Category Archives: Planning

Yesterday’s traffic gridlock should not have been a surprise

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The tsunami warning created massive gridlock across urban Honolulu, but luckily the damaging waves didn’t materialize.

I’m not talking about the scene in Hawaii yesterday.

I’m thinking back nearly 40 years to the tsunami warning on May 7, 1986, an event Meda and I have referred to since as the Pseudonami. Large earthquake, with major potential for a destructive series of waves that eventually turned out to be much less than feared.

I was working at the time for Common Cause, which had a small office on the second floor of what was then referred to as the Armed Service YMCA building (harkening back to its pre-WWII history), later known as the Hemmeter building, and now the No. 1 Capitol District Building. Right across Alakea Street from the State Capitol,

Meda was still splitting her time between teaching 1/2-time at Honolulu Community College and spending the other half in a research position on the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus.

This was one of her HCC days. Our routine was that Meda would drop me off downtown in the morning on her way to HCC, and then pick me up at the end of the day. We assumed our regular routine would work as Honolulu evacuated.

It was about 1.6 miles from the campus to my location by the capitol, usually a 10-minute drive. But as happened yesterday, Pseudonami evacuation created massive traffic jams and gridlock across the city. It ended up taking several hours for Meda to get to downtown.

That was nearly 40 years ago, and in the intervening years there has been a lot of discussion of techniques for avoiding or controlling gridlock that should be part of emergency preparedness planning. But perhaps that discussion hasn’t trickled down into our state and local planning.

Here’s a link to one video showing yesterday’s traffic gridlock in Honolulu, and there are many others to be found online.

Since we’re traveling, I’ve been scouring news reports looking for evidence that any traffic abatement strategies were deployed yesterday as part of the emergency plan. So far, I haven’t found any mentions.

Please share a comment if you observed any actions of this kind.

I just took a look at the State of Hawaii Integrated Preparedness Plan 2025-2026 (January 31, 2025). The word “traffic” does not appear in it. Various sub-plans discuss the category termed “Transportation,” but this focuses on organizing the resources needed to rebuild roads and bridges, and get airports and harbors functioning as soon as possible.

I asked ChatGPT to summarize recommendations for planning to deal with gridlock. Here’s its answer.

Actionable Best Practices

1. Use zoned evacuation orders to reduce surge traffic.

2. Implement contraflow lane reversals on controlled-access roads when feasible.

3. Block inbound traffic to full evacuation zones.

4. Activate emergency alternate routes or bypass roads in bottleneck areas.

5. Reprogram traffic signals for evacuation priority.

6. Send urgent alerts and encourage walking if possible.

7. Avoid fueling during evacuee movement in critical areas.

8. Direct vertical/walking evacuations in high-density zones where vehicle use can be minimized.

9. Deploy law enforcement personnel to manage intersections and enforce evacuation routing.

Cautionary tale of post-fire response in Oregon

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Three years ago, wildfires burned in many parts of Oregon. More than 4,000 homes were destroyed, about half of them manufactured homes, which represented significant amounts of affordable housing.

In response, the state legislature authorized spending $161 million to provide about 1,000 permanent housing units for low-income residents in 15 projects.

Today the Oregonian newspaper reported that the promises have not yet been fulfilled (“Oregon promised permanent housing for wildfire survivors. Victims are still waiting 3 years later“).

Two of the largest projects, in southern Oregon, are substantially behind schedule and timelines for completion remain murky. In one case, agency leaders failed to effectively navigate warnings about alleged construction defects and didn’t tell people expecting the homes until 14 months later.

As a result, some low-income Oregonians waiting for years to move into new homes or apartments remain stuck living in state-funded RVs or former hotel and motel rooms converted into cramped studios.

There have been contruction problems. Unresolved financing issues. Unexplained delays. Lack of public information.

Repairing construction defects in modular homes delivered to one project “would likely exceed the value of the newly built homes,” the Oregonian reported. The story goes into greater detail as the problems kept coming.

If there are lessons to be learned from the Oregon experience, Hawaii officials should be paying close attention to what has gone wrong there and how to avoid similar delays.

Portland initiative in response to public violence

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I was interested in a story published earlier this week by The Oregonian/OregonLive describing a program of “bystander training” in light of staffing issues with the Portland police that have resulted in longer police response times to incidents.

It seems like the kind of initiative that would be useful to learn more about, with an eye towards bringing similar training to Honolulu.

Portland police advise people to call 911 first, but as the bureau deals with low staffing, they don’t always come to the scene. In the absence of an immediate police response, numerous organizations teach bystanders how they can safely intervene.

Portland’s Office of Community and Civic Life offers 90-minute free personal safety workshops by request.

Other workshops are offered by the Portland Peace Team, which focuses on non-violent techniques for reducing violence.

“They teach CLARA to address de-escalation: Calm and center, listen, affirm, respond and add,” according to the story.

The Portland Peace Team was founded by Tom Hastings, a conflict resolution professor at Portland State University, and others. The organization provides nonviolent de-escalation at local events, where peace team members wear blue vests to identify themselves.

The Portland Peace Team also provides training in peacekeeping, including de-escalation, bystander intervention, facilitation, and more to community groups.

“The Portland Peace Team offers unarmed public safety assistance to any nonviolent organization or event and has done so since 2012,” Hastings said. “The Portland Peace Team wants to join with all Portlanders to restore our culture of nonviolence, no hatred, and activism for justice.”

A short tale of death and dying in the season of the coronavirus

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The text message from a friend arrived at 5:11 a.m. on Monday.

My Mom died yesterday. I am so sad. Love to you both.”

My friend and I were classmates in the 2nd grade at Kahala Elementary School the year the school first opened its doors. We went up through sixth grade together, then went our separate ways to different high schools, but reconnected in 2015 (along with other classmates) when Kahala School celebrated its 60th birthday, and she returned for her 50th high school reunion.

Since we reconnected, she has been a frequent visitor to Hawaii from her home base in Denver, flying into town every 6-8 weeks to visit her mother at the Kahala Nui retirement community. She’s joined us on our early morning walks on Kahala beach, and shared many late afternoon glasses of wine on our back deck, several times with others who can trace back to the same 2nd grade class.

Her visits were stopped by the coronavirus, the suspension of most air travel, and the stay-at-home protocol we were all asked to follow. Kahala Nui locked down. No visitors allowed. That was an smart move that appears to have avoided the spread of COVID-19 among the residents, but tough on residents and their families.

She kept in touch with her mother by phone, and Facetime calls, but of course it’s not the same. And then, less than two weeks ago, an infection put her mom in the hospital. My friend still wasn’t too worried. She knew her that her mom was a strong woman, even though over 90.

One of those things. She was strong and ready to live to a hundred. And then, suddenly, she wasn’t.

My friend knows her mother was asking for her during those final days. But even if she somehow managed to get flights to Hawaii, she would have been subject to the 14-day quarantine, and likely would not have been allowed into the hospital anyway. There don’t appear to be any bereavement exceptions built into the current rules.

So she was more than 3,000 miles away and couldn’t do anything other than watch from a distance and wait for the news that finally came on Sunday.

“It was hard not to be there,” she commented.

And what now? She has no way to know when it will be possible to get back to Hawaii to deal with all the bureaucracy of death.

These are such emotionally draining moments under the best of circumstances. And these are far from the best circumstances.