 Aloha! Welcome to Moving Hawaii Forward, a show dedicated to transportation and traffic issues but also striving to identify realistic solutions to our traffic headaches. I'm your host Tim Apachella. On St. Patrick's Day, while channel surfing between news stations, I came across a Fox special news report. It was titled, Trouble Transit Project, a taxpayers boondoggle in paradise. Not to my surprise, the show compared the Honolulu Rail project to the Alaska Bridge to Nowhere and Boston's Big Dig. I've always liked the word boondoggle. Boondoggle can be used as both a noun and a verb. As a noun, boondoggle means work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having some value. Sound familiar? As a verb, boondoggle means waste money or time on unnecessary questionable projects. That definitely sounds familiar. Whether boondoggle is used as a noun or a verb, it's the right word to describe Honolulu's Rail project. I'd like to use it for a verb for a moment. For example, Mayor Kirk Caldwell is boondoggling the state legislature as he desperately attempts to persuade them to pass the general excise surcharge with no end date or heart boondoggle's all efforts to convince the city council or public that the Rail project is under control. I could use this word all day long as I describe where we are with the Rail project and I bet you could too and come up with far better uses for the word. Another memorable quote that came out of the Fox news special was the term certifiable boondoggle. A great quote for sure and that well-placed term came from today's guests, Panos Prevadoras, Professor of Transportation and Chairman of the Civil Engineering Department of UH Minoa and a long-time outspoken critic of the Rail plan from the very, very start. Panos, thank you very much for coming on the show. I appreciate it very much. You're very welcome, Tim. The Fox news special was kind of a joy for me to find just by happenstance and there you were being quoted and I like that term certifiable boondoggle. How did this interview come about? Well, actually it came about several months ago because this team of Fox news was overnighting here on the way to China, the last trip of President Obama to China and they hear well the biggest news in Hawaii if you want to report something is their Rail. Nothing else at the time was big news and well, out of their own research and all they found me, they found members of heart, they found members of the public to try to gauge what this project is about, how long has been going and how is it going and obviously they found out that it is most likely a certifiable boondoggle by pretty much anybody's definition. Yeah, by anyone's definition. So it doesn't matter where you were at on this. That's right. Yeah, it's true. Well then fast forward a couple of days and here in the New York Times, there's an article as of March 20th and that title of that news article was Hawaii struggles to keep the rail project from becoming a boondoggle. So they're using becoming where we already know it already is. They got a little bit off but nevertheless, New York Times is a very, very national known publication. So I hate to say it but this is not where Hawaii wants to be on the national news stage. No and unfortunately, we are not even completed. I mean, we are already certifiable boondoggle and less than one third of the project has been completed. Can you imagine that? I mean, nobody ever knew that Boston dig is going to become that bad so early on. Later on as they added phases, the difficulties became clear. But for us, it's a simple project, right? It's a copy paste type of thing. It's 20 miles of linear bridge. I mean, it's not like the Boston Bridge. I mean, it's just how hard can it be? Well, and here's what I think is funny is we started with the easy part. Right. We're out in the ag land. That's right. I mean, what happens as we're getting closer into town and what happens to Kaliqi, what happens to downtown, what happens to Kakaako and actually Kaliqi, we just found the news a few months ago that pretty much the same company that is designing part of it, it didn't know that it was designing it on top of a major water main. How is that supposed to happen? I mean, in the middle of Kaliqi, there is a major water main. And you know, at that time, the board director, Colleen Hanabusa says, how is that possible? Clearly, how is that possible? Well, I mean, we're talking about major firms, major engineers, and this is major doing the basic diligence. You don't begin to design before you go. What is that? Yeah, you have to know where your utilities are. And they pocket $250 million, they say complete. And then why is this little detail right there, a water main? I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, this is beyond comedy of errors. Do you think they have a good, I'm kind of jumping around here, but do you think they have a good feel of the geotech reports along the waterfront? This is the big unknown. In fact, everywhere I give an interview, I say, you know, this is a 20 mile bridge. It's a very long bridge. It has nearly 800 segments. Almost statistically, there is a guarantee that one of them will have a major problem. Already two of them have had minor problems, either giant cracks