 500 cities nationally as a “Best Walking City”. One of the criteria for the ranking is the amount of mass transit use for a healthier lifestyle. We have high transit ridership per capita and walking to transit keeps us healthier. Also, as he reported last month, Honolulu was recently ranked # 1 in rush hour traffic congestion for all US metropolitan cities. The rail project will move 9,000 passengers per hour in each direction which is the capacity of 6 highway lanes. Once built, the rail project is expected to reduce traffic congestion by 11%. As a comparison, when school is out as it is now, there is 9-10% less traffic. Therefore, rail will bring a significant reduction to our traffic congestion.
To be fair though, I have noticed repeated errors in the written minutes, so what I pasted just above from 2008 may not be completely true to the message the PR subcontractor was attempting to convey.
For example, the March 2012 Waipahu NB meeting minutes state:
“Seating: The Honolulu Authority on Rapid Transit (HART) is planning for 100 more seats per train. A total of 400 seats will be available for passengers.”
However, upon examining the audio I discovered that no “400 seats” claim had been made. It was a mistake in the minutes. Albeit a mistake that could possibly make the rail project more attractive to anyone viewing those minutes who didn’t bother listening to the audio. A part of me thinks about the Tom Berg incident at a Waipahu NB meeting and wonders just how pro-rail might a certain faction of the board be? Then again it could just be that recording minutes is a thankless task that doesn’t inspire dedication to accuracy at the neighborhood board level. I don’t know…
The 2012 transcript is from audio so much hinges on whether one feels the placing of the word “future” before “traffic” is an acceptable way to signify that reductions are from future increased traffic levels and not present day levels. I would point out that there are road projects that take years to complete whose goal before start of construction could also be described as “to reduce future traffic” that upon completion reduce that “future traffic” to levels below those that existed years before construction began. This demonstrates that placing the word “future” before the word “traffic” is inadequate to the task of clearly indicating that reductions below current levels are not what is being described. That is, “future traffic” seems to be an inferior term of description because, depending on the project, reductions in “future traffic” can mean traffic either better or worse than traffic levels that existed during a project’s planning stages.
I also find it inexcusable to use a description of what traffic is like today “when school is out” to “put it in perspective,” when “it” represents what the worsened traffic of the future will be like even if rail is built.
I’m sorry, the final block quote from my post above is from the minutes of the July 2008 Waipahu Neighborhood Board meeting. The quote that begins “B. Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor”
cwd stated: “the taxpayers of O`ahu will still spend approximately $12 BILLION dollars (current value) during the eight-year construction period for greenhouse gas-emitting, climate-changing, rising the levels of the ocean, killing environmentally-sensitive areas around the world fossil fuels”
CO2 emissions just to build rail won’t be offset for decades in the future, if ever. To build a 20 mile elevated heavy rail system, you must first increase and elevate CO2 emissions on earth to complete the construction of the rail in order to then as global warmers believe to “save the planet” from an increased elevation of CO2 emissions. Seems hypocritical to mandate the increase of CO2 levels by pushing a rail build to supposedly help stop any increase in CO2 emissions. Locals adapt to the high price of fuel by driving less and conserving energy usage at home to help offset the rise energy costs.
We individually pay for the transit options we choose to use based on convenience and budget.
Personal responsibility comes with added costs that most locals individually choose to pay as car and road users do, including paying for gas taxes/get and license fees, registration taxes, saftey check fees, vehicle insurance, parking fees and so on.
Personal responsibility and choice comes with a cost and budget that each individual must determine what fits them best.
Rail built at any and all costs to help stop non-global warming and to force people out of personal vehicles as cwd wants is unacceptable, unsustainable, unaffordable and a violation of personal responsibility and choice.
$12 billion may have been spent, but it was by the 80% who made that choice.
$6.7 billion spent on rail is only for the 6% – 7% total on Oahu who use public transportation, and all other taxpayers don’t have a choice to not pay for building rail.
I thought the bus was working well if the city didn’t start the cutbacks on routes and bus frequency to shore up a muli-billion dollar rail financial .
