Tag Archives: Mufi Hannemann

Cayetano questions city rail contracts, plus more on mayor’s plan to raid the Clean Water & Natural Lands Fund

3 Replies

Good story by Sean Hao in today’s Advertiser concerning a complaint about procurement practices at the city filed on behalf of former Gov. Ben Cayetano and others.

If you’re interested in reading more, here’s the link to the pending complaint, which once again wasn’t included in the story.

Political note: Gov. Cayetano and his wife are backing Ed Case in the 1st Congressional race, and hosted an April 27 fundraiser for Case at the Mandalay Restaurant.

Here’s a little follow-up to the recent entry concerning Mayor Hannemann’s plan to divert money from the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund into the city’s rail project.

An April 16, 2010 letter from attorney Bruce L. Lamon to the director of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting alerted me to the fact that the city is pretty far down the path of raiding the Clean Water fund.

Lamon, representing Leeward Land Company, Ltd., takes issue with a city application to add a park onto the Waianae Public Infrastructure Map. Land for the proposed Waianae Regional Park would, according to the city’s application, be purchased using the $3 million from the CWNL Fund that is included in the pending city budget. Leeward is the owner of the land at issue.

Lamon’s letter addresses several policy and legal issues, including the CWNL Fund use restrictions of the City Charter and implementing ordinance:

Use of money from the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund (“Fund”) would be bad public policy, usurp the proper role of the City Council in prioritizing expenditures from the Fund and illegal.

The letter addresses the questionable legality of using the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund for this purpose, beginning at the top of page 4 and continuing to page 5.

The [Clean Water and Natural Lands] Commission has labored admirably to develop objective ranking criteria, to facilitate public input and access to its deliberations and to “create a public process that sets a bar of excellence for how this new fund is used for the benefit of the City and all of its citizens.” By proposing this PIM revision with the intent to finance acquisition from the Fund, the Department is not only proposing to violate the law and bypass the Council’s control over the disposition of the Fund, but to circumvent the Commission and make a mockery of its efforts and proceedings, and of all those who in good faith have submitted funding applications and helped evaluate them.

Of course, the landowner has its own interests in this situation, but its assessment of the legal issues surrounding use of the CWNL Fund reinforces the analysis presented here.

What happened to the light rail alternative to Honolulu’s transit plan?

18 Replies

Thanks to RLB for returning to the issue of the city’s examination of alternatives in a comment a couple of days ago. He wrote, in part:

I don’t pretend to understand the ins & outs of the Environmental Impact Statement planning and implementation, but I don’t see how your statements are supported by publicly available documents.

For example, in the City’s Alternatives Analysis, Chapter 2 has a section called “Alternatives Considered.” It says:

“The alternatives considered during screening included a No Build Alternative, a Transportation System Management Alternative, and a number of ‘build’ alternatives.Transit technologies that were examined included conventional bus, guided bus, LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT [emphasis mine], personal rapid transit, people mover, monorail, magnetic levitation, rapid rail,”

I appreciate the reference back to source documents, and I think RLB is right in saying that it is hard to understand how the light rail alternative could not have been evaluated. So let’s take a closer look.

Light rail, being the dominant form of new or planned urban rail transit systems over the past twenty years, was necessarily the most obvious alternative technology.

Beginning in the fall of 2005, the city did the preliminary screening of alternatives that RLB refers to, and published the “Alternatives Screening Memo” in October 2006. Several different alternatives were rated. Light rail was called “a strongly recommended technology“.

Recommendation – Light Rail is a strongly recommended technology for alternatives with limited portions of mixed traffic and predominately exclusive right-of-way, although the transition between the two types of service will pose technical challenges (power collection and visual impact). This technology is also recommended for analysis for alternatives with exclusive right-of-way.”

The alternatives screening memo concluded by recommending that light rail should be included among several technologies to be further considered.

But when the Alternatives Screening Report followed just a month later, several technologies had been dropped after further consideration, and just four alternatives were included in the analysis.

