Tag Archives: Honolulu rail transit

Geller on Rail: “The problem is that we have no part in planning our own communities”

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Larry Geller’s Disappeared News blog took on the issue of rail with an interesting slant:

Although the commercial media have framed the transit issue as Rail/No Rail, that’s not the core problem. The problem is that we have no part in planning our own communities, including, but not limited to, how and where we live and work and how we get about.

Honolulu’s proposed rail transit fails to meet our needs because the rail planning process was tightly controlled and designed to ward off real community participation and discussion in favor of a predetermined plan adopted behind closed doors on the basis of political considerations.

Larry compares Honolulu’s planning process, and it’s rail plan, to that of Portland, Oregon. I hope Larry doesn’t mind this extended excerpt. And I hope you’ll go back to the source and read Larry’s complete original version.

Contrast Portland’s “common-sense” policy with Honolulu, where wide streets like King Street feature uncontrolled crosswalks that take their toll in death and injury year-in and year-out. It seems that pedestrians must die and make the news before a traffic light or pedestrian-crossing warning lights are installed on this island. (Just getting hit by a car isn’t enough—to do any good, your sacrifice has to make the front page.)

This is 1960’s thinking. It was a time when the automobile represented both the economic future of the country and spurred the growth of cities into their surrounding suburbs. People suddenly could live in a different place from where they worked. A network of interlocking highways and cloverleafs overlaid the map of city after city. Honolulu put in the H-1 and H-2 freeways, but never took the next step—ultimately seeing the folly of endless sprawl and switching to keep the city livable by limiting development and incorporating transit into urban planning.

The e2 Transport video was about more than pedestrians. It described how a visionary governor, working with advocates and advocacy groups, put together a plan for urban revitalization and preservation of farmland and suburban areas. The result is that Portlanders today have the benefit of an extensive, expandable transit system that enables people to do without commuting by car to work. The choice of transit modalities also created a new retail prosperity along the transit lines.

In place of urban blight, kids are playing, people are working and shopping, they’re going to church or to downtown events and hopping public transit to get home after enjoying dinner out and perhaps a couple of drinks.

Honolulu’s “urban planning” and its transit plan in particular do not derive from citizen participation, and we’ve been short of visionary leadership as well. Whatever developer wants to pave over farmland gets the green light to do so. The current dispute over whether rail should proceed is only possible because it is a fight among politicians and ideologues. Before this phase of the battle, the City Council wavered over the route (Salt Lake, Nimitz, Dillingham, etc.) based on the whim of city councilmen, not as a result of careful and inclusive urban planning. Pure politics. Little common sense.

Tracking back from disputed rail insurance contract

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There was a good story by Kevin Dayton in yesterday’s Star-Advertiser which traces “irregularities” the bid process that led the city to cancel a contract award for an umbrella “owner controlled insurance program” that would have covered all rail contractors.

Nonsubscribers might try this link: http://fpn.advisen.com/articles/article163579071-2099913611.html

Dayton reported:

An internal investigation by the city Department of Budget and Fiscal Services discovered “irregularities in the evaluation process” that selected Marsh USA Inc. for a $1.68 million contract to serve as broker for the OCIP program.

The investigation found that city risk manager Beverly Braun improperly influenced the ratings by member of the evaluation committee in a way that favored Marsh’s technical score.

Dayton quoted city purchasing administrator, Wendy Inamura, who said they found “no evidence of fraud or bad faith” in the faulty bid process.

It made me wonder how much information about the situation can be found online. You never know what might turn up in a check like this. Probably nothing. But little bits of info can later turn out to be meaningful.

The players include Marsh USA, Aon Risk Services Inc. (the losing bidder that complained), Braun, CALTROP (the consultant recommending the OCIP insurance plan), and the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services, which conducted the internal investigation. The contract would also be interesting to see, along with the original bid results.

I started with the city’s Docushare system, and searched in 2009 documents for “owner controlled insurance,” hoping to find information concerning the original contract awarded at that time.

The only item was Resolution 09-268, “TO RETAIN THE SERVICES OF MCCORRISTON MILLER MUKAI MACKINNON AS SPECIAL DEPUTY CORPORATION COUNSEL FOR THE CITY AND COUNTY OF HONOLULU WITH REGARD TO THE PROCUREMENT BID PROTEST FILED BY AON RISK SERVICES, INC. OF HAWAII,” and an accompanying committee report.

