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I’ve seen more bicycles, scooters and motorcycles in Honolulu as our gasoline prices stay above $4 a gallon, and popular routers on The Bus get more crowded.

In my nightmares, I’m running on the sidewalk, and there’s someone who is riding right at me:

• Going full speed 
• Ignoring the crosswalk signals
• Holding a lit cigarette
• Riding without a helmet
• Screaming into their mobile phone - bonus points if they’re cursing
• Listening to their iPod
• Wearing sunglasses, so I can’t see their eyes

Anyone who listens to an iPod while they’re riding looks like a candidate for a Darwin Award.  If they’re talking on a mobile phone,  they’re paying even less attention to where they’re going.

Once in a while, I see someone driving a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk. There’s a guy who I see almost every morning that I run on Ala Moana Boulevard. He guns his gas scooter down the mauka (ocean side) sidewalk on his way to Aloha Tower. He’s riding against the automobile traffic, but it’s a very wide sidewalk.

Then there’s the man I saw last month who rode his motorcycle up Beretania on the sidewalk behind Century Square and the Catholic Archdiocesan offices. He parked his bike next to the bicycle rack. Mopeds and scooters can park at a bicycle rack, but not motorcycles.

Sometimes I see people riding scooters and bicycles with one hand on the handlebar and the other hand holding a cigarette. Looks healthy!

Image courtesy of Thomas Hawk through a Creative Commons license. 

Related pages on billso.com

Honolulu mass transit

Do children need a cell phone before they’re 18? I’ve long believed that people shouldn’t learn how to drive until they’re 18, or when they’ve demonstrated some advanced level of personal development. There are folks like Darren Draper and Rich Ling who think that mobile phones can become excellent tools in a classroom. This article in the New York Times about finding gadgets that are age-appropriate for children got me thinking about the issue again.

Several months ago, I was in a campus restroom when I overheard a student talking on his phone while he was sitting in a stall. He was talking in a normal voice, as if he was the only person in the restroom.

There are some universities and schools that have developed zero tolerance rules for mobile phones and other devices in classrooms, especially during exams and quizzes. If the device can be heard or seen, the student fails the exam. I’m not sure how long these rules will last, simply because more college students seem to carry their mobile phones everywhere.

“Where you at?”

Kids who use Nextel or push-to-talk phones are another irritant. No one needs to hear both sides of their conversation, and Mark Jaquith seems to agree with me. I used a Nextel phone between 2000 and 2003, but I would almost always put the PTT feature on vibrate. I’d use the PTT feature as if it were a regular phone conversation whenever I was out in public.

As usual, Asia and Europe are the leaders in mobile technology. European regulators may ban advertisements from children’s cell phones, according to this 8 March 2008 New York Times article. As mobile telecoms and other companies search for new sources of revenue, mobile advertising has become an attractive new business. The iPhone and Google’s Android platform each offer multiple ways to place advertisements on a user’s screen.

This is your brain on a mobile phone. Any questions?

There’s another concern in Europe - radiation. Studies are being commissioned to examine the possible effects of mobile phone radiation on children’s brains and behavior.

In japan, government officials are now asking mobile telecoms and handset manufacturers to design and market models for children - without any email or texting features. Japanese parents rely on cell phones as a digital leash for their commuting children, but kids have been known to spend all night sending messages to each other. Japanese officials want manufacturers to focus on voice and GPS features, so students will spend more time studying. This Associated Press report has more details.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• iPhone
• 4 June 2004: GPS and mobile phones
• 22 April 2008: Android vs iPhone
• 1 October 2007: it’s time for an emergency Rave
• 13 February 2007: They will know you by your shoes

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

I don’t want to get on a rant here, but I’m just someone born very late in the baby boom. Frankly, I have more in common with Generation Y than with Generation X. But both generations have their faults. I saw this yesterday, while I attended Peter Kay’s presentation on crowd sourcing at the May 2008 HTCA meeting. Peter kept asking the audience what web services they had used. The number of hands got smaller with each service he named. Everyone had used Wikipedia. A few people knew about Twitter. Peter mentioned a few sites I had never used, like InTrade and IdeaScale.

I was the only person who raised his hand for Ning, the social networking portal that hosts TechHui and Peter’s latest project, HawaiiConCon.org. The Honolulu Advertiser’s article about the site is available here. and I mentioned TechHui in my billso.com post on 31 March 2008.

The generation gap

A few members of the audience got nervous when Peter discussed corporate wikis. I have heard and read similar questions as managers and academics struggle to keep up with the digital generation.

Tammy Erickson has a top 10 list on Business Week with some excellent comments about generational conflicts in the workplace.

More of the precious little snowflakes - and they’re so many of them in Gen X (the generation born between 1965 and 1982) and Gen Y (those born between 1983 and 1997) - need to wake up and smell the coffee.

It’s not Starbucks coffee.

It’s not even a maple nut crunch latte from the 7-11.

It’s Maxwell House scooped from the big blue can, brewed in a vat, simmered to the consistency of loose mud and served in a tiny styrofoam cup.

If you’re lucky, you get a little red plastic stir stick and some Coffeemate. Denis Leary would be proud of this coffee-flavored coffee.

And if you’re really lucky, someone made some Sanka because you can’t handle the caffeine.

Life sucks and it’s not fair

Many Gen Xers are hitting the ceiling in in their climb up the corporate ladder. There’s fewer CXO spots than there are Gen Xers. It’s not fair, but those stubborn folks in Generation Jones (born between 1954 and 1964) got there first. Their heroes are folks like Bill Gates, who would blow off his Harvard courses and try to make up the study time with end-of-the-term all-nighters.

It’s bad timing as the children of Generations X and Jones are going on to college and getting jobs. Members of Generation Y have feelings of entitlement and privilege that crash against a wall of indifference and disbelief in the real world.

The heroes of Generation Y are people like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has bragged about skipping most of his Harvard art history course while he built a Facebook prototype. Zuckerberg passed that class after he built an online study guide that his classmates poured their notes and content into during the end of term reading period. Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, but Zuckerberg got rich much faster. See this New York Times article for more details.

Helicopter parents

Gen Xers hate how the Generation Y calls their parents to ask advice about everything from class schedules to work responsibilities. It’s awkward when a college student’s helicopter parent calls a professor to intervene on their child’s behalf. It’s dumbfounding when this happens in the workplace. This 2006 MSNBC article about helicopter parents who manage their childrens’ job searches is a great example.

The current recession only makes matters worse for all involved. The home equity line is tapped out. No one wants to buy that piece of investment property that looked like a sweet deal 3 years ago. Bonuses aren’t as common at work anymore. This year’s vacation became next year’s vacation, and that’s just a maybe.

And yes, they’re buying Maxwell House and brewing their coffee at home.

Escape - if you can

There is hope. A few Gen Xers escape from corporate jobs to start their own small businesses. But many of the Xers are uncomfortable with modern technology. Text messaging and social networking are too much to handle. They can deal with their Netflix queue, but email is more their speed.

Members of Generation Y have kept up with the changes. Some Gen Xers are jealous that their younger Generation Y can navigate the Internet so easily and use online services to find new opportunities.

Some members of Generation Y are overwhelmed with communications options. Just read their blogs and feel their pain as they realize that everyday life is hard. ReadWriteWeb has a great collection of Generation Y links and RSS feeds, along with a video and some additional discussion.

But as I mentioned on 19 May 2008 in this billso.com article, many Americans don’t read blogs or send emails. To them, all of this conflict between generations may mean very little at all.

Images courtesy of Roadside Pictures and mark_the_legend_foster through a Creative Commons license.