We expect our mayor to have a modicum of wisdom and foresight when dealing with situations that affect our quality of life, like maintaining public park facilities and restrooms where many families congregate to enjoy their limited free time together, or assuring The Bus runs on schedule so we’re able to get to and from work in a timely manner. Peter Carlisle has failed miserably in delivering these basic services, choosing instead to focus solely on Rail Transit. Carlisle lacks the wisdom and foresight a mayor’s job requires and has alienated a large segment of Hawaii’s voters with his decision-making or lack thereof. With an operating budget of close to 2 billion dollars, not being able to find 2 million dollars to keep the bus running as previously scheduled is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. August 11th can not come soon enough to elect a mayor who has more empathy and compassion for “we the people” and not solely “Big Brother”.
TheBus is heavily subsidized so I do not consider it to be a model of transit success; I have no reason to believe the system would improve if it was made larger since the administration would be under constant pressure to raise rates and/or cut routes.
There are a number of concerns about BRT that do not convince me it is the right tool to do the job of getting people to where they need to go. The fact that BRT would be cheaper to me suggests that Honolulu would get an inadequate product with more investment required at a later time.
The comments about expanding Honolulu’s bus system fail to mention how this transit mode would achieve rapid and reliable service since BRT when successfully implemented means allowing the transit vehicle to proceed with minimal delay along its route. In other places, this is achieved through physical separation from other traffic and/or allowing the bus to operate in an exclusive right of way.
The videos below demonstrate how BRT operates in Almere, the Netherlands. See http://youtu.be/WmI0t1VDc1A (for the urban intersection), http://youtu.be/5pLsccQ-JeI (for the suburban junction) and http://youtu.be/P61pkA3GejI (for the point of view from inside the bus; at the 49 second mark there is a man who looks like he’s going to risk crossing in front of the bus).
In the videos, all traffic yields to the transit vehicle at signalized stops that function in a similar manner to rail road crossings. In the urban junction video, note that the automobile lanes, bus lane and bicycle lanes are alongside each other but physically separated from each other with curbing.
Another example of BRT “done at the highest standard of quality in a developed country” is Brisbane’s BRT. It’s a fully separate busway that allows it to deliver the same speed and reliability as rail rapid transit.
The Human Transit blog by Jarrett Walker has a post titled “Bus Rapid Transit Some Questions to Ask” and “Brisbane Bus Rapid Transit Soars” if you want to know what I’m talking about.
How is an at-grade BRT plan going to ensure safety for motorists, mopeders, pedestrians and bicyclists in the high-density, high-travel areas of Honolulu at all the crossings where buses will intersect with other traffic?
Is there going to be some kind of physical barrier (e.g., a short plexiglass wall perhaps?) that prevents pedestrians (especially the elderly) from stepping out into the path of a bus traveling at high speed? If not done right, Honolulu will be making hundreds of crossing patterns and those portions of the BRT route through high-density pedestrian areas inherently more dangerous for residents and visitors.
Perhaps BRT can be accomplished at a lower initial cost; however, the trade-off is the long-term operational costs that will remain a perpetual commitment to the taxpayer. With X number of more buses there will be X number of more drivers to pay plus greater bus maintenance and fuel costs. Our roads will require more frequent paving if more buses travel over them. What is the future burden to the taxpayer going to be as fuel, wages and benefit costs increase in the future? I’ve heard no mention of moving underground utilities and improving the BRT route to concrete to accommodate whatever volume of buses will be traveling on those routes.
As I understand it, rail transit offers the opposite from BRT: the upfront costs are greater but there’s an opportunity for transit efficiency and lower operational costs. Grade-separated rail will move a higher volume of people along the fixed route utilizing less labor. The bus system will still be needed to provide all the connectors from the Rail route to the communities and the bus will be able to do what it does well, which is to traverse the linking streets.
I’m unable to see the reasons why expanding an already heavily subsidized bus transit system is the better choice for Honolulu. If anyone has thoughts on this, please share because I truly want to know what I’m overlooking.
Apologies to all…the comment above should have been posted as a reply to At what cost.
Ian, I forgot to comment on your statement: “…the contemporary form of money & politics is a lot more damaging to democracy than the old, nickel and dime stuff.”
Are you saying small kine cheating is better or preferable?
Dan Ariely has a post on NPR: “The ‘Truth’ About Why We Lie, Cheat And Steal” which is about how society’s troubles aren’t always caused by the really bad apples; they’re caused by the scores of slightly rotting apples who are cheating just a little bit.
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/04/154287476/honest-truth-about-why-we-lie-cheat-and-steal
He postulates that by better understanding human nature we can form better policies.
Near the end of the piece he talks about conflicts of interest, which makes the Ikaika Anderson incident mighty interesting.
