FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle

Internal emails reveal that Federal Transit Administration officials were skeptical of Honolulu’s plan to spend $5.3 billion on a 20-mile rail transit line. City voters approved this line only after an expensive and hard-fought campaign. One FTA email accused the city of Honolulu of “lousy practices of public manipulation” and argued that the FTA should not only avoid being associated with it, it should “call them on it.”

This and other documents were turned over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit arguing that the city’s environmental impact statement (EIS) failed to consider a full range of alternatives. In a 2006 comment on the city’s plans to write the EIS, FTA staffer James Ryan noted, “We seem to be proceeding in the hallowed tradition of Honolulu rapid transit studies: never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over.” Another FTA official, Joseph Ossi, replied, “This isn’t an FTA issue. Let the city deal with it. They have produced 3 failed projects and are well on their way to a fourth, so why is FTA wasting time on the City’s problems?”

“This is different,” a third FTA staffer, Raymond Sukys, answered. “This time [thanks to a tax increase] they have a huge cash flow which will build something. It seems likely that we will get involved in litigation again especially since we have an erroneous NOI out there. I do not think the FTA should be associated with their lousy practices of public manipulation and we should call them on it.” The “NOI” is the “notice of intent” to prepare an environmental impact statement, and Sukys apparently thought Honolulu’s NOI was insufficient because it failed to identify a full range of alternatives.

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These emails were released to the public by former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano, who is running for Mayor of Honolulu. Cayetano says he thinks the city has higher priorities than building a rail line.

In response to the released emails, Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood assured the Senate Appropriations Committee–which is chaired by Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, who is well known for bringing pork home to his state–that the Department of Transportation is happy to give hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to Honolulu for the rail line. The $250 million that LaHood proposes to give Honolulu in 2013 is “the largest single item in the Department’s New Starts portfolio,” no doubt because of Inouye’s political influence.

“This will deliver people all over the island,” LaHood said, apparently in the belief that Oahu is only 20 miles long and zero miles wide. Oahu is actually nearly 600 square miles, nearly 99 percent of which is more than one-half mile from (and thus effectively inaccessible to) one of the planned rail stations. Of course, LaHood has clearly shown that he cares about building trains more than about either alternatives or the cost effectiveness of those trains.

Rail opponents are confident that they can win their lawsuit. However, the city has allocated a million dollars to fight the suit. The city seems to think it will be cheaper to outspend the opponents than to go back and revise the EIS, which would force it to admit that just about any alternative would be more cost effective than the proposed high-cost, low-capacity rail line.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

10 Responses to FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle

  1. LazyReader says:

    “they have a huge cash flow which will build something”. What an interesting philosophy. Take money and spend it on “something”. Yeah Honolulu has more pressing concerns than rail, like the economy, energy and gas prices (some of the highest in the country), affordable housing, the environment (*see Great Pacific Garbage Patch).

  2. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    “This will deliver people all over the island,” LaHood said, apparently in the belief that Oahu is only 20 miles long and zero miles wide. Oahu is actually nearly 600 square miles, nearly 99 percent of which is more than one-half mile from (and thus effectively inaccessible to) one of the planned rail stations. Of course, LaHood has clearly shown that he cares about building trains than about either alternatives or the cost effectiveness of those trains.

    Sounds like someone was smoking and inhaling before those talking points were provided to USDOT Secretary LaHood.

    In my opinion, a half mile (800 meters) is too far to expect people to walk. One quarter of a mile (400 meters) is more reasonable.

    Even a network of rail lines would not “deliver people all over the island.”

    • bennett says:

      I believe it’s called Maui Wowoie 😉

      As for: “In my opinion, a half mile (800 meters) is too far to expect people to walk. One quarter of a mile (400 meters) is more reasonable.”

      For the fully ambulatory general public, particularly in climates like Oahu, I couldn’t disagree more with the statement above. Obviously the closer the better, but a 1/2 mile is absolutely a reasonable capture area for transit, and has been proven to be so. In many urban transit systems, passengers travel 3/4 to a full mile to transit stops with little to no complaints. Put bicycle storage capacity on the transit vehicles and watch the capture area explode.

      That said, Oahu should take a look at the bus system in Maui. IMHO it’s one of the best in the nation and a lot more cost effective than the current rail project.

      • C. P. Zilliacus says:

        For the fully ambulatory general public, particularly in climates like Oahu, I couldn’t disagree more with the statement above. Obviously the closer the better, but a 1/2 mile is absolutely a reasonable capture area for transit, and has been proven to be so.

        In the case of the Washington (D.C.) Metro, 1/4 mile was usually considered the outer limit for walk access. But Washington has (at times) very cold winter days (not this past one) and blazing hot summers. Stockholm, Sweden (cold, dark winters but glorious summers) seems to assume 500 meters (not much more than 1/4 mile) as an acceptable distance.

        In many urban transit systems, passengers travel 3/4 to a full mile to transit stops with little to no complaints.

        Depends on the climate, doesn’t it?

        Put bicycle storage capacity on the transit vehicles and watch the capture area explode.

        I don’t disagree with you about bikes increasing the capture area, at least when the weather is nice, and especially if the transit system will transport bikes.

        That said, Oahu should take a look at the bus system in Maui. IMHO it’s one of the best in the nation and a lot more cost effective than the current rail project.

        Agreed.

        • bennett says:

          I think we’re on the same page here. Context is everything. A 30 min walk in December in Oahu and in D.C. are very different. 1/4 mile is the industry standard, but those that use the standards blindly and ignore context set themselves up for inefficiencies and may become fodder for future posts by Mr. O’Toole.

  3. LazyReader says:

    You are right it wont deliver people all over the island. One would think that it would work. With 953,000 people (3/4 of the state population), Oahu is the most populated island. If you look at the route map; the rail line is entirely south. It exclusively orbits around Pearl Harbor and a few miles out. Starting at East Kapolei running around the harbor to Pearl City, down the Kamehameha highway and going south-east to reach the airport. Only the last few stations are in (what is technically) Honolulu and ends at Ala Moana Center (the states largest shopping mall). I don’t know about northern Oahu or anything about how many people live there. All I know is they’re getting screwed with no potential transport at all especially if the Bus is cannibalized to keep the rail up and running as long as possible. Even if the system becomes a successful tourist transport, for every tourist you put on board is space that would have been occupied by a potential resident. Oahu receives 5 million visitors annually a lot coming from the U.S. mainland or Asia, if you can calculate the energy it takes to get an individual let alone five million to the middle of the Pacific, it defeats the purpose of this “energy efficient transit” to begin with.

  4. Sandy Teal says:

    Almost all the arguments can be ignored if you are spending other people’s money.

    It is very hard to see a national purpose for building this or almost any other light rail system. The federal funding is just pork.

    • the highwayman says:

      People in HI pay taxes too!

    • bennett says:

      According for you first sentence it’s hard to see a national purpose for the federal government. I obviously disagree with your assessment.

      • Jardinero1 says:

        Thanks for bringing that up Bennett. It is hard to see a purpose for a national government except to provide for the common defense and the regulation of commerce. The states and municipalities provide the bulk of what we call government services, roads, police, fire protection, courts and locally relevant regulation. The federal government provides very little in real service to the citizen, in spite of the fact that it collects the lions share of taxes from the citizens. If the federal government limited itself to the common defense and regulation of commerce, the federal tax burden could be reduced and the states and localities would have an increased ability to tax and spend as is locally appropriate.

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