Still on track?

by billso on Wednesday, 2 April 2008

Tomor­row, the Hon­olulu city coun­cil resumes its dis­cus­sion of the rapid mass tran­sit project. The city coun­cil has to make its deci­sion: rail, bus or maglev. Bob­bie Slater in the Hawaii Reporter has a good overview of what the meet­ing might be like.

Despite Todd Apo’s last-minute amend­ment, mag­netic lev­i­ta­tion may be elim­i­nated. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment can­celed a major maglev train project in Munich last week, accord­ing to Wired. One of the lead con­trac­tors in the pro­posed project, Thy­seenK­rupp, may sell its maglev busi­ness unit to a Chi­nese com­pany, accord­ing to Deutsche Welle. This Reuters arti­cle describes the con­tro­versy as Ger­man politi­cians and exec­u­tives scurry to escape blame.

Noth­ing has been set in stone, of course. The loca­tion of the tran­sit sta­tions may shift for many rea­sons. This arti­cle in revealed that the UH-Weat Oahu train stop has been moved 1000 feet away from cam­pus to accom­mo­date exist­ing roads and a planned hous­ing devel­op­ment. Some Salt Lake res­i­dents are con­cerned with noise from the pro­posed train sys­tem. Coun­cil­man Romy Cachola man­aged to divert the sys­tem through his dis­trict, in exchange for his vote last year.

No Aloha

Mazie Hirono has already spo­ken to Jim Ober­star about Aloha Air­lines. Dan Inouye may hold his own Sen­ate hear­ing on Aloha. See today’s Adver­tiser for details.

The state can­not afford to build mass tran­sit or high­way sys­tems on its own. Trans­porta­tion is a pub­lic util­ity, much like the water, elec­tric and tele­phone sys­tems. As the state’s tax rev­enues dip, other com­pa­nies like Hawai­ian Tel­com are strug­gling to pre­serve their revenues.

Fed­eral money is the key

Jim Ober­star is chair of a pow­er­ful Con­gres­sional trans­porta­tion com­mit­tee, and he’s promised US$900M in Fed­eral money for the Hon­olulu rapid mass tran­sit project. He does like to use his power. It’s part of a long tra­di­tion of upper Mid­west­ern con­gress­men like Wal­ter Mon­dale, Hubert Humphrey, Jim Sensen­bren­ner and others.

Cur­ry­ing favor with Ober­star is smart lob­by­ing. With­out Fed­eral funds, Hon­olulu can’t keep up with its traf­fic prob­lem. The state can­not afford any sort of solu­tion on its own.

I still pre­fer the big buses to trains. The lone dis­senter on the tech­nol­ogy panel, Panos Preve­douros, has an arti­cle in yesterday’s Hawaii Reporter about the panel’s abbre­vi­ated decision-making process.

The UH pro­fes­sor also notes that San Francisco’s BART sys­tem faces a US$11 bil­lion bill to refur­bish its trains and tracks. Hon­olulu would face a sim­i­lar bill after 20 or 30 years of rail ser­vice, espe­cially if the tracks start rust­ing like Aloha Sta­dium did.

Dksopedia’s arti­cle on Hon­olulu fixed rail has been updated recently, and it has a nice ref­er­ence list and timeline.

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Tagged as: airline, Aloha, California, congress, Federal, government, Hawaii, Honolulu, mass-transit, minnesota, rail, train, USA, Wisconsin

  • http://billso.com billso

    Accord­ing to today’s Hon­olulu Adver­tiser:

    The City Council’s Com­mit­tee on Trans­porta­tion and Pub­lic Works yes­ter­day voted 4–1 to elim­i­nate rubber-tire and mag­netic lev­i­ta­tion tech­nol­ogy from con­sid­er­a­tion for the 20-mile tran­sit net­work. The vote, which fol­lowed an eight-hour hear­ing, reverses a March 19 coun­cil deci­sion to con­tinue to eval­u­ate all three technologies.

    The coun­cil is expected to con­tinue to debate tech­nol­ogy options prior to a final vote April 16. How­ever, most com­mit­tee mem­bers yes­ter­day felt the issue has been debated enough.

    “I don’t think we com­ply with what we said we were going to do if we throw out (for con­tin­ued delib­er­a­tion) three tech­nolo­gies,” said coun­cil mem­ber Todd Apo. “We need to make that deci­sion. I do believe that steel on steel is the best selec­tion for what we are try­ing to do.”

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