For Claire,
If I’m not mistaken, I was under the impression that the elevated rail system would also be heavily subsidized?
driving a car is heavily subsidized. if drivers had to pay the actual costs of driving a car, there would be no traffic problem. everyone would have a bus pass.
Earlier, I replied to a comment from another poster on the subject of the savings on fossil fuel consumption rail could potentially provide. I explained that any benefit building rail could provide over an Oahu without rail MAY have disappeared as, since the time the FEIS was assembled (and the FEIS may have been using data older than its completion date), the average fuel mileage requirement for cars has been raised by President Obama to 54.5 mpg by the year 2025.
In my earlier post I was not prepared to cite a source for my claim that, according to the Final EIS for rail, rail’s energy savings over an Oahu without rail was only 3 percent. I’ve since had a chance to locate the 3 percent figure in the Final EIS for rail.
From the Final EIS for the rail project. Chapter 4, Page 7 (4-7)
“Environmental Effects: The Project will reduce daily transportation energy demand by 3 percent.”
And from the same page (as these results may also be impacted by newer 54.5 mpg standard for cars)
“Environmental effects: The Project will reduce regional pollutant emissions between 3.9 to 4.6 percent.”
It would be nice to see an update for this section of the FEIS that takes into account the higher mileage requirements that cars have been mandated to meet. Although the question of whether the auto industry will be able to meet that goal is not yet answered, they appear to be on the way with many cars getting around 40 mpg appearing in showrooms these days.
I feel this “3 percent” reduction in energy demand figure, like the forecast 7.4 percent of the traveling public rail transit ridership figure, and the 1.4 percent of the traveling public that is forecast to give up their cars to switch to riding rail figure, figures which all come from the city’s own rail project FEIS, is one the city goes out of its way to avoid mentioning. It seems the city would much rather leave those details to be filled in by the public’s imagination… with a little help from about two million dollars in PR spending each year, of course.
Some thoughts on the topic of the elevated rail having lower labor costs than buses because the trains will be automated.
I think it’s hard to determine whether this is true or not. Others have pointed out that labor costs that arise out of the creation of the rail transit police force will offset labor savings from the use of automated trains. I’d like to know how large the police force will be and how many non-law enforcement support personnel will be required. I’d also like to know how many hires would be avoided by using rail to replace buses that would run between the ag lands/possible housing development east of existing Kapolei and Ala Moana mall to allow for a labor savings comparison. I think I’ve come across this info before but there is so much information on rail to sort through it gets difficult to remember it all. I think the city’s conclusions are easier to find, but I’d like to see the details that went into those conclusions. That goes for a lot of “facts” about rail.
I also somewhat doubt that the trains will actually be fully driverless. I’m not sure exactly when the decision not to have drivers was made, but if you’ll recall, at the time of the 2008 rail related vote that decision had not yet been made. One of the selling points then was that, for that stretch the rail would run on, you would only need one train operator for every three bus drivers you would need without rail. That was one of the decisions Mufi was waffling on. If the city had decided to go the other way, the trains would still have been automated; but you would have had a driver on standby — just in case.
If you look back on labor activity over the years, labor does not look kindly on the deployment of technologies that eliminate the need for labor. Normally, you would expect current transit workers and their union to be leading the charge against any idea that would replace people with machines. But they’ve been very cooperative with the rail project.
I suspect that if and when rail is built, at some point after the start of operations, the need for operators to be on standby, just in case, will be rediscovered. You might also need someone to visually confirm that no one is trapped part-way through a door. Yes, there are automated safety systems, but they fail once in a while. I think the transit authority, HART, with the strong union representation among its members, will “realize” after the dust settles that a considerably larger number of workers will be needed than first thought. That’s what I suspect anyway.
Some might accuse me of fear mongering, but if that is what you think, please answer this — what was cause of the holdup, why did it take so many years for the city to settle on operating without drivers this time around? Back in ’92 Uncle Fasi’s train was supposed to be fully automated, what changed since then that complicated the decision? What was the internal debate that took years to settle? The concept of having operators aboard the trains must have had something going for it or it would have been dismissed early on. How close of a call was it? And will that call be reversed?
Here’s my overall take on this whole elevated rail versus doing something else debate: Even if you believe that elevated steel on steel rail is the best transit technology — we’ve got the wrong people implementing it.
Ben has my vote!