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From today’s Honolulu Advertiser web site, here’s a bit of interesting news.

According to a study by Edmunds.com, Hawaii has the highest automobile ownership costs in the country. The company’s press release is posted here. Edmunds.com based this study on its True Cost to Own benchmark – an online calculator that provides results for specific models is available here.

The figure of US$59,457 covers five years of car payments, insurance, fuel, maintenance and depreciation.

California car owners paid $110 less.

In today’s print Advertiser, the lead story focused on the mass transit selection process. I’ve changed my thinking over the last year, and now prefer the guided buses instead of rail. The bus routes are much easier to build, and the bus system would be easier to maintain. I’d rather spend my commute time reading than driving.

The Honolulu Advertiser ran a front-page article this morning about the growing parking problems in Chinatown. I’ve worried that downtown businesses and colleges might face problems as more customers face longer waits to find that elusive parking space.

Companies keep moving downtown, and they sometimes wind up with more employees than dedicated parking spaces. The solutions range from shared parking spaces to subsidized bus passes!

Too many vehicles? Or not enough mass transit?

Recent figures indicate that there are 734,270 registered vehicles on Oahu. Another article in this morning’s Advertiser indicates there are 1.13 million vehicles in the state, while our population is 1.28 million people. Of course, the large rental car fleets on our islands are a part of this total, but it’s still alarming that there’s so many vehicles in our state.

Both the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser ran stories this morning about the proposed mass transit plan for Oahu. The environmental impact study will consider three routes, according to this scoping plan posted by the Advertiser. This map from the Advertiser lays out the route alternatives:

1. (in solid red) the City Council’s plan, which diverted the line through Salt Lake to get councilman Romy Cachola’s swing vote;
2. (in dashed red) the council’s plan with a loop through Honolulu International Airport; and
3. (in dashed blue) the plan that some city council members really wanted, going through the airport and bypassing Salt Lake.

Council chair Ann Kobayashi is still angry that the mayor is focusing on rail. However, the scoping study indicated that several modes will be evaluated, including “light rail, rapid rail, rubber-tired guided vehicles, and magnetic levitation and monorail systems”.

Neither newspaper mentioned that Kobayashi, along with Donovan Delz Cruz, Todd Apo, and Cachola, had announced in March that they would visit Amsterdam and Paris to visit high-speed bus lines built by Phileas Advanced Public Transport System of France. Their trip would be paid for by Phileas, and the plans were announced on the City Council’s web site and mentioned in the Honolulu Weekly.

UH-Manoa professor emeritus Tom Dinell wrote a good commentary about the rubber-tire bus alternative in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on February 4. Bus routes would be easier to reconfigure than a train, and the high-speed buses could also go into areas like Waianae and Mililani. Of course, these buses would need dedicated lanes in town, and the city must ban other vehicles from these lanes in order for the system to work well. The fixed guideway bus system should not become an “emergency lane” for city vehicles.

As much as I like the idea of trains, high-speed buses may be easier to install, use and maintain on this island. As Dinell pointed out, it’s much easier to replace a bus than a train when the technology improves.

Dkosopedia has an excellent summary of the Honolulu transit struggle in the 21st century, for readers who want to learn more.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported yesterday that more Honolulu drivers are riding alone to work. Today’s Honolulu Advertiser explained how ridership levels on The Bus have rebounded after the 2003 bus drivers strike. The Star-Bulletin printed a chart with some interesting figures: on Oahu, the number of people driving along went from 61.4% to 67% between 2000 and 2005, while carpooling dropped 4 points. The Advertiser’s graph showed bus revenue from almost US$20M in 1993 to US$41.5M in 2006.

“Telecommuting one day a week, working at home, cuts down demand on roads significantly… It doesn’t cost anything and immediately saves money.”

Panos Prevedouros, an engineering professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, provided a puzzling quote that closed the Star-Bulletin’s article. Here’s my brief list of reasons why telecommuting isn’t free.

1. The employee may have to provide her own computer if the company hasn’t done so.
2. The company should provide secure remote access for employees. A VPN to the office network is essential.
3. The employee’s computer should be clean and free of viruses, malware, spyware, keystroke loggers and zombies. Think of the telecommuter’s computer as an extension of the company’s network. How does the company’s IT department profile off-site computers?
4. The telecommuting employee has to provide her own utilities and amenities, including furniture, electricity, Internet access, and air conditioning.
5. There’s the psychological costs of remote work. Some employees may prefer to work in an office environment. Working from home is one powerful way for an employer to exert more control over an employee.
6. Working offsite can be distracting. it’s tempting to turn on the TV or chat on the phone while working from home.
7. Schedules may become too flexible. Add “just one” errand or “only a few” chores into an offsite workday, and the telecommuting employee becomes less productive and attentive.

I’m assuming that Dr. Prevedouros is thinking of commuters who work in an office environment provided by their employer. Some of the items on this list would be different for commuter who owns their own business, and this article does a nice job of covering various tools that a business owner might use.

Tech: The New York Times > New York Region > Got the Time? At Grand Central, It Has Never Been That Simple: But will the trains run on time? “The problem is, the electromechanical devices in the terminal’s master clock system that are sending these signals are becoming increasingly unreliable, making the clocks inaccurate. What’s more, the time displayed on video monitors throughout the terminal is controlled by a different system, not tied to the atomic clock at all. Now, however, officials at Metro-North Railroad, the keepers of the clocks in Grand Central, are setting out to improve things for the 700,000 people who depart or arrive daily on 550 commuter trains and countless subways. Next month, they will install a new $59,000 master clock that will synchronize every second of every day by satellite with the Boulder atomic clock to ensure accuracy up to a fraction of a nanosecond, which is a billionth of a second.”