 Welcome to Moving Hawaii Forward, part of Think Tech Hawaii series dedicated to traffic and transportation issues. I'm your host, Tim Appichella. Today, we look at the subject of soaring out-of-control costs for the rail and recent news about Kirk Caldwell attempting to entice the state of Hawaii to permanently extend the half percent excise tax. Also, we want to look at efforts of the Honolulu Transit Task Force. This group of dedicated architects and planners say there may be a far less costly way to complete the rail alignment from Middle Street to Alamoana. Cost savings range from $2.9 billion to $4.2 billion. Currently, Hart is overestimated in its budget by $3 billion and the Federal Transportation Administration is breathing down the city's neck, wanting to know by April how this gap of $3 billion is going to be short up. At stake is the Fed's commitment to fund the rail project, $1.55 billion. With me today to discuss this and much more, Scott Wilson, representing the Honolulu Transit Task Force. Scott, thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Tim. I'm glad to be here. Lula, all the news in the newspaper about this issue, timing is perfect for you to show up and talk about- It is. In today's paper, there was talk about the rail tax and two votes happened already in the legislature, so we are right in the middle of it right now. We are right in the thick of it, as they say. So, tell me about your group. Tell me about Honolulu Transit Task Force. Tell me about your mission and goals and we'll go from there. Okay. Well, really, we are a group of architects and planners that were originally- were part of AIA Honolulu. AIA is the local Honolulu chapter of American Institute of Architects. We have been looking since 2007 at ways in which transit options, rail trends, could be planned in Honolulu. And so, in 2009, we came out with a report as about 30 pages long and we gave it to the city council and the mayor and said, we really think light rail is the way to go for Honolulu. It could be built at a fraction of the cost. That report and two others similar to that were ignored by the city and they pressed ahead with their elevated rail. So, as recently as December of last year, we were still part of AIA and we had a new plan to basically modify what's been built already so that it could come down on the street level. At that point, the AIA Honolulu decided, you know what? We've said enough about this. As an organization, we're not going to take a position. So, you guys are going to have to go independent if you want to continue. So, we retitled ourselves. We're the same people that we've been since 2007. Let me interject a question right there. The main reason your group split apart is because of political reasons. Was it uncomfortable? Are we that small town that we don't want to talk about these things? Right. We're a small town and sometimes it's awkward to be confrontational with people that you work with all the time to take a contrary position. Obviously, the mayor was re-elected recently and the AIA, we have a lot of members who have contracts with the city and the federal government. So, it was a political decision. Where your bread is buttered. Yeah. Okay. So, you're having the courage and your group is having the courage to say, we know where our bread is buttered but we have to do this anyway for the good of the public. It's been the same position we've taken since back since 1992. Actually, when Mayor Fosse first proposed Elevated Rail in Honolulu, we were doing hand drawings back in those days. There were no computers but we were drawing hand drawings and saying, oh my gosh, this is not a good thing for our harbor. We gave that to the mayor. Obviously, Mayor Fosse's plan never went ahead but we did the same thing with Mayor Hanuman and Mayor Caldwell. We continue to feel that this Elevated Rail is really harmful for our city and now we've got additional ammunition. We are wildly over budget because all of our predictions about cost have actually come true and gone even beyond what we expected. So, when you were talking about your group and what you've been up to, early on you guys said your reports were being ignored by the Hanuman administration and that's where we're at. Right. And then it got inherited to Mayor Caldwell. He has made it his political career. His legacy is to produce Elevated Rail. Now, he's in deep hot water because the costs are just completely out of control and there's absolutely no one's even venturing what it would cost to complete this to Alamona and our report is saying even more importantly, what is the cost to take it to UH because we all agree that the UH should be part of any kind of a transit system and when we actually looked at the current heart plan it dead ends into a canyon 60 feet tall, a dead end on Kona Street and literally there is no way to take this on to UH. So, it is you have to back up two streets to Pensacola and then come up with a ramp that goes up to 90 feet so you are talking just unbelievable engineering efforts and cost just to take it to UH which is where it should have gone all along. Well, let's take a look at some slides here of what your folks are proposing to get off the elevated part of this rail system and go get back onto the street, bring it back down to earth. Yep. Let's take a look at that. Well, let's look first these are all simulations from the city this is this slide is at HCC so continuing from Middle Street there's a stop in Kapolama and then the Iwale or sorry