No Build

Transportation System Management

Managed Lane

Fixed Guideway

Light rail was not neither rejected nor included for any additional analysis. It was essentially ignored, although it could have been assumed to be included in the “fixed guideway” option.

This is suggested by a list of issues that remained “unresolved” after the Alternatives Analysis had been completed, which included: “Selection of transit technology for the Fixed Guideway Alternative (if selected)”.

Supporting this view was the city’s official response to those who commented on specific types of transit technologies during the screening analysis:

“Vehicle and system technologies will not be selected prior to the draft Environmental Impact Statement. Comments about issues related to vehicle and system technologies will be considered when specifications are developed.”

In December 2006, the Honolulu City Council adopted a “locally preferred alternative” by passing Bill 79 (2006).

In Part III of the bill, the council reserved the right to select the technology to be used, clearly indicating that the choice of a particular fixed-guideway technology was still in the future.

The council reserves the right to select the technology of the fixed guideway system for the locally preferred alternative.

AIA testified in favor of Bill 79.

AIA supports the fixed-guideway alternative…We strongly support the implementationof this system.

And, at the beginning of 2007, when Honolulu architects began pressing for a dialog on design issues, including alternatives to an all-elevated system, the city rejected their requests, saying it was too early for such discussions.

According to PBN (2/23/2007):

oru Hamayasu, chief planner for the city and county’s Department of Transportation Services, said it’s too early in the process for architects to get involved. The city’s consultant, New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc., has its own architects working on the project.

“We are sensitive to design details and we certainly would welcome the help from the AIA in the next phase when we get into design elements,” Hamayasu said. “I understand AIA’s desire to get involved early, but right now it’s really, really early.”

This view was reiterated in the legal notice published in the Federal Register announcing the city’s intent to do an EIS for its rail project (3/15/2007).

In a section on “Alternatives”, the legal notice stated:

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

It went on to describe alternative alignments that would be considered. It is interesting to note that both were described as including elevated as well as at-grade sections.

The legal notice then specifically provided:

At this time, comments should focus on the scope of the NEPA review and should not state a preference for a particular alternative. The best opportunity for that type of input will be after teh release of the draft EIS. [page 12255]

The subsequent NEPA Scoping Report, published in May 2007, appeared to confirm that light rail was still an option.

Comments were received in favor of monorail, light rail, and rapid rail…No information was received that would eliminate one or more of the transit technologies currently under consideration.”

But later in 2007, more than a year before the draft EIS would be published, AIA protested to Mayor Hannemann that a “request for information” sent to rail manufacturers contained specifications that would preclude any at-grade option.

In a December 28, 2007 letter from AIA Honolulu President Peter Vincent to Mayor Hannemann, it was pointed out that the specifications were imposed by the city and were not at the suggestion of the city’s consultants.

According to comments made by the City’s transportation consultants, the decision to design an elevated system was mandated by the City and was not the result of the recommendations of industry experts.

This letter drew a heated response from the mayor, essentially telling AIA that it was too late to discuss technology choices, contrary to repeated public reassurances, legal notices, and explicit instructions over the prior two years.

Mayor Hannemann dismissed the AIA’s concerns as “11th hour opposition”.

Publication of the draft EIS and its presentation of the impacts of various alternatives, which was supposed to be the starting point for discussion of particular technologies, was still more than ten months away.

And when the draft EIS was issued, light rail was not one of the alternatives considered. It simply disappeared, without comment.

RLB is right. It’s hard to see how this could have happened, given all of those references including light rail among the alternatives to be studied. But light rail, the most widely used urban transit technology and the most obvious alternative, was ultimately ignored and dismissed without comment or explanation.

The Neil-Mufi rematch could reflect more than a little of 1986

16 Replies

This early phase of the Abercrombie-Hannemann 2010 gubernatorial battle royal is already giving me the creeps.

Do you remember what happened the last time around?

