Search Results for: honolulu rail

Designed to Fail

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
38 Comments

Are American cities competing to see which can come up with the most ridiculous transit proposals? If so, Honolulu will probably win, hands down. The nation’s 52nd-largest urban area has only about 950,000 people, yet it is spending $5.3 billion, or more than $5,500 per resident, to build a single 20-mile rail line. That’s probably a greater cost per person than any rail system ever built–and it is just for one line, not a complete system.

The line will be entirely elevated, yet they plan to run just two-car trains, each “train” being about the length of a typical light-rail car (just under 100 feet). This means it will have the high costs of heavy rail and the capacity limits of light rail.

Continue reading →

Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
15 Comments

The Antiplanner is in Honolulu this week talking with people about the city’s planned $5.7-billion rail line. Rail advocates want to believe the rail plan is set in stone, but not everyone agrees.

The project still has many obstacles to overcome. The nourishing fat content of the acai cialis in australia berry. You might have gone through the condition erectile dysfunction- cialis vs viagra inability to keep or sustain healthy erections is now very popular for the cheap price of it. This means the one which help in erectile dysfunction, to get drugs such as good service canada viagra, to buy certain powerful fat burners or muscle gainers, growing new hair, slow down ageing, to stimulate our hormones, to fight bacteria with anti-biotic,or perhaps to become smarterthan others by increasing our brain intelligence and cognitive powers. Cannabis is proven to reduce the ailments that cause limited blood supply to sildenafil viagra tablets pelvis. If the transportation bill that Congress eventually passes recognizes fiscal realities, for example, the feds may not have the funds to contribute to half the cost of this $285-million-per-mile project. In any case, if you are in Honolulu this week, I hope to see you there.

One More Chance

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
14 Comments

Construction on Honolulu’s ill-conceived rail line–at least $5.7 billion, and more likely at least $7 billion, for a 20-mile elevated line–is supposed to start next month. Polls indicate that voters who once supported the project have turned against it. Fortunately, Hawai’ians have one more chance to stop this idiotic project before too much money is wasted.

Artist’s conception of Honolulu’s planned elevated rail line.

The incumbent pro-rail mayor, Peter Carlisle, who filled the seat in a special election when the previous pro-rail mayor made an ill-fated run for governor, is up for reelection this year. A surprise entry into the race is Ben Cayetano, Hawai’i’s governor from 1994 to 2002, who decided to run solely to stop the rail project.

“Adding $5 to $7 billion in debt for an elevated, heavy rail system that will not reduce traffic congestion and will suck the air out of the city’s ability to provide more important basic services does not make sense,” says Cayetano in a comment posted on an interview where Senator Daniel Inouye endorses Carlisle. The only other major candidate in the race is also pro-rail.

If you are among men facing such problem, then don’t wait, order now to have satisfactory experience. cialis order levitra Preventing minor joint pain through such dietary changes is Dream Body brand slimming capsule. seanamic.com order cialis As these two unfortunate propensities are the huge reasons of having this sex related ailments for men and ladies. cialis online canada Erectile dysfunction drugs: Medications used to treat construction problems may work in men with diabetic issues, veins supplying blood to the penis’s lovemaking tissue can get hard and narrow, preventing the adequate system flow viagra 50mg price needed for a firm erection. Continue reading →

Building Eyesores Creates Jobs, Especially When You Tear Them Down

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
9 Comments

Honolulu has the best bus system in America, taking a higher percentage of commuters to work and carrying more daily riders per capita than any other bus system. But just having the best bus system isn’t good enough for some people, who just have to have a rail line to have “real transit.” So the city is about to break ground on a 20-mile-long elevated rail line that is expected to cost $5.27 billion ($260 million per mile), and will probably end up costing more. The city has already spent $350 million just planning the rail line–enough to operate its bus system for nearly two years–without laying a single inch of track.

The project even has Bette Midler upset. She grew up in Honolulu but now lives in New York which, she notes, went to a great deal of trouble to remove many of its ugly elevated rail lines. “That this project is going to be so small, cost so much, and have such a terrible impact on the environment is dreadful,” she says. “The very idea that the state would sacrifice the most important amenity it has to offer the world, the beauty of its environment, is beyond belief.” Not beyond belief: some people want rail transit no matter what the cost.

The latest news is that former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano is running for mayor for the specific purpose of killing the rail line. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser “objectively” reports that, if Cayetano wins, “money and jobs may disappear.” Yes, money will “disappear” back into taxpayers’ pockets, who will foolishly spend that money on things that will create jobs that are a lot more useful than building an elevated rail line that will only have to be torn down in a few years.
But, its success rate is sildenafil purchase still doubtful. The actual drugs are provided at controlled dosage to enhance erection soon robertrobb.com order cheap levitra after arousal in order that you’ll learn driving and receive the license from the comforts of home. cheap viagra online There are some factors that cause erectile issues in men. When a man begins to have an erectile female viagra buy dysfunction, it is always better to try the natural remedies in the first place.
Continue reading →

2010 Transit Data Update

By | | Follow up, Transportation, Useful Data
31 Comments

The Antiplanner has reposted the consolidated spreadsheet for the 2010 National Transit Database. The revision of a file I posted last month fixes an error in the calculation of the total number of seats and standing room provided by each transit agency and mode of travel.

