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This morning, both major daily newspapers in Honolulu published editorials that were highly critical of the City Council. As I discussed last Thursday on billso.com, Mayor Mufi Hannemann has prevailed in his quest for a steel-on-steel rail mass transit system, despite the laughable efforts of several council members to amend, postpone, revisit, second-guess, and micromanage the proposal.

Today’s editorials are significant. Any member of the City Council who wants a newspaper endorsement in upcoming elections should be concerned. In Honolulu, the mainstream media still wields considerable influence over voters.

Enough is enough

I’ve written several articles on this issue because the fixed guideway mass transit project is the largest ever proposed in the state of Hawaii. The decisions that have been made over the last 3 years have led to a US$3.8 billion proposal that will determine how Honolulu’s residents will commute, park and live for the next 50 years.

Oahu has far too many automobiles already. Adding and expanding the roads and highways would only bring more cars and traffic problems.

“A bewildering bill”

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s lead editorial today asks the City Council to let steel-on-steel rail go forward. Their opportunity to make this decision has passed.

The editorial’s description of Wednesday night’s meeting is apt:

Only two members voted for a bewildering bill naming three technologies — rail, rubber-tire and magnetic levitation.

This editorial ended with James Oberstar’s assessment that Honolulu’s train system might become the country’s most efficient light-rail project. Oberstar runs the US House committee on transportation. Hawaii’s senior senator, Daniel Inouye, is his counterpart on the Senate committee. Oberstar’s promise of US$900M in funding seems linked to steel-on-steel rail.

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser has a front page article about the height and placement of the transit stations and guideway. Much of this information was available last year, when the city presented its proposals along with computer-generated images of the project.

An editorial in the same edition implored the council to “stop the games” and recommend one technology in their final vote this Wednesday. The front page article acknowledged that the Mayor Hannemann can veto the Council’s final recommendation, and that the Council probably does not have enough votes to override his veto.

Calling out the opposition

The editorial also asked Barbara Marshall and Charles Djou to abstain from the vote, citing their long-standing opposition to the fixed guideway transit project. Romy Cachola is called a flip-flopper who put his district ahead of the island’s greater interest.

Finally, Ann Kobayashi got a reminder that the Council had three years to do their homework and make a decision. Kobayashi and Donovan Dela Cruz both fought hard and long for a bus-based system that resembled previous Mayor Jeremy Harris’s recommendations. Fellow council members were not swayed then or now.

There will be more hearings and decisions about the exact route of the trail, and the placement of the rail stations. Bills have already been proposed to regulate building activity and growth around the project. The Council’s inability to recommend a transit technology may become the enduring legacy of the current council members.

It’s time to end the discussion and move forward on light rail.

Related posts on billso.com

• 17 April 2008: Back on track
• 15 April 2008: Council members discuss mass transit research
• 2 April 2008: Still on track?
• 20 March 2008: Like a fifth wheel
• 21 February 2008: Delhi catches monorail fever: Is Honolulu next?
• 6 February 2008: Hawaii has highest car ownership costs in the USA
• 21 June 2007: Mayor: state could pay for airport mass transit line
• 19 June 2007: City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes

This morning’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a great feature article on the Ball aluminum can plant in Kapolei. Manufacturing beverage cans takes more technological capability than most consumers would believe. It’s good to see a mainland company that is still producing products on Oahu for the state of Hawaii.

I still don’t understand why Frito-Lay closed its chip plant in 2006. See this Pacific Business News article for more details. It makes much more sense to bring the raw materials to Oahu in bulk on container ships. Why is Frito-Lay making its chips on the mainland and shipping them here when the finished product is fragile and filled with air? We can fit many more potatoes than potato chips in a cargo container.

In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Sara Corbett has a long article about the mobile phone’s growing importance in global and local economics. The article is also a great example of how qualitative research and ethnography can be used by larger corporations. When I teach research methods courses and supervise professional papers, I often recommend that graduate students investigate these methods.

The article follows a Nokia researcher named Jan Chipchase as he collects field notes and photographs from around the world. His research data is sent back to Nokia’s designers, so they can determine how to add features that will stimulate mobile phone adoption in lesser developed countries.

Can you see me now?

Some of these features have nothing to do with software or hardware. In rainy regions, a mobile phone might require a hook to keep it off the wet floor. Inexpensive phones must be durable.

Corbett also discusses something I’ve seen more frequently over the years: mobile phone users who arrange their meeting place by phone in real time. Instead of meeting at a set hour in a specific spot, an appointment becomes a game of tag, as the two people give each other landmarks until they actually see each other.

Mobile microfinance

There’s a long discussion of how mobile phones might be used to help microfinance schemes become scalable. Microfinance involves loans of relatively small amounts of money, usually arranged by face-to-face meetings. Mobile phone applications such as text-messaging could be used to make the loan and repayment processes easier and faster. Swift repayment is a key success factor for these plans, and Vodaphone has been implementing mobile banking systems that would work well with microfinance ventures.

Once concern that I have is the cost of these microloans. Eight days earlier, this New York Times article discussed the backlash against Mexico’s leading microfinance firm, Compartamos. Economist Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel peace Prize for proposing the microloan concept, wants non-profit groups to arrange microloans.

Compartamos is a for-profit company that is launching an IPO, based upon the massive interest revenues the company has generated. The IPO keeps microloan customers from participating in the group’s success. This Business Week article from December 2007 has some more information about the IPO.

Mobile telecom firms are likely to use microloans as a way to subsidize inexpensive mobile handsets for their customers, which as only an indirect benefit to the microfinance community.

Phones or food?

Today’s New York Times published a long article about global hunger. There are some heartbreaking stories in this article, including the growing market in Haiti for flavored dirt. One quote from the article really caught my attention:

President René Préval of Haiti appeared to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints about la vie chère — the expensive life — grew. He said if Haitians could afford cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families.

Are the world’s poor being asked to choose between mobile phones and food? It seem farfetched, but the surging cost of basic staples in some countries has forced the question.