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As Yogi Berra might say, “The game isn’t over until it’s over”.

Even then, the game is still not over.

Let’s review the last week of Honolulu mass transit hilarity. Pardon the pun, but this entire process has become a train wreck that may well be decided in the courts.

I’ve made it clear in my previous articles that I favor the fixed guideway mass transit project. The island needs a better, scalable transit infrastructure. We already have too many cars on Oahu, and there’s not enough residential or commerical parking to handle them. There’s little or no room to expand the major surface roads. The US Department of Defense will not allow the state to build a tunnel, road or causeway around or under Pearl Harbor to handle the western suburban traffic that surges into Honolulu every morning. 

Light rail has its advantages. It’s a widely used technology on the mainland. Other vehicles can’t use the rails, so a rail fixed guideway would not be used by city and county trucks and cars on “emergencies”.  

But I like the flexibility of buses. The city has decades of experience with The Bus, and there are several thousand trained drivers, mechanics and other staff on Oahu. The new buses will require much larger elevated roadways than a rail system would need. It will be difficult to put these new buses on existing surface roads, but they’ll be able to service more areas than a rail line might.

A fixed guideway bus system could be built much more quickly than rail. 

At this point, I wish we could just go ahead with a project. But first, we’ll need more elections. The special-interest groups and politicians have made sure of that.

I just hope we won’t have referendums to decide where the stops will be located, or what color to paint the crosswalks! 

Kobayashi throws a wrench in the works

On Tuesday, 23 July 2008, City council member Ann Kobayashi, who prefers busses to rail, filed as a candidate in the mayoral election on the last day. Fellow council member Donovan Dela Cruz and former Hillary Clinton state campaign chair Colleen Hanabusa will run Kobayashi’s election campaign. See the Honolulu Advertiser’s article, Kobayashi gives up seat for mayoral bid, and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s article, Rail row prompts Kobayashi to run.)

Her filing set off a chain reaction as island politicians scrambled to the clerk’s office to file for elections. Duke Bainum, a Kobayashi supporter who was narrowly defeated by current Mayor Mufi Hannemann in 2004, filed for Ann’s seat on the city council - even though he’s lived off-island since he lost the election. State Representative Kirk Caldwell (D -24) also filed for the race, but Republican and Democratic Party officials are sparring over technicalities. (See the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s stories Republicans cry foul and Last-minute decision sets off political flurry). 

Mayor Mufi Hannemann and Hanabusa have been touted as likely candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2010. On Thursday evening, 24 July 2008, I was driving east on King Street, when I saw a few dozen people waving Mufi signs in front of the Blaisdell concert hall. Mayor Hannemann may have lost his re-election campaign this past week, but he will go down fighting.  

Let the mayor decide?

The next day, Wednesday, 24 July 2008, the Honolulu City Council unanimously approved Charles Djou’s proposal to put rail on the November general election ballot. While this proposal needs two more votes to get the measure on the ballot, and a potential veto by Mayor Hannemann, council members seem ready to abandon representative democracy and let the people decide rail’s fate on Oahu.

It’s really up to Mayor Hannemann at this point. He can veto the measure, and the Council cannot override his veto. The clerk’s office is also running out of time to get the measure on the general election ballot. 

No matter how a rail referendum turns out, council members can blame the voters for the outcome. As Todd Apo said at the meeting, “let’s get this over with”. See the Honolulu Advertiser and City council wants rail on the ballot.)

What’s next for the toll road supporters?

StopRailNow and its allied organizations are not endorsing a mayoral candidate yet, even their own member Professor Panos Prevedouros of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Panos may want to step out of the race now, as it’s becoming clear that Ann will be a proxy candidate for the anti-rail groups. Ann has enonugh experience and backbone to spar with Mufi in a mayoral debate, while the professor is a one-issue candidate who lacks political campaign and debate experience.

The anti-rail groups have nothing to celebrate in the short term, as the fight over rail has accelerated and will likely end up in a Federal court. Incredible as it sounds, Honolulu may lose a billion dollars in federal funding if the fixed guideway mass transit question is not settled soon. It may be cheaper to build toll roads and reversible elevated lanes, but people will need cars or vans, and money for the tolls. These won’t be freeways. 

If some of these groups use the election to oppose any form of fixed guideway mass transit and promote elevated toll roads, Ann Kobayashi may surpass Linda Lingle in the informal competition to become the 21st century successor to Rene Mansho. 

Updated 10 am, 27 July 2008

Both Honolulu newspapers ran front page stories in today’s Sunday editions about their respective public opinion polls. Of course, each poll had its own questions about rail, and each poll concluded that about 2/3rds of the respondents wanted rail in Honolulu. A majority or respondents in each poll wanted the rail question on the ballot. 

Each poll was carried out with a local television station as a partner. 

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (see Transit planning has many on board) and KITV4 included questions about Mayor Hannemann’s preferred system, steel-on-steel. Detailed results on are on these two pages. 

