 Hey Aloha and welcome to Stand Energy Man here on Think Tech Hawaii with Robert in the control room and Cindy here on the studio making me look handsome which is a challenge all by itself. Anyway, I'm glad you're here with us today and I've got a pretty interesting topic, one that's near and dear to my heart because things tend to be more challenging nowadays and I just thought it was my old age creeping up on me but there's other reasons for it so we'll get into that discussion but first of all let me start off with some hydrogen information. I just got my newsletter from a gentleman named Mori Markowitz and he runs the fuel cell and hydrogen energy association and if you go online and you look up the fuel cell and hydrogen energy association and look for their newsletter it's just chock-a-block full of great hydrogen news everything from Toyota running fleets of cabs in the UK to new 2 megawatt systems going online in Europe just all kinds of things going on around the world in hydrogen which are all good for me because I love hydrogen and we just had a talk with Shell Oil and also with Hitachi this week to try and talk to folks about what they can contribute here in Hawaii to bringing on our hydrogen infrastructure so it's been busy week for me and I'm looking forward to working with all these big companies and the hydrogen council doing international work to get hydrogen mainstreamed and scaled up to where it should be to help us solve our fossil fuel addiction, get rid of some fossil fuels and get us on some cleaner energy. Look up that newsletter again it's a fuel cell and hydrogen energy association so today's show we're going back to Maui and we're going to visit a gentleman Lee Chamberlain who we talked to from RideSmart Maui we talked to him a couple weeks ago and had a good talk about bikes and electric bikes and you know the advantages disadvantages different styles different equipment that you can get that make bike a real transportation piece not just the old lycorspanics jump on and race like a madman around the islands but a really utilitarian vehicle and you know bicycles have long been known to be the most efficient type of mechanical transportation you can come up with and it's really a good way to go we see a lot more people riding the bikis around town here so that's good and we'll get those folks back on the show to talk about their successes but right now we've got Lee Chamberlain calling in from Maui and Lee welcome to the show and thanks for being on with us again well thanks for having against Dan it's great to be back again and congratulations on the progress you're making with hydrogen and you know again i'm back here working on my little part of trying to implement a clean energy here with the electric bicycle and reduce the footprint of the automobile by substituting vehicle miles traveled with the potential of utilizing the bicycle or the electric bicycle which is even probably more efficient than the regular bicycle but anyway thanks i'm glad to be back it's good to have you back on and you know it's it's funny because we've talked before offline about the processes that you need to go through to to make things happen and you know we've kind of had a a boost from all of our county mayors and the governor who have stood up and said they want to support the Paris Accords on climate change and all the initiatives there so they've kind of made the public statement that they're all in on supporting clean energy and clean transportation and i think that we're all trying to take advantage of that upswing in their interest and their commitment but sometimes dealing with the politicians is a lot more sunny than dealing with the bureaucracy that works for the politicians and so we're going to talk a little bit about that and i'll start off by saying you know surf co the folks that have a couple auto dealerships here on oahu doing Toyota big company they don't just do cars they do all kind of things they made the commitment here in Hawaii to bring on their hydrogen station along with their Toyota Mirai vehicles at their dealership and you know people don't really give i think enough credit to that company for making that kind of commitment it's not a 10 10 or 20 thousand dollar commitment it's a couple million dollar commitment to clean energy in Hawaii but it's taken them almost two years to get their station online and some of that's has to do with you know going through the first the first time ever hydrogen station build outside the military bases here on oahu but i know Michio and up at the university is going through the same kind of thing we're getting getting permits through the county and uh getting clearances and environmental issues met and um you know there's there's always seems to be something that you have to go and and put in your plans and have them reviewed by somebody and give them a bunch of data and that just seems to slow things down in my in my younger days i did construction and i remember the days when you could take in a hand-drawn sketch the building department downtown at the county and by the end of the week you're already you know doing work and putting the building up i think those days are kind of long gone there's a lot of different areas you have to go and visit and especially now with more planned communities uh lee's starting to run into some of these issues on on mawai so lee why don't you tell us about some of the projects that you've been trying to support over there on mawai and and some of the challenges that you run into well stan um one of the things that um happened a number of years ago was as i i got interested in going ahead and trying to implement alternative routing for bicycles that are safe and and and those would have called of course food pedestrians and uh we got involved with uh hawaii bicycling league and then uh became a sub-chapter at the wide bicycling league over here and called us to help them by bicycling league and uh with that we've gone ahead and made some headways and getting funding for projects that have been in the works for a long period of time and the many of the projects that were begun under previous leadership were basically dropped and stalemated and we were able to go ahead and get funding to complete some of those projects that were basically stagnate and in addition to that i've come become aware of a different project specific to the mawai and where i live on the west side and that particular project