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I wish I’d seen Trevor Yee’s excellent article called Why HPT Lanes Won’t Work in Honolulu before I wrote my previous billso.com article on the proposed rail system. Trevor raises several good points about toll lanes. These lanes are much larger than a fixed guideway, and they depend upon toll revenue. I am seeing fewer cars on Honolulu’s roads these days, even as the school year gets underway.

Doug Carlson also had some good points in his recent post called The Closer Rail Gets, the More “Way Out” the Alternatives Are; a Sea Tunnel Around Oahu?! Doug takes on the foolish notion that a tunnel could be built in the Pacific Ocean. Environmentalists, the US Department of Defense, and a host of other groups would block an Oahu tunnel or causeway proposal if taxpayers didn’t scream about the costs.

Carlson also mentions a Honolulu Star-Bulletin commentary in which Hans Rosendal suggested that electric vehicles might make a good alternative to rail and traditional automobiles. If gas prices continue to rise, such vehicles may be the only practical alternative for people who want to drive a car to Honolulu from the Windward side of the island. I’m just not sure an all-electric vehicle could make it over the mountains. See the Star-Bulletin article called Transit Matters: Electric Vehicles for more details.

Yesterday morning, I saw Honolulu mayoral candidate/UH-Manoa professor/rail opponent Panos Prevedouros on the corner of the Pali Highway and Vineyard Boulevard. He was out there holding his sign and waving by himself. I heard two honks within 5 minutes, which was surprising. That intersection gets a lot of automobile and bus traffic from Kailua and Kaneohe every weekday morning. I thought there were more Panos supporters out there, but perhaps they’ve switched to Ann Kobayashi’s camp.

Recent articles and pages on billso.com

• Honolulu mass transit
• 27 July 2008: Have the wheels come off the bus and rail in Honolulu?
• 23 July 2008: The 100 mpg solar Prius
• 12 July 2008: My sidewalk nightmare
• 8 June 2008: Why Honolulu needs rail
• 6 June 2008: Can the blind hear hybrid cars?
• 20 April 2008: Honolulu newspapers to City Council: Enough already!
• 17 April 2008: Back on track
• 15 April 2008: City council members discuss mass transit research
• 2 April 2008: Still on track?
• 20 March 2008: Like a fifth wheel
• 2 July 2007: Parking in Chinatown is getting harder
• 21 June 2008: Mayor: state could pay for airport mass transit line
• 19 June 2007: City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes
• 15 June 2007: Telecommuting isn’t a free solution for Honolulu’s traffic woes

More people are walking into downtown Honolulu these days. I’m seeing more bicycles, mopeds, scooters and motorcycles, too.

Seattle has started closing streets to cars, to help protect pedestrians (see Seattle Starts Car-Free Closures).

In most American cities, the car rules supreme, at least until Google reinvents the electric car (see Google Moves to Reinvent Transportation).

In the interest of public safety, we present the following two articles. Read and learn.

Memo To: New pedestrians, In re: Your skills provides a long and handy primer to basic pedestrian and mass transit etiquette and safety with tips like these:

• The crosswalk will not protect you from cars.
• Get a bus pass or have your change ready as your board.
• Try not to bump other people with that big rolling bag or backpack as you…
• Move to the back of the bus. Please, move to the back of the bus.

NY State Sen. Carl Kruger proposes ban on handheld devices addresses a new social problem: the distracted pedestrian.

• Don’t send text messages while you walk.
• Turn down the volume on your iPod so you can hear the traffic. Oh, I said, “TURN DOWN THE…”

Image courtesy of woesis through a Creative Commons license.

Related articles and pages on billso.com

• Honolulu mass transit
• 28 June 2008: Google wants Georgia to get some exercise
• 12 June 2008: Do kids and students need cell phones?
• 19 March 2008: Running around

US drivers can’t understand fuel efficiency - at least when it is measured in miles per gallon (MPG). When I was growing up in the early 1970s, MPG became a national buzzword as gasoline prices soared.

But when fuel economy figures are presented in gallons per mile (GPM), more drivers were able to compare fuel efficiency between vehicles, partly because the GPM figure can be directly multiplied by the pump price. An owner can calculate the total gallons she will use in a week, month or year, along with the cost.

It’s a handy metric to remember, especially as some drivers wrap their cars with advertising decals to subsidize their commute.

If you’ve filled up your tank, and you know how many miles you’ve driven since the last time you added fuel, just divide the gallons purchased by miles driven to obtain GPM.

To make the GPM figure more understandable, researchers Richard Larrick and Jack Soll presented the figures as gallons per 100 miles (GPCM).

To calculate GPCM, multiply the GPM figure by 100, or divide 10000 by MPG.

The chart below compares MPG (left axis and the blue line) against GPCM (bottom axis and the red line). To use the chart, just find the figure you want to compare, and trace a vertical line up or down to find the conversion:

• A car that gets 10 MPG uses 10 gallons to drive 100 miles.
• A more efficient car that gets 50 MPG only needs 2 gallons to drive 100 miles.

As I was writing this article, I was pleased to discover that Rich Larrick and I both graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 1986.

See Reuters, the New York Times, Consumerist, the MPG Illusion site at the Fuqua School of Business, and the original article in Science.

Updated 23 June 2008 738 HST: Rick sent me these comments about my blog post:

“GPM is useful when deciding about buying a new car, deciding between cars, etc.  It guarantees that people see that improving from 10 to 11 MPG, 16 to 20 MPG, and 33 to 50 MPG all save the same amount of gas over  some distance — 1 gallon over a 100 miles or 100 gallons over 10,000 miles.  Without GPM, people expect larger linear improvements in MPG to yield more savings (that’s the illusion).”