Kalihi and then this is called Kapolama stop at HCC so this is on Dillingham. Okay, that was produced by the city this is further on as you get into downtown this is a shot of the guideway kind of near Bethel Street you can see Aloha Tower in the in the distance. This thing is mammoth how Scott how high is that's about 35 feet off of off of the ground and it's about it's about 25 feet wide as a guideway just just the guideway no not looking at the stations yet. You know it's interesting I'm going to just throw an interjection here and that is the city of Seattle has approved and spent billions of dollars to get rid of their viaduct now granted this viaduct carried 100,000 cars every day yet we spent billions of dollars trying to open up from the downtown to our waterfront and here we are in Honolulu spending billions of dollars to raise an obstruction that is going to block us off from our future history in which we end up tearing down a giant infrastructure just like the Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco just like the viaduct in Seattle so sorry I have to get that out my chest when I see this we're getting this horrible deja vu that in 50 years we're going to go oh my goodness why did we build this colossal elevated structure right at our waterfront yeah you say deja vu I say groundhog day but that's okay we both both on the same page and there here's a better view here's what we're really more objecting to are the stations that have to be right by the water this is the projected Chinatown station at Kikau Like Street so it's not just a guideway that we're worried about it's actually these colossal stations that are is this an architect's rendering because this looks like a mammoth empire strikes back this it looks like a spaceship has landed in Chinatown and and and all of the scale of the small buildings and the and the views out of Chinatown to the water are completely disrupted by this 240 foot long concrete structure which has got to be supported on pylons and has to have escalators and elevators this does require an elevator for ADA oh yeah absolutely uh I hope it doesn't break down because elevators in our tropical environment that are standalone tend to break down and as do escalators so this is part of the operating and maintenance costs that's going to be that part of the the reason that humidity and salinity in the air yeah you're look at the salt water the salt water is literally 30 feet away from all those all that equipment right that's that's we think is unfortunate so we were going to look at some other I think we're going to look at some other of all I there we go this is another produce this was again produced by the city this is showing the guideway as it gets near um Fort Street Mall and you're looking to the station you see it in the distance there you can see the Dillingham transportation building on the left you can see a station but it's very far away I think if you look at our next shot it's a little closer in right now you can see the station a little more clearly it it's supposed to go right into the plaza between Dillingham transportation building and the pacific I've noticed a little graffiti there's is that just for fodder or yeah we we we decided to be there's going to be some right this was our simulation so we had to be realistic okay we had to put a little graffiti because with all that concrete there it's it's impossible to imagine it not getting a little tags in all the city's planners great wisdoms they always say well we we paint the columns with murals the graffiti tag artists would respect that and they won't dare dare put any graffiti on these things well I haven't seen that ideal city yet yeah nor have I let me ask you something um when this was first rolled out years and years ago were there renderings or drawings that kind of didn't show the reality of these gargantuan columns and rail stations were there renderings showing it more of a soft and subtle alignment well what we notice is that the city's renderings they would show it from about a half a mile away and just the guideway so that's what was really consistent in their whole PR campaign was okay let's show this let's show this thing from a distance let's let's show it from three or four blocks away we won't show any stations we're only going to show the guideway so it looks pretty harmless it's just in the little you know cute little poles a little guideway are there any photos in the archives for us to compare in the future here the ones that we just saw uh and if you look at the the additional ones that we were just talking about the ones in kakako now this is this is pretty huge I would say this is the one proposed at mother waldron park mother waldron park is right on the left where that tree is as you can see this huge guideway uh because it's right in the middle of the road and you can't put a post in the middle of the road they've had to put this giant bent uh straddle bent uh structure with posts on either side but you can see this is pretty disruptive imagine those people living in that housing building and that's an existing building on the right they suddenly have an enormous concrete wall right in front of their window and there's going to be a train on steel wheels rattling by their uh there went the valuation of that poor building yeah all right well looking at all that concrete what i see is um the basis of a lot of cost yeah i i see uh i see the construction in the union i mean it's good for the union there's good