that you can be, you know, 100 feet away. And you can see that the crack is an inch long. And then in Pearl Highlands, one of the segments actually semi collapsed two, three feet, and they had to sort it up and then, you know, do the correction. So already we're having issues. Why Parkway is a sensitive area? Why? Because it is underground water. Then we're going to approach, you know, Dillingham has its problems. Waterfront has its problems. Kakaako has also, Kakaako basically is one or two feet below high tide. So it has natural spring in water, so to speak. You see him coming out of the drains all the time. And when it floods, it doesn't drain. No, it does not. So it's another little Mapuna Puna there. So, which also begs the question about, you know, not changing subs is what some people want to put the drain at level. Well, I'm going to talk about that because I have Scott Wilson on this show about three weeks, four weeks ago. Yeah. And we're going to talk about that. But one thing Scott Wilson did bring up is, you know, when you were using this gigantic elevated rail system, the pads that you need to put in are gargantuan. Yes. And when we get down to the waterfront, those pads are even going to get larger and larger just to stabilize the coil, the coral soil. Yes. So the cost of just pouring those is astronomical. Yes. And in fact, that's a big one of the big concerns because you don't know how big you got to go until you actually hit the exact puka because not all of them have been fully geotechnically investigated because we're not in Kakao. It's going to take another three to five years to be there. So, yes, it's a big open question. There is also questions about the stability of buildings very near it. Because if you start drilling big pukas into the soil, you might be affecting high rises that there are immediate neighbors. A lot of questions like that. Yes. So let's couple that with unstable soil conditions. Let's then add on ancestral burial issues. Yeah. Let's add on utilities that have to be relocated or discovered in the case of the water main. And then let's talk about the cost of business disruption, traffic disruption. The list goes on and on. And a few eminent domain remains. Because some of them, you know, quite a few owners like you and I, I mean, most reasonable people wouldn't agree, oh, yeah, we'll take four feet of your property, we'll leave you the rest. Yeah, but that's my parking. I cannot operate without that. Not anymore. So take the whole thing, by all means, go ahead. I mean, and then rebuild it. Do the block whatever you want. But you can't just take four to 10 feet and tell me, you know, that's only $15,000. So, and that's it. Right. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. It doesn't work well. Yes. It's going to work, but it's not going to work well. Eminent domain is very powerful. But then, you know, some logic has to prevail too. Correct. I want to get back to the New York time article. Because one thing I think, I don't think people realize is that on a per capital basis, this will be the most expensive rail project per capital and per mile, both. And per mile in the country. And Hawaii taxpayers are the beneficiaries of that. Yeah, that's a heavy burden. That's how you create another grease. And you pointed out something that I don't think a lot of folks have. And that is, when we look at cost to the taxpayer, we're looking at, okay, let's just hypothetically say it's going to go up to $10 billion because of financing costs rolled into it and worst case costs the whole bit. Let's just say it's, in fact, the mayor says it's $10 billion. He's already stated that as a fact. So I'm going to use that number. And let's say we have 997,000 people on this island. We'll round that up to a million. That's right. So simple math is $10 billion divided by a million. Maybe you subtract out 20 to 30 percent because tourists are paying for that excise tax. So you subtract some of that out. But your point is, your point is, we have 400,000 people for taxpayers, not a million. That's right. Now, I haven't seen that mentioned by anyone before. 8 grand times 2.5, it takes you to 20 big ones. 20 big ones per family is a make or break situation for the average. I think Randy Roth and Cliff Slater had mentioned that for a family of five, by the time this was all said and done, they're looking about $25,000 out of that household. Yeah, that's the ballpark. It's a ballpark. But it's starting to make sense. And that number could go north. It will go north. It will go north. My estimate is that the costs are predictable up to Middle Street. Beyond Middle Street, the final 4.2 miles, I believe it's going to be a billion a mile if everything goes according to plan. What are they estimating right now? 500,000 miles? Anything that's going to be double that? That double that. The construction difficulties, particularly in internalizing that, as you said, the business cost. Because, again, you and I won't be able to go to World Theater, so we'll be going with substantial difficulty because it's a whole bridge being built. I mean, who's going to let me under the bridge and thousands of other cars? So for a while, we're going to have tremendous disruption. And once you start entering Kalihi