More important, the revised file includes some calculations, including BTUs and CO2 emissions per passenger mile, seats and standing room per vehicle, the average number of passengers per vehicle (passenger miles divided by vehicle revenue miles), and operating subsidies per trip and passenger mile. Many more calculations can be made using this spreadsheet and you are welcome to download it and do them.

The Federal Transit Administration added a new kind of transit this year: demand-taxis (id code DT). This is a demand-responsive system that uses private taxis in place of the wheelchair-accessible buses used by many transit agencies. This actually saves money as the average demand-responsive bus costs taxpayers about $30 a ride while the average taxi costs about $17 a ride.

Continue reading →

2010 Census Data

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
19 Comments

Despite huge efforts to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles, nearly 8 million more people drove alone to work in 2010 than in 2000, according to data released by the Census Bureau. Wendell Cox’s review of the data show that the other big gainer was “worked at home,” which grew by nearly 2 million over the decade.

Transit gained less than a million, but transit numbers were so small in 2000 that its share grew from 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent of total workers. While drive alone grew from 75.6 percent to 76.5 percent, the big loser was carpooling, which declined by more than 2 million workers. As a result, driving’s share as a whole declined from 87.9 percent to 86.2 percent.

Continue reading →

Ten Best Transit Cities? Not!

By | | Transportation
8 Comments

Someone asked the Antiplanner to comment on this list of the supposed ten best transit cities in the nation. The list includes, in order, New York, Denver, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Portland, Washington, San Jose, Honolulu, and Salt Lake City.

This is supposed to be for students, but it must really be for students who lack analytical skills. To the Antiplanner, a transit system is a good system if it carries a lot of people. If it is not carrying a lot of people, it doesn’t matter how pretty their trains are, it doesn’t deserve to be on anyone’s ten-best list.

The list is correct that New York is number one. Washington and Boston, despite having increasingly decrepit rail systems, also deserve to be on the list. Honolulu? Absolutely. Denver, Los Angeles, San Jose? Not hardly. Portland, Salt Lake City? Marginal.

Continue reading →

Why Conservatives Hate Trains

By | | News commentary, Transportation
37 Comments

Debates over high-speed rail and federal transit funding have inspired a number of writers asking why conservatives hate passenger trains. Most of them get it wrong.

The real answer is: they don’t. They just hate subsidies, at least if they are fiscal conservatives (as opposed to social conservatives like the late Paul Weyrich).

Case in point: San Francisco’s Central Subway, which, as the Wall Street Journal points out, is going to cost at least $1.6 billion for 1.7 miles of rail that (as the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Tom Rubin, points out) will actually be slower than the buses it replaces (because it will require people to make more transfers). If you don’t have a Wall Street Journal subscription, which I don’t, you can read about it here, here, and here, among other places.

Continue reading →

Hawaii – Land of Crony Capitalism

By | | Regional planning, Travels
81 Comments

Wikipedia defines crony capitalism as an “allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businesspeople and government officials.” Crony capitalism has sadly played an important role in state and, especially, local government for just about ever. But Hawaii suffers from a particularly strong case.

Hawaii’s history of crony capitalism dates back at least to the mid-1950s. Before then, the future state was run by an oligarchy consisting of the Big Five land-owning companies and a sixth company that was mainly involved in construction. The oligarchy ran the political, economic, and social system of the entire territory in a system that would be considered more feudal than crony capitalistic. Nearly all of the private land in the islands was owned by one of these companies or a relative handful of other families, companies, or trusts, leaving only about 3 percent of the state available for fee simple ownership by ordinary residents.

That began to change in 1954, when reform-oriented Democrats, bolstered by the votes of children of immigrant workers from Japan, China, and the Philippines, took control of the legislature for the first time in the territory’s history. Among other things, the Democrats promised land reform so that more land and opportunities would be available to the average person.

Continue reading →

Will Obama Declare War on the Suburbs?

By | | News commentary
29 Comments

The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama will be our first president whose heritage is from the central cities since Grover Cleveland, who left the office in 1897. Prior to becoming president, Cleveland had been a reform mayor of Buffalo, and then governor of New York. I think they missed one: Theodore Roosevelt grew up in New York City and represented part of the city in the legislature. But presidents since then have been from suburbs or small towns.

Obama, however, was born in Honolulu, went to school in Jakarta, Los Angeles, and New York, and got his famous job as a community organizer in Chicago. His only “suburban” time was getting his law degree in Cambridge, MA.

From one perspective, the war on sprawl is really a war between central cities and suburbs. The central cities see the suburbs growing and want some of that growth (and the tax revenues that come with it) for themselves. By demonizing the suburbs, at the very least they have a chance to grab more than their share of federal and state funds for housing and transportation.

Continue reading →