“I have always been in favor of mass transit, I voted for the fixed-guideway, but I am opposed to steel-on-steel,” Kobayashi said.

She argued that the transit system needs to be widely discussed in the community and said Hannemann has not been open to discussion.

The Star-Bulletin’s lead editorial called for a rail ballot, and recommended Charles Djou’s proposal for a city charter amendment. (See Let voters decide how to end debate on rail transit.) 

Meanwhile, KGMB9 and Gannett’s Honolulu Advertiser (see 76% of Oahu voters want rail on ballot) focused on reader comments. Many of the remarks were about the increased tax burden, and the lack of service for specific areas of Oahu. The detailed survey results are posted in this PDF document. The Advertiser will continue the story over the next 3 days, while KGMB starts a series about rail on its newscasts tomorrow evening.

RELATED TAGS ON BILLSO.COM

• mass-transit
• Honolulu

RELATED POSTS AND PAGES ON BILLSO.COM

• Honolulu mass transit
• 12 July 2008: My sidewalk nightmare
• 8 June 2008: Why Honolulu needs rail
• 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 2007: 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

It’s time for me to end the rampant speculation by the media and announce that I will not join Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) as his nominee for vice president this year. While I respect Senator Obama and support his candidacy, there are other candidates who would bring much more value to the Democratic ticket.

Bill Richardson would provide excellent cabinet-level experience in foreign policy and energy, while representing the west and Hispanic interests. He also has a good relationship with Senator Obama, and a long relationship with the Clintons.

Kathleen Sebelius has had a good run as governor of Kansas, and delivered the democratic response to this year’s State of the Union address. That’s an indicator that she is being considered for a national role in this year’s elections.

Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has expressed interest in the nomination. A joint ticket might deal a serious blow to Senator McCain’s ambitions, even if McCain picks Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) as his VP nominee. Chris Cilliza has some good thoughts on this on his Washington Post blog article, Hagel for (Democratic) Veep?

Frankly, the GOP should be more concerned about Bob Barr’s campaign as the Libertarian Party preidential nominee. Barr has little chance of winning the presidential race, but he could take votes away from the GOP ticket, as this AP article surmises.

See Obama Vice President Picks in the Huffington Post, Time to Talk About Obama’s Veep Choice by Ron Rosenbaum,

Public domain image of Kathleen Sebelius was taken by FEMA and appears courtesy of Wikipedia.

The anti-rail forces on Oahu are focusing their efforts on a deceptive petition campaign that doesn’t address some major reasons why Honolulu needs a rail rapid transit system. The train would help keep cars off the island, and get cars off the H1 and downtown roads during peak commuting times. The train may not help traffic on fort Weaver Road, but their traffic problems need different solutions.

No new roads

StopRailNow has an alternatives page that lists several solutions like underpasses, elevated toll lanes, The proposed elevated lanes won’t fit on some sections of the H-1. The Outdoor Circle isn’t happy with the rail proposal, but even they realize that miles of flyovers and elevated roads would look worse.

StopRailNow hasn’t discussed where people would drive when they got off these elevated roads, because the answer is obvious: on the same overcrowded surface roads we have now.

There won’t be any extra lanes on the Nimitz Highway, King Street or Ala Moana Boulevard because there’s no room for extra lanes. the best that can be done is reducing the width of lanes, which is being tried on Ala Moana Boulevard west of Ward Avenue.

There won’t be a bridge or tunnel around Pearl Harbor, because the US Navy will never allow that kind of security risk. I’ve read many suggestions like this, mostly from people who live around Fort Weaver Road and commute through downtown. Fort Weaver Road and the Kapolei area have expanded faster than the city can build roads.

No room for more parking

The anti-rail advocates haven’t discussed where or how all of the extra cars on these toll roads will park. There’s no room for new parking lots or garages in downtown Honolulu, the Ala Moana area, or Waikiki. Repainting lots with narrower spaces won’t work well, either.

We live on an island. There’s no room to builds more parking garages, unless we erect them on park land and tear down homes and businesses.

Uninsured drivers?

Another one of StopRailNow’s alternatives is a crackdown on uninsured drivers. The web site estimates this would take 15 to 30 percent of current vehicles off Oahu’s roads. Too bad they didn’t cite their source - there’s one lonely link on that page to Cliff Slater’s honolulutraffic.com web site.

Will these uninsured drivers join carpools or take The Bus? Who will pay for the dozens of new buses that are already needed? Bus ridership has increased a great deal in the last few months.

The site doesn’t discuss what will happen to these thousands of abandoned cars, either. Will they be shipped off-island, or will the cars rust by the sides of abandoned roads? Assuming that the majority of uninsured motorists cannot afford auto insurance, this solution sounds more like economic discrimination than a viable alternative.

On 4 June 2008, Republican congressional candidate and city council member Charles Djou proposed a city ordinance that would let the Honolulu Police Department boot cars for unpaid citations or lack of insurance. Sounds like the state needs to revise its vehicle registration process so that applicants are checked for outstanding citations when they attempt to transfer a title. In fact, Charles Djou and the Honolulu city council should probably just let the Hawaii state legislature address this issue.