that i've been working on most exclusively is the west mawai greenway and the west mawai greenway has um been an educational experience for me say the least so can you describe that west mawai greenway in terms of where it goes from and to and and what route it follows yes so the west mawai greenway which is outlined in hawaii white plant 1990 was supposed to be a priority one project to go ahead and divert any kind of uh future congestion that they were projecting okay and so that meaning that that particular project was supposed to be completed within six years and and we're looking back 1990 and 30 years 30 years later we're still not there is what you're telling me we're still not there and um and i seem to have kind of run up against the wall again after bringing it to the tension of the county and pushing very very hard to get it implemented and of course the west mawai is famous for its traffic congestion now which maybe could have been averted some of it could have been averted with it like ways but my focus and direction has been to try to establish a pilot and and get data to go ahead and substantiate you know the money is necessary to go ahead and build a greenway and we had a number of uh uh different programs in place and we created a sure rest to focus on the subject and we brought people from all members of the government and gave them test rides on the greenway and everything and again it's the west mawai greenway which is a cane haul road which parallels the hana fulani highway and literally will go 26 miles all the way from the poly to lapua point so we could have and was supposed to be a um bikeway on the existing cane haul road which is not being utilized at all it exists and is in place and used to be utilized for heavy trucks to transport the the produce whether it be the pineapple or the shirking or whatever to the different stations for processing so this road is very impregnated into the ground and has been there a long long time and exists and would be nothing to go ahead and take over and utilize for bicycles and pedestrians who owns that um that easement right now if it's no longer used by uh by the sugarcane folks is that owned by the state or well part of it's owned by the state part of it's owned by the county part of it's owned by private ownership there's one individual named peter martin that we worked with exclusively uh to uh in the beginning and uh that was a 5.6 mile stretch from olawawa to lahina and that particular stretch was actually owned half by the county at that time or was projected to be owned by half by the county and half by peter martin peter martin has always been a supporter of the the greenways and and those type of avenues and in that effect he made one through his development and Lonnie Poco many years ago and still exists it's a beautiful trail that it's the only trail that is on the west side that's exclusive to bicycle pedestrian pathway anyway um he was a supporter of the program and so then we started trying to get the county to be part of the and create a public private partnership to implement the greenway and then that peter was so behind the project he said he would pay for part of the project himself to do that and then um what happened was is that we had a charrette and the mayor came and and one of his words to me at the end of the his presentation following the charrette was that now when you to do this you got to keep it simple okay that's those were his parting words to me and so uh we he managed to go ahead and and provide a million half dollars in the 2016 budget for the actual um design and implementation of the greenway but then this is this is the mayor this is the mayor right this is the mayor yes yeah and then when it got to council we had a contingent of people there for the entire day dressed in orange shirts so we couldn't be missed so we filled these the auditorium at the council chambers anyway with orange shirts from the very beginning eight o'clock in the morning till we were there till seven eight o'clock at night and that was during the budget hearings and rickio comma the head of the budget hearings um they had the agenda and the bikeways was way down the agenda and it's got late into the evening ricky graciously went ahead and and brought and jumped the agenda item bikeways up the west by greenway specifically up up the agenda list and made hearing to what they want to do with the million half dollars that the mayor proposed and so when he asked uh at that time david good the public works director so what do you think about the million half dollar proposal for the west by greenway and then david good's response was is that there is no way that we could possibly plan so what that's i'm talking about public works is no way that they can possibly plan design and implement a greenway within a year and a half which which what the cip funding was was uh required for okay so so ricky says to david well what do you suggest he says okay i'll take two hundred thousand dollars and i'll do the planning and design for the west by greenway and then we can go ahead and move on to implementation so i thought that was a big win you know i mean yeah great we got three hundred thousand dollars not a million half they got three hundred thousand dollars for his planning design and then we move along for a year and half and uh david kicks his can down the road literally and um i find out from the engineers that the public works department can't plan and design a greenway because they don't have the tools in their toolbox is the quote from one of the engineers the lead engineer on this particular project that they don't have the tools in their toolbox to plan and design a greenway so they have to farm it out to an outside engineering firm and it takes a scope of work to do that so uh literally they kicked this can down the road for a year and a half before they actually create a scope of work which they finally gave to this engineering firm outside engineering firm and when i finally saw the scope of work i was livid i mean i can't couldn't believe it so basically what happened was is that the public works shifted from the 5.6 miles original uh west black greenway design that we had had the shred on and the mayor gave the money for originally and all that he shifted it uh without any discussion with me to a different place which was the sugar cane train tracks and went from 5.6 miles to seven tenths of a mile and then when i see the scope