for contractors and they've got at least 10 years of work solid work i mean that's that's great that's not part of the 100,000 jobs that mere hanuman had promised no you're talking about permanent type jobs fortunately no yeah which by the way we're only about 900 and some odd jobs that have been really created on a permanent basis most of the jobs have in fact gone to out-of-state workers because it's very complex work and they there's been no similar project in hawaii so all of these local contractors that we're hoping to get work are really not not seeing it they're they're all busy anyway because we're we're in a boom well isn't that the myth though that's why we get the public all excited about this concept because we're going to have a hundred thousand new jobs yeah and people assume oh a hundred thousand local jobs yeah no they're not local jobs so so the the whole reason we're doing rail first it was going to be about traffic but then for some reason when they studied it they discovered that almost no traffic was going to be taken so then they changed it to jobs and they said oh yeah it's this is about jobs well we discovered there's not very many jobs or they're out-of-state job so now we're on to to d and housing so now that's the reason we're doing right affordable housing and affordable housing that's the mantra that's everybody's putting out and of course contractors are all happy because i think i could build housing at least i couldn't build the rail but maybe i could build housing so so it sounds like a three card three card monty yeah it's like which shell are we supposed to look under now right yeah it's not about traffic oh oh and it's not about jobs oh oh now it's about to d how convenient yeah yeah maybe maybe when we take apart to do there's going to be another one i gotta think about my next my next excuse for rail there you go well since i see all this concrete i see my eyes and public sees the same eyes uh costs and expense and and overruns so let's talk about budgets um i have a shot up here that i want to put up and it shows the costs from about 2006 there we go so here we are 2006 we had an estimation of about 4.6 billion dollars from start to alamuana right and then at that time fta says okay hey these are reasonable we're going to commit 1.55 billion dollars and to get you from our portion of contribution for this rail uh this project and with that we had a half a percent of the general excise tax and that was approved for 15 years from 2007 to two 2022 now we fast forward four years oh we've gone for 4.6 billion up to 5.4 billion oopsie doodle okay let's let's go a little bit further than that let's accelerate four more years oh look at this 2014 6.5 billion dollars oopsie doodle and then in 2015 the state legislator says okay we're going to extend to get another five years we don't want to but we could see that we're in a cash crunch here we don't have enough money in the budget to get to where we need to go and so lo and behold we have an extension now to 2027 and then uh oh september 2016 we've gone up to 8.6 billion as our best uh ceiling cost i think that's the ceiling cost with financing i think financing is included in that that's true and then two months later oh my goodness six alive we've gone up to 9.5 9.5 billion and that's last year we're now in 2017 i just can't wait to see what new numbers are waiting so now it's 10 billion we've rounded it up the mayor the mayor has announced uh that we should round it up he must love round numbers yeah we i think 10 billion is a pretty round number yeah from 4.6 now to 10 billion right all righty well let's talk about your group and the fact that you've come up with a plan and we've seen you know where these alignments are are with us this mammoth gargantuan elevated system you folks in your report have stated that if you can bring that rail down to street level down to earth yeah um the cost savings would be what the cost savings would be at least three billion and more and more three to four billion at least and that's because when you bring the the rail down to street level you're saving almost 400 million per mile because right now uh as we get in beyond middle street we're getting into our urban center and the cost the cost per mile for elevator are going to be between 400 and 500 million per mile per mile let's hold that thought we're going to take a break i'm tim appichella this is moving hawaii forward and we will be right back thank you hello this is martin dispang i want to get you excited about my new show which is called humane architecture for hawaii and beyond and it's going to be on think tech hawaii from downtown honolulu on tuesday afternoons five p.m and we're going to talk about uh to make architecture more inclusive on the islands which is what you which is one of the definitions of humane which is being tolerant of uh you know many people of nature of many other influences so we're going to have some great guests like today's guest for example my collaborator david rockwood who's the author of the awesome um manifestation of humane architecture in the background so see you on tuesdays five p.m and look forward to i'm standing as a man and i want you to be here every friday noon think tech hawaii dot com watch the show be there i pity the full hawaii perfect welcome back this is tim appichella i'm your host we're moving hawaii forward i'm here with scott wilson and we're talking about um taking the elevated rail system back down to earth down to ground and