The resolution provides the original RFP number and a few details on the contract award and bid protest.

WHEREAS, the City issued a solicitation for broker services for the Owner Controlled Insurance Program (OCIP) for the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project for the City and County of Honolulu, RFP-BFS-174907, and the contract was awarded to Marsh USA Inc. (“Marsh”) on July 28, 2009.

WHEREAS, a bid protest was filed by Aon Risk Services, Inc. of Hawaii (“Aon”) on August 7, 2009 through its attorneys, the Law Offices of Cades Schutte, in connection with the award of Contract No. CT-BFS-0900306 to Marsh for Owner-Controlled Insurance

Expanding the search to other years found additional information.

Resolution 10-92 traced the subsequent history of competing protests by Marsh and AON filed with the state Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs, and raised the appropriation for legal fees from $50,000 to $70,000.

There’s also a change order for a contract with Kiewit Infrastructure West Co., referred to in Dayton’s story. In the absence of the planned owner-controlled insurance, Kiewet was paid an additional $4 million to buy its own insurance.

That exhausted documents found by searching for owner-controlled insurance.

Next I tried “Marsh USA Inc.”

There’s a February 2005 letter from the acting director of the city’s Dept. of Budget & Fiscal Services referring to Marsh USA as “our broker.”

There are a couple of references to testimony on different matters by Rocco Sansone, Senior Vice President, and Chad W. Karasaki, Managing Director, of Marsh USA, Inc. in Honolulu.

A search of insurance licenses listed four representatives of Marsh USA Inc: Ronald Keith Beers, Kathy Y Dang, Rocco Sansone, and Marissa G. Mandado.

Here’s an interesting coincidence. Although Chad Karasaki was listed as managing director for Marsh USA in the 2007 testimony referred to above, he is now listed in insurance licensing records as a representative of AON Risk Services of Hawaii, which protested the contract award to Marsh. Meaning? Who knows. Item to note? Yes.

That’s all I’ve got time for right now.

As you can see, building up background on an issue takes time and may require approaching from several different directions. It’s always an interesting process, even if it ultimately doesn’t turn up anything worth reporting.

City managing director responds on HPR, and Legislature tries another route to undermine legal reviews of the rail EIS

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We were just a couple of blocks from home on the last leg of yesterday’s early morning walk when a friend stopped her car and rolled down the window.

She was laughing.

“You’re being quoted on public radio right now!”

It was a surprise to me. It was late afternoon before I learned that Honolulu Managing Director and mayoral candidate, Kirk Caldwell, apparently felt he had to respond to my commentary on rail broadcast last week. For those who missed it, my original can be found here.

Frankly, I didn’t hear anything in Caldwell’s generalities to change my mind. But I guess it shows this discussion is being taken seriously.

Then I got a surprise when Hawaii’s Thousand Friends, the public interest environmental and land use planning organization, pointed out that a bill to expedite county processing of permits is being touted as a way to force quick approval of the city’s as yet unpublished EIS for the rail project.

HB 2434, introduced by House Speaker Calvin Say “by request”, started out as what looked like a straightforward proposal to require the other counties to adopt the kind of “third party approval” system that Honolulu has already adopted. It would allow a contractor waiting for a building permit, for example, to hire a private party to review plans and certify that they meet city requirements. This private review is in lieu of action by the county.

The bill also added relatively short deadlines for processing of permits and “other approvals” by the state and counties. If not processed by the 30-45 day deadlines, and without regard to the scope of the proposed action or complexity of the issues raised, applications would be automatically approved.

The automatic approval provisions are extremely broad. Now we know why.

House Standing Committee Report 486 puts the rail issue front and center.

Your Committee finds that while this bill will facilitate all types of construction jobs, its most immediate impact will be to expedite construction of Honolulu rail, which is shovel-ready and will generate jobs and assist local businesses by pouring federal monies into our economy.

The bill has been set for a Friday morning joint hearing before the Senate Committee on Water, Land, Agriculture, and Hawaiian Affairs, chaired by Sen. Clayton Hee, and the Committee on Transportation, International and Intergovernmental Affairs, chaired by Sen. Kalani English.

More information on HB2434, including its current status, the house drafts, committee reports, and testimony, can be found on the Capitol web site.