of work i notice that it has different taskings and the first tasking which is a a design that is a um going to spend three hundred thousand dollars for a visionary design 24 000 of that is going to go towards aerial photography okay for seven tenths a mile and the rest is going for the design of a 10 foot wide path that's two inches thick on an existing roadbed of asphalt and then one question why is this costing so much money and the answer was because that we are subject to civil litigation the county knows are going to be sued and so they had to go through all these elements to go ahead and minimize their liability at the end when the actual route or roadway is actually in place okay okay we're gonna we're gonna take a quick break here and when we come back we'll throw up some graphics that uh kind of lead you let people see what you're talking about visually do you want to be cool if so watch my show on tuesdays at one called out of the comfort zone i sing this song to you because i think you either are cool or have the potential to be seriously cool and i want you to come watch my show where i bring in experts who talk all about easy strategies to be healthier happier build better relationships and make your life a success so come sit with the cool kids at out of the comfort zone on tuesdays at one see you there hi my name is bill sharp host of asian review coming to you from honolulu hawai right here in the center of the pacific ocean asian review is the oldest of the 35 or so shows um uh broadcast by think tech hawai we've been in production since 2009 our goal is to provide you the viewer with information breaking information about events in asia asia being anything from hawai west to pakistan from the russian far east south to austria and new zealand we hope to see you every monday afternoon at five p.m. hey welcome back to my lunch hour here on think tech hawai stand energy man with lee chamberlain over on mawai who's um been describing a rather frustrating process that i'm i'm i'm afraid to say is started 30 years ago with a bike plan that was pretty well set out elite there's no bridges or anything to have to be built on this bike we're right it was all uh cain hall road that ours already existing okay so yeah so the story is we've got a a bikeway greenway plan from 1990 that um i don't know how many mayors we had since then but i should just divide by four or something um but a lot boku mayors have gone through and council people have looked at this stuff and here we are 30 years later and still no bikeway and bottom line is it's been from county planning to kicked over to the private sector to moved off of the the um the cain hall roads onto railroad tracks which i don't know maybe that's better in terms of substrate but it's narrower to um different land issues but the bottom line is you get back to well we might get sued you know and that's kind of where the title of the the segment today came in you know i see a lot of the problems that we're addressing here whether they be permitting or regulatory or whatever stem from people who have either abused the system shortcut the system or been hurt by this you know by lack of uh of uh sticking to code or whatever and who gets sued the city the state the private land owner and even though at least shared with me there's a there's a state law that's supposed to protect especially private landowners who let people cross their private land um without any threat of liability but apparently that doesn't hold a whole lot of water and you can still be sued um by someone hurt on your property if you're transiting it um in a recreational mode and not being charged for it you can still go back to the land owner so it gets back to you know is tort reform one of the things that that we really need to look at as a state to see if uh that would help solve some of these issues so let's throw up one of the graphics that shows this greenway and um what we've got up Lee is the uh the one with the colored string diagrams with the different proposals and the yellow uh the yellow at the bottom is the existing highway um and then the purple blue and red roads are the the different the different options I guess that were first proposed and um and it shows kind of where it covers between where you say Lahina or it was past Lahina I see what you've actually got up I sent you a couple different maps but I think the one you have right now is the the new Lahina bypass which I'm I'm proud to say that the state of the uh DOT Department of Transportation was kind enough to go ahead and graciously implement a um parallel bikeway on the new extension greenway extension sorry good correction the bypass extension on the one behind the bypass which is 2.7 miles so what happened was is um we've been trying to put in place here a bypass for probably 40 years I guess and we finally got two segments in place and this last segment um I was able to testify prior to them given the green light to go ahead and implement it which they just finally completed a few weeks ago but um in doing so I I emphasize the fact that we need to go ahead and have a parallel bikeway on the bypass there because otherwise bikers won't have a place to to ride and they can't cross the bypass easily on the old road and so consequently it would be makes it makes sense to have a bikeway there and we do have a lot of people biking on the highway the recreational bicyclists and so they went and put it in and amazingly the difference between the state DOT and the county was is when they committed to doing it I had the plan in my hand the next morning they went ahead and sent me a CAD drawing with the bikeway that they were going to go ahead and build technologies there to do these kind of things but I don't know what's going on in the county that doesn't enable them to do the same thing where they have to farm these things out to an outside engineering firm and um I didn't finish the fact is that on the current status with Westmine Greenway the outside engineering firm has five more taskings to go before they actually get to implementation and every one of those taskings of course going to have another large nomination associated with it but um currently we're we're under the first phase the first tasking of the scope of work for the seven tenths of a mile on the Greenway. So kudos to state DOT and I know Ford Fujigami is up in the governor's office now and in the DOT is under under new management down there