saving anywhere from 2.9 billion to 4.2 billion dollars and scott thank you for sharing your your thoughts and wisdom yes um before the commercial break we uh we're talking about cost and how much your group plans to save and i'd like to hear that again well yeah thank you uh for um axing asking again what it what it involves is is that we've discovered that the the unique construction of elevated rail and the elevated stations because it's never been done before it poses a huge problem in hawaii we have very limited uh workers who've done this and we have very unusual geological conditions as we as we move from middle street into downtown downtown and especially to the harbor we're getting into totally unforeseen geological conditions because our harbor area everywhere everything uh ocean side of richard street was actually filled so where those pictures that we saw of the guideway going down nimitz highway that is all on filled land so the the standard way of boring a hole in the ground and filling it with concrete is not not applicable we if you look at all of the the high rises that were built in downtown in that ocean area they were they were literally built on boats of concrete they they the entire footprint of the building has an enormous 10 foot thick concrete pad under it so it is just floating because there is no rock to build on this is not manhattan so so those those um posts that you see holding up the rail those actually have to go down into a big spread footing and that may be 30 feet by 30 this leads me to a really important point of the report that you folks put out and that is um in the first one third of the alignment uh there was a 76 percent cost overrun in that first third section so your report and correct me if i'm wrong basically says if we take that simple logic and we say there's two thirds left that would be 76 and 76 and 76 percent a total of 228 cost overrun but the point being made in your report was hey the first third was the easy part you just alluded to the fact that when we get close to the waterfront we've got extra pads to put in we have uh utilities to contend with we have businesses that are going to be interrupted there has to be some kind of mitigation for the businesses so your cost estimate of overrun is that rather actually simplistic um it could be a lot higher than the 76 percent i i tried to be conservative i can see that but i just tried to say frankly right now the the project is only one third finished because we have no stations built and we have about 10 miles so if you if you adjust those you come up with about a 30 percent completion so and we've had as i said a 76 percent rise so obviously from 4.6 billion to 10 billion is the overall price so they're they're projecting almost uh 100 percent increase in price but we're saying it's actually going to be more so and and as i said there are multiple conditions in the downtown area and the urban core which they haven't even begun to deal with that that they've had they've had very easy construction out in agricultural land and even the land in pearl city waipahu they're in the middle of us they're in the middle of an existing highway and they're well inland from any kind of shoreline so this was the easy part this was the easy part and they still had problems yeah okay here we go um parson breakerhoff they were one of the consultants on this project right parson breakerhoff is nationally well known they do a lot of projects they did work on the big dig back in boston and they were the last ones to do the really the last bit of consulting for the last elevation rail project here in this country i believe and with that project they were 80 percent off cost and they were 74.9 percent off on the ridership estimations are we talking about miami i believe so we're talking yes i was going to say uh the only other existing elevated rail system in an urban center is miami yeah that was done in the 80s right and they were that far off on cost and they were that far off on ridership which leads me to the point that they were brought in to consult on this project um but correct me if i'm wrong but the city and county of honolulu is still retaining their estimations they are parson rinkerhoff is still in charge of this project they are doing the design drawings for the final segment okay i only bring that up as a footnote i guess at this point they uh estimated the ridership maybe about 119 000 but anywhere in any city where there's rail with there's a light rail component or even an elevated um guideway um maybe at best be it seattle or i don't know if it's portland's part of that but most cities have about a 38 000 weekly ridership and the projection i think is um been stated as high as 119 000 i know are those ridership numbers accurate are they i think they're they're wildly inflated yeah i mean i i think this is this is standard practice uh with all these big infrastructure projects they low ball the cost and they high ball the ridership so they're trying to make this thing look useful and and and uh needed right well if we look at there is an additional project in in san juan portorico which was uh also done by parson rinkerhoff it was done in the 90s and we don't talk about it maybe because it's san juan is not a not a state but right but nevertheless uh that is actually the project closest to honolulu because they they tried to run it through the center of the city and it was too too difficult because of uh proximity of buildings so they ran it around the side