downtown, Kakaako, Alamoana, these disruptions are not tolerable. It's not Waipahu anymore, because Waipahu is not the business center of the town. How come the businesses haven't come out with torches and pitchforks? They don't have time to visualize. Everybody, when they visualize what it is, they begin to go to this point. And after all this time, we still don't have one built station for people to see what it means. A football station, 30 feet up in the air, and we'll have to look at them, 21 of them. I think it looks like a Darth Vader ship from the Star Wars. I really do. I just think it looks horrid. You can put sails on them, but it's still going to look horrid and huge. It's ADA and everything, and you have to straddle an entire Kamehameha highway. It cannot be small, because you have to reach the two sides for people to make it accessible. Well, in this New York Times article, Mayor Kurt Caldwell was quoted, and I thought that was very interesting. In fact, very, very interesting. The first part of the quote was, people are very angry about it. Well, thank you. That's an obvious. But here's the one that caught my eye, and I got to tell you, it made me chuckle. He said, but we are now heading toward eight miles completed. It's like we are pregnant, and we can't just stop or tear it down. Now, that's a very interesting analogy, pregnant, because if the rail project truly is with child, there's got to be a father out there somewhere of this whole project. And I don't know who the father of this boondoggle is, but I'm going to suggest that Mayor Hanuman and Mayor Caldwell check at the front desk to pick up their DNA test case. I don't know why he would use the term pregnant for this project, but it certainly is a boondoggle, for sure. And opens it to questions that what's going to be the offspring. It may not be the outcome that we're expecting, and most likely won't be in terms of ridership. That's my biggest question. We are seeing all the negative developments of the cause. We cannot right now account for anything about ridership. The system is not anywhere near to be operating at any segment, and I think that's going to be the nasty surprise. Well, when we come back from our break, I want to talk exactly about ridership because I think that's a huge component that has not been addressed properly, and I know Randy Roth and Cliff Slater, they wrote an article for Civil Beat not long ago, but I really want to talk about that. So we're going to be right back. I'm Tim Apachele, this is Moving Hawaii Forward. Aloha, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Pauline Sharkmark-Chen. I'm the host for a new show on Think Tech Hawaii called Outside In. Outside In will be taking a look at how the external world can help shape Hawaii's future. And I will be starting the show hopefully next year in terms of regularly scheduled programming. And we hope to invite a wide variety of different guests ranging from history, philosophy, art and architectural fields all the way to robotics, biotech, cryptocurrency, bitcoin, and the like. So we're going to have a full range of guests to cover many different areas of interest, and I hope to see you next year. Until then, Aloha. Aloha, this is Kaili Akina with the weekly Ehana Kako. Let's work together program on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network Mondays at 2 o'clock PM. Movers and shakers and great ideas. Join us. We'll see you then. Aloha. Hi, welcome back. I'm Tim Apachele, your host with Moving Hawaii Forward. And again, we're here with Pondos Papadoras. We're talking about rail. We're going to talk about transportation issues. We're going to talk about transportation solutions. And I think before we left, we were talking about the New York Times article and specifically what was reported in that. And one of the quotes also that was found was from a former governor Cayetano. And he said, it's gotten to the point where even if I don't recommend walking away, it's gotten to the point that even I don't recommend walking away from it. Now that's quite a statement from Governor Cayetano. So he's saying we're committed now, which leads me to a quote from former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, because I think this should be printed on every voter pamphlet that is distributed on any vote that's going to involve a large project. And Mayor Willie Brown had his own article in the San Francisco Chronicles. So back in July 28, 2013, he said the following, in the world of civil projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. And then he further said, the idea is to get going, start digging a hole so big and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in. Doesn't that sound like our project exactly? Yeah, exactly. But what he's describing actually is real boondoggles. These things haven't happened anywhere else. So I was on the radio earlier today and I said, okay, let's think about it. Recent projects, the Reef Runway, not so recent, the H3, the Superfery. Tell me where any of this applies to. They didn't have excessive costs. They didn't have excessive delays, but the H3 did. But it was a different type of fight, cultural issues, the EAS and the EPA new rules kicked in, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually the project was done, not on time, and yeah, double the cost, but then the double cost had the fact that it was done over 20 years. So it was inflationary things, not really actual costs. But these rail projects and the California High Speed Rail that generates all of that, again, they are facing a three time the cost. And we're close to that. We're past the double and we're going to trouble. So it's just exactly what's going on. But this is very part and parcel of rail projects. You cannot really support rail projects based on truth. This is what it is. So we require to be lied to as taxpayers. That's right. And we need to know that. How do taxpayers hypnotize themselves into a sense of saying, this is going to be good for us. But we truly secretly know that we're going to be paying two or three times more. Well, one of the reasons is because highway agencies have given up on highway capacity addition. You see, communities grow. It's a natural thing they do. So along with the schools, waters and sewers, we got to add highway lanes or new roads. They are not doing their part. So then they know, okay, if the obvious solution is off the table, let's work on the 1%. Okay, let's do that. But not a $10 billion. So as you recall, I ran for mayor in 2008. And I said that if we're designing a light rail project similar to Phoenix, Arizona, where the cost anywhere you look at it is between 300 and 800 cost per person, you can get a traffic ticket for 500 bucks or more. So I wouldn't have run for mayor. Right. I mean, it's a cost but less than 1000 bucks. But from the good morning of this project, already we're at $5,000 per person per person in a place that people work two and three jobs to make. Well, and, you know, from an economic standpoint, a lot of these people are working two or three jobs at minimum wage. And so to take $5,000 out of that individual's pocket. It's unconscionable. It's unconscionable. That's exactly why I had to run. Yeah. And I'm glad you did. In fact, this was an opportunity for me to say thank you because when Cliff Slater was here and Scott Wilson, I didn't have a chance to say thank you. Well, I did say to Cliff Slater, thank you for standing up and speaking truth to power because it seems this time around they hired some very, very good public relation firms, legal firms, you name it. They had everything lined up so that when the opposition came to the table, they were pretty much shoved aside. That's right. And I think that's what happened this time versus what happened in the 1990s. Right. So in the 1990s, it was a clear county project. There was more accountability. You could knock at doors and go see those servants. Now there was a construct called Infra consult. You go knock at Infra consult, they tell you, oh, we'll get back to you. We'll ask the city and all. And basically, it became a wall. It was a firewall of information. Right. Yeah. Well, let's talk about how that happened, but then also the term strategic misrepresentations. And I want to talk about one of them right now. And that is the rail ridership projections. They're obscene because, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're estimating that this rail system is going to carry 116,000 passengers a day. Right. A day. A day. It's trips, actually, not passengers because we can do one way trips, but that's how you count them in transit projects. Yes. Okay. So this isn't unlike what happened in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Right. That's right. They estimated 114, 116,000 trips per day. They estimated 80,000. They got 24. Oh, okay. Stand corrected. Thank you. It's a little smaller project. It's 10 miles. The way we have seen it, it's about $80,000 was the Parsons Brigade of Projection. They got 24,000. They are struggling to get to a little over the half point now after 11 years of being open. So again, it's an interesting thing. When you talk to these people, they say, well, even if the ridership, you don't find it in the opening year because in the opening year here, we expect 90,000. Don't worry. Given enough years, people will get used to it, will hit the ridership. And there you look at San Juan, Puerto Rico. We are looking at 2030. They have had their 2030 already. They've been in operation for 11 years, and they cannot reach the half point of the forecast. The half point, not the forecast. Do you have any thoughts of what the ridership will ultimately be? 50,000 or less. 50,000 or less. Yes. I mean, I have blocked on that. So that's my opinion. I did analysis of all recent systems. And again, we're a very small city. We have an excellent bus system that a lot of people trust. They're going to have a big distrust of transferring to rail and de-transferring back to the bus. So instead of doing that, they're going to form who is to have a little more carpooling, or they'll get cheap cars. So it's not going to work in favor of the rail. Well, I have an unfortunate theory, and that is, and I think developers have used the rail as a basis to get their permits on valuable agricultural land. I'm talking about Hopapili, a project that is 11,750 homes. That's right. And most of those homes are going to cost enough that they're not going to find local employment in Kapolei. They're going to