but I'm certain that this transpired under Ford's leadership because quite frankly when I look at all the state departments he's probably one of the most progressive lean forward directors that the state has and you know transportation is his thing but making bikeways isn't in his wheelhouse making electric cars isn't in his wheelhouse but yet his department took on not only your project but took on the sustainable transportation working group that was put together to help relieve traffic and clean up our air so kudos to Ford and the folks that work with him for doing what he did for you but you're right I mean I went online and for 160 bucks I bought a piece of software that could design a house and you can do the three-dimensional dollhouse view look inside the walls the framing everything and I was amazed you can even access catalogs online now with specific pieces of furniture or refrigerators or appliances or sinks and things that technology has gone leaps and bounds and I think it's time that maybe our county folks take a good look at pulling their head out of the t-square and drafting table mode and start looking at some of this software and implementing it because obviously the states figured that out and they're doing it so but we have a lot of pieces moving in here you've got public hearings that have to be gone through and again you have that that that tort piece hanging over your head and I don't know some leaders are okay about accepting the risk and saying it's it's good for the it's good for the city it's good for the county it's good for the state let's let's take the the risk and do it we know we're going to get sued anyway if somebody gets hurt you know that's part of doing business the only way you can avoid risk is not doing something if you don't want to crash airplanes don't fly any if you don't want to have car accidents don't drive any cars so it's easy to say no but it's it takes a good leader to say yes so if I could put it in a nutshell it sounds like what you're asking for li is for leaders to step up and be leaders and and say hey I know there's risk here but we got to get it done exactly and but then again you know you need to go ahead and start looking back at what was frivolous frivolous lawsuits okay and so I know that the county has a staff of attorneys that are on their pay to go ahead and and review these things and defend the county and all that and I just think that when the attorneys are being licensed they should be educated on the fact that they are crippling progress by being able to prosper themselves through litigation okay and so part of the licensing process I think should be that the attorneys have limitations to suing government entities because they feel that or think that they have bottoms pits of money okay i.e. the taxpayers money and so we need to go ahead and stand up to this litigation authority that has been provided and and cultivated by the lawmakers of whom the majority are attorneys who take care of themselves you know so I think that is something that needs to be thought of seriously and you know I don't know exactly what the answers are because obviously that would involve a lot of discussion and litigation I don't think we're going to solve I don't think we're going to solve that problem here Lee I agree I don't think we're going to solve that one ourselves but I'll just give you an observation that I've had when you have more lawyers than the yellow pages and you have doctors you know you're you're on the road to a problem and and quite frankly I think if you look in the in the Hawaiian telephone directory you'll see more lawyers and I have great friends that are lawyers I mean Rachel James who works with me is going to be a lawyer someday but I know she's going to be a really good lawyer but we need lawyers we need them to do their job and I guess what we're asking is that we ask them to focus on the positive side of getting things done I mean just in the news this week we've had McDonald's sued by two people for putting cheese on one of their hamburgers and charging them for it and and it's like really I mean that's that's worth going to court over and another guy that the parents had to sue the 30-year-old kid to kick them out of the house because they couldn't get them out of the house well that's bad parenting to begin with but the court's not the place to do that kind of stuff and maybe the courts are just tying up too much time like you say with lawyers who are looking for work and we need to kind of get past that and get to where we get government done and and serve the people they're supposed to be working for us it's our taxpayer money that they're spending and not spend all the time saying no just because they're afraid of a lawsuit so believe it or not Lee we've we've blown through a half hour already and we've just scratched the surface but you know I'm glad to see you made some progress over there on Molly and we're looking forward to seeing your your greenway go through thanks to the state DOT for for pressing forward time for molly city council or county council to step up and and help you out in the mayor over there and pick up and start doing something so that's our plea from at least from stand the energy man and from Lee Chamberlain is to you know put on the big boy pants and get some leadership done over there and we appreciate the leadership that is getting done by Ford Fujigami and the folks over here so I'll let you finish with the last couple words Lee and then we'll we're gonna have to sign off well again thanks a lot for having me and I really appreciate to have the opportunity to go ahead and tell my story over here and I'm hoping that this is just another way to get the word out to the public that get public behind and understanding the the difficulties associated with trying to accomplish anything and then and all comes down to public support to get anything done here I was told from the very beginning everything requires public support so be an activist if you want to get something done and think about supporting some of the plans that have been placed for many years that actually benefit the community and the state and the world. Good words from Lee Chamberlain over on Maui. Well I'll do it for stand energy man this week and thanks to Lee for being on the show and Robert in the control room and Cindy out here for keeping me straight and we'll see you next week on stand energy man here on Think Tech Hawaii. Oh