Consultant says Honolulu transit project open to legal challenge, but light rail alternative would not significantly delay project

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Phil Craig, the consultant who prepared the alternative rail study for Kamehameha Schools, spelled out in a recent email the reasons he believes the city’s rail project is vulnerable to legal challenge.

I’m taking the liberty of quoting him at length.

I suggest a careful read of the Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for High Capacity Transportation Improvements in the Leeward Corridor of Honolulu, HI, as published in the Federal Register, Volume 72, No. 50, pages 12254 to 12257, Thursday, March 15, 2007. For your convenience and those of others copied on this message, I am attaching a copy, which I used as one of the appendices to my light rail transit report to Kamehameha Schools.

This notice, placed in the Federal Register by the United States Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration and by the City and County of Honolulu, specifically stated under V. Alternatives, Fixed Guideway Systems (page 12256):

” The draft EIS would consider five distinct transit technologies: Light trail [sic] transit, rapid rail transit, rubber-tired guided vehicles, a magnetic levitation system, and a monorail system.”

In contrast with the above, the DEIS prepared by CCH, and upon which a 45-day public comment period (ending on February 6, 2009) was held after its approval by Region 9 of the Federal Transit Administration, considered only one transit technology, rapid rail transit [the all-elevated automated light metro] with three routing variations: via HNL Airport, via Salt Lake Boulevard, and via both the Airport and Salt Lake Boulevard.

Simply stated, the DEIS did not conform to the Notice of Intent published in the Federal Register. This was brought to the attention of USDOT’s most senior officials by the late Councilmember Duke Bainum and his colleague, Charles Djou in their June 2, 2009 letter. To date, however, both CCH and USDOT/FTA have chosen to ignore that fact as they attempt to “railroad” the HHCTC Project through the environmental review process (no doubt encouraged to do so by certain members of Hawai’i’s Congressional Delegation).

It is my understanding of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the agency regulations implementing it that it is mandatory that parties responsible for preparing, reviewing and approving an Environmental Impact Statement must adhere to that which was published in the Federal Register.

Inasmuch as the USDOT/FTA and CCH failed to comply with the published intent of the DEIS, it is my belief that this deficiency alone is sufficient grounds for a successful legal action in the Federal Courts that, if pursued, will result in setting aside any Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) or Record of Decision (ROD) based upon it published or approved by the Federal Transit Administration. The end result would be that construction of any part of the Honolulu High Capacity Transit Project, as currently constituted, would be enjoined for failure to comply with NEPA.

While there are other significant areas in which the DEIS is defective, I hope that this fundamental and glaring lapse of process does not pass unnoticed by those concerned with the future of the Island of O’ahu.

Craig has also spelled out why it is not “too late” to consider more flexible light rail technology, as the Hannemann Administration claims.

The HHCTC Project is only in a conceptual engineering phase; preliminary engineering is yet to begin, let alone final engineering. If the City Administration were to issue an addendum to its Request for Proposals seeking a Design, Build, Operate and Maintain (DBOM) Contractor calling for the use of low-floor light rail vehicles (instead of high-floor light metro cars) with rolling stock maintenance and storage facilities to match, and allowed an additional 90 days to allow its three bidders (AnsaldoBreda, Bombardier and the Japanese consortium) to revise their proposals for the initial East Kapolei to Peal Highlands segment, Notice to Proceed still could be issued to the successful bidder by February/March 2010 instead of November/December 2009 as currently proclaimed to be possible.

Please note that all three of these companies have light rail vehicles in their catalogs that would be suitable for use in Honolulu. Indeed, were the City Administration willing to revise the DBOM Contract and reopen the bidding, it is probable that firms like Alstom and Siemens that dropped out and others like KinkiSharyo of Japan and Hyundai/Rotem of South Korea that chose not to enter the competition – which also could provide suitable vehicles – would reconsider their previous positions and expand the competition for this work.

The only other significant revision to the proposed contracts would be to require that the height of the high-level platforms of the planned elevated station be lowered to fourteen inches (14″) above top-of-rail to match the floor height of low-floor light rail vehicles. The major impact of this change would be to result in shorter rises in mezzanine or street to platform rises of escalator, elevator and stairways. Station designs also are preliminary at this point – to something changing also would not delay completion of the project by four-to-five years.

And why should we take Craig seriously?

You can make your own assessment of his credentials as an experienced rail planner and consultant, which appear to me to be impressive.