of the downtown the ridership ended up being 25 percent of original projection okay i want to get into an article that appeared in front of the star advertiser here recently and mera kurt called well called your report or your your plans to reduce costs and bring the the rail down to down to earth down to the street level is wishful thinking um i don't know how you feel about that but um as the mayor moves forward with the state and tries to persuade them i don't know persuaded is the right word in my world it's almost bribery of trying to increase the split of the excise tax from the current 90 percent 10 percent split and now that that proposal may be 80 20 or even high as 75 25 percent right and um i don't know if that's wishful thinking maybe he'll be successful but he seems to be rather desperate in trying to convince the state to extend this excise tax into perpetuity yeah um you have someone on your your on your team douglas tilden that's correct he was one of the major authors of this report yes what specifically did they have an issue with this report uh no douglas tilden was one of our primary technical advisors right uh so he fully supports it in fact no i know but when i say they i meant heart and the mayor's office that's that's actually a very good point we are still waiting for a serious response to our proposal i think we are do we are do what we're trying to do is raise a level of discussion in the city about alternatives and so far we've gotten just very casual almost laughable responses to our report they're laughable they they have said things like well if you put in light rail you're going to have to build a trench seven feet deep and 30 feet wide and as you can see from that picture right there uh behind us that the the track the track for our train on the ground on there is 14 inches deep and it's eight feet wide okay so so all of this this scare tactics about giant trenches and disturbing all of the human remains is is a smoke screen okay let's talk about wishful thinking i'm gonna pull up a screen here because the legislature right now is is trying to entertain and grapple with mayor caldwell's request to extend this excise tax so can we see the first one uh this was quoted a few days ago i think we're having a harder time than two years ago and it's based on the fact that there's no trust the numbers given have changed dramatically i think so next one please uh the house majority leader scott sakeye what exactly do they mean by a split i think they know what a split is i just think they're having a hard time contending to what the mayor is really saying currently it's a 90 10 split this is the one that really uh an eye opener i think there are a lot of questions some members probably feel they can't rely on the answers that are being provided given past representations that were made to the legislature excuse me we missed a word there and that was printed in star advertiser two thousand uh february first uh this one more example of where we are with the legislature in trying to grapple with uh mayor caldwell's request okay i'll read it here and it's well that's fine so here we are we have a credit a credibility problem we have we have a situation where your report's being taken to task yet all the numbers from all the years seems to be washed away and and merely forgotten do you have a comment about that yeah i i just think um at this point um the mayor the mayor and and hart really have to have a serious discussion on how they're they propose to finish this project because it's they they have not addressed how they would extend it to u h they they have simply gone to this this fallback position of let's just extend the g e t tax for indefinitely and that way we can afford all kinds of things down the road well that basically will mortgage and and suck up all possible tax revenues for the state for any kind of uh projects or uses or needs for from now until the foreseeable future yeah randy roth who's an attorney is a professor at the law school um estimated that by the beginning to the end of this project with the increase of all the taxes and the accumulated taxes a family of five will be paying about 25 000 of the life of the project and and that's a tax we don't see every time we go to the store it's it's embedded it's it's embedded in our uh for everything we pay for um real estate cars everything and so i if if the taxpayer truly knew the cost that they were going to be spending on an elevated rail project i would think there would be pitchforks and torches out in the streets but i don't think they understand that and i'm hoping your group can illustrate that a little bit better and a little bit more um and then show the advantage of what you're trying to do and trying to save this project and trying to get the cost to the pax to taxpayer significantly reduced yeah we we are just starting to have a serious discussion with the mayor about options because we recognize that that 15 miles of this will be built it will be built in middle street so there you're going to have your fast transit time all the way to middle street from middle street coming down to grade it will be slightly slower we calculate only three minutes slower so and for three minutes we will save three to four billion dollars so that's about a billion dollars a minute per minute is it worth it yeah i i i just think that we have so many other needs in this state whether it's referring to schools or it's referring to roads or stores we've got to be more pragmatic