See this Star-Bulletin article for more details, including a quote that sounds like Djou was reading from a StopRailNow brochure:

Djou said he believes removing noncompliant vehicles off the highways would “probably do more to alleviate traffic congestion than anything else the city government could possibly come up with.”

If gas prices continue to rise, more motorists will stop driving because they cannot afford the fuel. Fuel prices will keep rising after the November 2008 election, too

How many signatures?

The anti-rail groups must get 45,000 certified signatures by 31 July 2008 to get their ill-advised referendum on the November general election ballot. Dennis Callan, the co-chair of StopRailNow.com, believes that only 30,000 certified signature are needed, according to this Advertiser article:

The different counts result from varying interpretations of city rules governing voter-based ballot initiatives. The city clerk’s office said Stop Rail Now needs signatures equal to at least 10 percent of total voters registered in the last mayoral election. That equates to 44,525 signatures.

Stop Rail Now argues it needs signatures equal to 10 percent of the votes cast for mayor in the last election. That equates to 30,026 signatures, which is 14,499 fewer signatures than the city’s figure.

According to the Advertiser’s 28 May 2008 article, Callan hasn’t even asked the City Clerk for a ruling on this issue. Is this another example of the short-range planning expertise of the anti-rail forces? Is StopRailNow.com afraid of the answer? Does the group plan to sue its way onto the ballot if they don’t collect enough signatures?

By the time the rail line goes into operation, gas may be higher than $5 a gallon. Where will the anti-rail groups be then? Their leaders might not be very happy, because their taxicab and auto-related businesses will face increased costs, even as automobile usage drops. Perhaps some of the anti-rail proponents have already joined the thousands of Oahu commuters who are taking their cars off the roads and using vans, bikes and buses.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• Honolulu mass transit
• 20 April 2008: Honolulu newspapers to City Council: Enough already!
• 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
• 6 February 2008: Hawaii has highest car ownership costs in the USA
• 19 June 2007: City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes

C-SPAN, the US cable network that broadcasts Congressional hearings to the American public, is teaming up with Google to offer video clips from candidates, voters, and other groups on a new YouTube channel.

Voter turnout is a problem in the US, especially in the 18-25 age group. Viral video is one way to reach voters. This Los Angeles Times article has some interesting quotes, along with links to some video examples.

See Google’s blog post and the video below for more details.

From ZDnet, the New York Times and TechDirt comes this story: New York City has subpoenaed a TXTmob server that was used to coordinate street protests during the 2004 Republican national Convention.

The city’s lawyers are litigating civil suits brought by hundreds of protesters who were arrested during the convention. All the city’s lawyers want are the records of every user and message sent on the system.

TXTmob can be used to resend text messages to hundreds of mobile phones in real time. The software is available on the Institute for Applied Autonomy’s web site. Wikipedia has a good article about the service.

Tad Hirsch, the creator of the TXTmob software, does not want to release the information on his server:

“There’s a principle at stake here,” he said recently by telephone. “I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy.”

Hirsch has appealed for donations on his web site. Hirsch says some of that data no longer exists. He’s been busy writing his dissertation at MIT.

Who’s got the data?

There are many web and mobile services like Facebook and Twitter that could be used to coordinate protests, according to this Wired article. Groups need to consider who operates their messaging servers and who controls the data for their web services. Hosting an application like TXTmob on one’s own server is one way to avoid a Web portal or service provider’s restrictions.

Even so, the server has to be connected to the Internet, and the text messages are resent to subscribers through the mobile phone carriers servers. The telecom carriers routinely archive text messages sent through their systems, as I mentioned on 3 February 2008, and the carriers will provide messages and logs if subpoenaed.

I may have to revisit the article I wrote last year for the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics & Society. Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology had the following response regarding the TXTmob subpoena in Wired’s article, and I agree with him:

“In civil cases, the law seems to prohibit the disclosure of stored communications in response to a civil discovery subpoena because the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibits disclosure of stored messages of any kind,” he argues. “The subpoena clearly is not enforceable.”

But he adds that the case is a reminder that federal privacy law is in dire need of an update to reflect the new era of massive stored communications and web services.

“The notion that any litigant can get any information about any person is an 18th century rule that now can now encompass terabytes of information, and I think it also has an impact on service providers who don’t want to become one-stop shops for every litigant in the country,” he says.

A local example

On Monday, Two hundred protesters used email and phone calls to organize their event at Fort Street Mall in support of Aloha Airlines. The US Bankruptcy Court is in 1132 Bishop, above the MSIS classrooms in the Frear Center. My office is a few steps away. This Honolulu Advertiser article has details and a few pictures.

I didn’t see anything about the march at DontFlyGo. Their web site is difficult to navigate, and the domain name is missing an apostrophe on the banner. Based on this Honolulu Advertiser article, there’s little indication that local groups might try to use mobile messaging to boycott go! flights.