It was 1986, and Congressman Cec Heftel resigned in order to come back and run for governor.

A special election to fill the short remainder of Heftel’s term was scheduled for the same day as the primary election.

[text]It was a nasty campaign, with Mufi hurling drug-innuendo and long-haired-haole stereotypes at Neil (who was already many years past his “Super Senator” persona, having served in both the state Houswe and Senate) and rumors/attacks/smears undermining Heftel’s effort.

When the votes were counted, Neil won the special election and spent several months as a member of Congress, but Mufi won the primary election and the right to face the Republican opponent in November.

Mufi’s negative campaigning had alienated a hefty chunk of Democratic voters, and in the general election face-off moderate republican Pat Saiki beat Mufi for the right to represent Honolulu’s normally Democratic 1st Congressional District.

Okay. Here we are 24 years later, and the Office of Elections says there’s no money for a special election, so it might be delayed until September’s primary.

Charles Djou is no Pat Saiki. But you can see various ways this year’s election can end up with strange results.

In the Congressional race, could strong Democratic candidates split the field and allow a Republican to carry the special election and take that mantle of incumbency into the general election? Actually, Democrat Ed Case seems more likely to take votes from Djou, giving Senate President Hanabusa a strong race. It’s a race that could turn nasty, with overtones of the original Neil-Mufi fight.

Could a candidate repeat Neil’s feat and win the special election but lose the general? At this point, anything seems possible.

Then there’s the Neil v. Mufi rematch. Could the primary campaign exacerbate divisions among Democrats and cause enough to withhold their votes in the general to give the GOP candidate a winning boost in the process?

Much of this, of course, is really positioning for those two U.S. Senate seats which will be open, one way or another, within the next few years.

What a wild year it’s going to be.

Kamehameha School’s plan puts organization fully into transit debate

5 Replies

Back in April 2009, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects held a panel discussion at which a mainland transit consultant predicted Honolulu’s rail EIS could be “in trouble”.

As I wrote at the time, the problem is “the city failed to deliver an environmental impact study that fulfilled what was promised in the official notice published in the Federal Register.”

Consultant Phil Craig told a gathering of architects that the Federal Register notice for the transit Environmental Impact Study committed the city to providing an analysis of alternatives, including “light” rail at grade as well as the “heavy” rail system favored by the city administration. But Craig said the available alternatives were never explored adequately or seriously considered, a flaw which he said could open the EIS to challenge.

What wasn’t clear at the times is that Craig was in Hawaii on a project funded by Kamehameha Schools to develop an alternative transit proposal to compete with the city’s proposed all-elevated system.

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser reports on Craig’s study, which has the potential to shave $1.7 billion off the transit price tag and also make the rail far more user and community friendly as it passes through Honolulu’s urban core.

Although the Advertiser says that the study has been in the hands of the Hannemann adminstration since “last month”.

What isn’t at all clear is whether Kamehameha made the study available to the Advertiser or is still trying to remain behind the scenes in the highly political jockeying for position.

Kamehameha is perhaps the only entity with the clout and deep pockets to force the city to seriously consider reasonable changes to its plan. I would imagine any signals that Kamehameha might back a legal challenge to the adequacy of the city’s environmental impact statement and its lack of consideration of alternatives could put the Hannemann administration in the position of having to either significantly delay until a legal ruling or make design concessions to placate critics.

I’m hoping Mayor Hannemann can actually show some real leadership and make the decision that there would be significant public benefits to the Kamehameha plan, both in cost savings and rider experience. The mayor’s leadership could demonstrate that he can do more than exhibit stubborn resolve, but can actually change direction when the evidence mounts up. That’s the sign of a good leader, and there’s always a chance that, facing a possible legal challenge with direct or tacit support from players like Kamehameha Schools, the mayor will see his way to a win-win resolution. He gets to deliver a rail transit system, as promised, and the public gets a less expensive, less intrusive, and more user-friendly design.