have to come to town on H1. And so is that how they're going to get ridership? Just by developing? Well, is that in their minds what they're going to get ridership? Like what does keep building more and more developments and people have to use the rail if they don't want to stand in traffic for four hours? It is amazing, Tim, but the system is broken because we have a land use commission and myself with other people went and testified, and we didn't have to make up any numbers. We just showed them the page of the Hopapili TIAR, the Traffic Impact Analysis Report. And in the peak hour, they have two stations in the Hopapili area, two stations for the rail. How much ridership are they going to get? Two double-decker buses an hour, about 400 people. That's at best 10% of the trip they generate. Guess what all the rest in the 90% going to do on the freeway? Yeah. So at best, the scenario is 10% of Hopapili will use the rail. Okay, fine. I can dispute that because typically it is not going to happen anywhere else. There is no neighborhood that it's served 10% by the bus and the bus is very flexible, very excellent. I'll give it to them. 10% the rail. Now folks, you in the power, tell me what we do about the 90%. I know you're so good at taking care of the 1% bikers, the 2% this and the 10% rail. Good. 85 to 90% solo or carpools. These are vehicles. This is how our people behave. You were elected to serve the people's needs. Talk to me about the 85%. Right. And there's no expanding the capacity of H1. They may be able to move a zipper lane this way and that way. One more lane maximum and that's highly unlikely. And that's highly unlikely. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Well, okay, you've just painted a very truthful. Bleak picture, yeah. It's sarcastic, obviously. I know. You have very bleak picture and I wonder what voters are thinking when the mayor is trying to convince the state legislature to give the city in heart a blank check. Well, they have given up because they cannot trust the system to do the right thing. It's so obvious. It's obvious that the numbers are there. You present them to the Land Use Commission. The Land Use Commission gives all the permits and all the OKs. Right. So the system clearly does not work. You probably know the name of a gentleman by the name of Keone Dudley. Dudley. And he is the president of the Friends of Makakilo. And he actually put out a very, very definitive report on contributions received by all the council members that voted for that project. And it was amazing that five or four or five of those council members received up to 70%. 70% of their contributions as a result from either supporters of rail or supporters of that BR Horton project. And I found that amazing. Now he filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission and the report back was business as usual. That's the power of super PACs. And if that is true, if super PACs win the day on any project, I'm afraid that's doesn't look good for Hawaii or any other state in the United States. Well, that's the way to push projects forward. And you know, that's the it's called enterprising politicians, they have gotten into it. And they know that if you form the right who is, that's how you get it done. And it doesn't matter that the project is actually a boondoggle, it's a project. Yeah, let me we don't have much time left. So let me I'm going to express lane right into what do you want to see? Do you want to stop this project? I want to stop the project. I mean, I agree that the quote of Governor Caetano is slightly misquoted. He and I are completely in agreement that this rail should continue because it's too late and it should start it's going to go past the airport and stop at Middle Street at that point we're in front of the H1 of the H1 and Monalua merge Middle Street merge and traffic is more reasonable with express buses we can deliver these passengers that they came the long distance the long delay into town to downtown Waikiki and the UH. That's the smart idea. So Scott Wilson and company through the Honolulu transit task force they believe they could save this project three to four billion yet you're what I saw from you was you think it's going to go to 15 billion if we go on the on the street. Why the delta here? Why the why does the spare? It's a completely different system. The trains are not compatible. It's a completely different contract. So first of all you have to do two separate EISs which is very difficult. You don't know if you're not going to get funding for the remaining four miles is again it's a it's a different system. It's not an elevated fix by by FDA nomenclature you drop off to a different layer. So again it's another new start that needs to be renegotiated. So they'll say okay you're not going to get 1.55 you're going to get only one billion because you did all this stuff now propose this and we'll see and now how you're going to save the old and the new system. It's too far complicated in terms of legalese and also of technology because they're separate contracts. Thank you. We've run out of time unfortunately and I'd like to thank you for coming and being my guest and this is Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Apacheva. Thank you for joining us.