 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's 3 o'clock. Rock. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. Welcome to Moving Hawaii Forward on Think Tech. Our co-host for the show is Tim Apochella, who is, you know, normally the host for the show. Welcome to your own show, Tim. Thank you, Jay. It's a pleasure to be here. This episode today is called The Visit with the Department of Transportation. We are going to talk about what's going on in Hawaii transportation. Our guest for the show is Tim Sakahara. You remember that name? He was with KGMB for a long time. Now he's the public information officer of the Department of Transportation. He is also my cousin-in-law, twice removed. Exactly, right. We're like twins, like I said. Don't, spitting resemblance of a family member. Full disclosure. Exactly, yes. So there are many state transportation projects underway, some more important and some more expensive than others. Transportation is in any event a lubricant of our economy and what happens in transportation affects us all. So Tim, formally this newscaster, he's going to tell us from the point of view of the spokesman of the Department of Transportation about all these projects and how it works and namely the lubrication effect on the economy. I want to hear about that from you, Tim. Well, it's true. You know, the Department of Transportation affects every single person, resident, tourist, visitor in the state every single day when you think about it. Because it's all 15 airports in the state, 10 commercial harbors, and all 2,500 lane miles of highway on all islands. And so, yeah, so we have a direct impact on everyone who sets foot in this state. So we certainly know that it's a big responsibility to do our best and to keep this state moving forward, both for the economic engine of it as well as the tourism effects. So, yeah, so there's a lot to do and a lot of work to be done and every day the 2,500 employees are dedicated to keeping those projects moving forward. And he has this great director, Ford Fujikami. He's a great guy. He's a bright light in this administration. You know, he is. That man is a workaholic. I chose a department with the hardest working director in town because he's in by 5 a.m. every day. He's also leaving after 7. He's working on weekends. The man knows everything about everything about the Department of Transportation. And actually, disclosure on him too, he's a Kapolei resident as well. So a lot of people say, oh, well, you don't know what we're feeling like with the pain of the traffic going towards the leeward side. Well, he does. Yeah. And things. And so he's definitely got a firsthand knowledge. I wish I could say it was my cousin too, but he's not. Sorry. He'd be better to know than me. I gotta say. I don't know about that. Anyway, Tim, so a lot of projects, the three of us should talk about these projects and get a handle on what's happening, you know, in this session and in this time, in this time of the administration, what are we doing to improve transportation? Just for example, I was listening to HPR this morning, I'm talking about the complete streets with a guy named Packard and from the city. And he's talking about all these projects. And the question really, the underlying question is, is a project a plan or is it a reality? And how do you get from the plan to the reality? Well, a big part of that is the focus right now. As you know, there's some economic challenges with the state and the Department of Transportation is certainly vulnerable to all that as well. So what we're trying to do is do the most with the least, quite frankly. And so one of the ways we're doing that is focusing on system preservation versus the capacity projects, right? So what does that mean? The system preservation is actually trying to maximize the infrastructure we already have, make the most of what we have versus the large capacity projects, which means building brand new roads. But when you do that, it costs a ton of money. It takes a ton of time. And of course, you have to do all the environmental clearance too, by building new road. So it takes a long time. So that's why, and like I said, the money, they're all very expensive whenever you're building new roads. So we're trying to focus on the system preservation, meaning take what we already have and make it better because it really doesn't make any sense if we go, look, that's an important call from the governor. No, I think it's the president. President Obama's in town. He could be calling you for dinner right now. But you just missed your opportunity. There you go. I'll tell you. But you'd rather spend it with you. That's right. Talking about system preservation versus the large capacity projects, right? And so that it really doesn't make sense if we can't properly maintain and operate the roads we already have to be making new roads. So that's why we are working on the roads we have, adding more shoulder lanes, restriping to make more lanes, especially during those traffic peak hours. We already did that in H1 Westbound and IF. We did it on the H1 Eastbound near Kunia. We added another zipper lane, which tremendously boosted the usage of the zipper lane by 40% when we added that second lane, which also, by the way, gets more traffic out of the single occupancy lanes as well in the process. So it really does affect everybody. It sounds to me like that. The whole idea about clearing up the congestion on the freeways is a major, major direction of this department. And let me, let me join and say that that is a good idea because we have a terrible problem with congestion on the freeways. Now, Tim, I interject a question here is, at what point do you convert from a two-person HOV lane into a three-person because the time delay is getting, I would imagine, it's still increasing. And so at what point would the state consider of, you know, increasing the mandatory three-person carpool versus the two-person? Well, right now, all the HOV lanes and the zipper lane is all two-person occupants. So there is no three person. So it's either just the one or the two. And we did actually just adjust the HOV lanes and times because some of them, we extended, for example, the shoulder lane on the H1 eastbound westbound, sorry, NIA, we extended that from 3 to 7 p.m. because we know that afternoon commute going westbound is so long. So we extended that, had a huge impact. And then on the same token, the carpool lane on the H2, head and southbound, we actually eliminated in the afternoon because there wasn't any need for it. So we have been adjusting the times of all those high-occupancy vehicle lanes. And right now they are all two-person. So it doesn't matter if you have two, three, four, five, six, whatever people in the car, as long as you have two or more inside of them. What about this thing came up in the Lingal administration about charging people in the speed lane automatically, like they do in Singapore, you know, with some kind of automatic computer charging system. Hot lane. The hot lane. And then, you know, sort of using the computer to balance the traffic between the hot lanes and the other lanes. Yeah. And in fact, there was legislation in this session right now that was introduced to charge, like, a dollar fee for every time a single occupant uses the zipper lane, for example. And, you know, we certainly respect the intent of that, but it can get difficult. This is not your bill. It's not our bill. No, this was Representative Greg Takayama's bill, who introduced it. And there are issues with it. I mean, certainly, you have to follow federal guidelines for the usage of that lane, especially if federal funds were used to build it, which they were. And as well, the public money and funds were used it. So a lot of people take exception to having to pay for the road out of their own expenses. And they have to pay for it. So it might not be that popular. This might not be that popular. It definitely has both sides of the argument, but it didn't pass this legislative session. So you could do it under the illusion of a demo project. I know they've done that in South Seattle, where they've taken an existing lane, an HOV lane, and under the demonstration project, they were able to get the feds to sign off on that. Now, how long that demonstration project goes, who knows? And how long federal funding goes, who knows? Well, I think you talk about getting the money together to do these projects, including demonstration projects. You need funding from the federal government. The federal government is a little bit a cup of coffee right now. Did you notice that? Yeah. Well, and there's a lot of uncertainty, too. I mean, President Trump has talked highly of a transportation and infrastructure projects. So we're hoping that bodes well for the Department of Transportation. I hope so. But yeah, you never know until you know. Now, you have this, what is it, freeway service patrol. This is in the same vein, to try to avoid congestion and holdups on the freeway, no? Well, there's a lot of things that we do. Let me just say that it's almost impossible working for the DOT to please everyone. We get a lot of criticism, and rightfully so, but the freeway service patrol is actually the highest rate of program in the DOT. 99% of the feedback we receive on that is overwhelmingly positive, which is saying something, and especially in this day and age. What is the program? So the program is there's tow trucks, and that that Rove, the H1, Moanalua, and H2 freeways from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, and they're looking to help people. So if you get in a stall, if you run out of gas, you get a flat tire, they'll pull up and help you. They'll either, and first they'll help you get safely off the road, because we know the longer that a car is blocking a lane of travel, the more it's going to back up, and of course, cause people to be late for work and congestion. So what's the conversation like? You know, the guy pulls up next to you, and he says to you, I'm from the government. I'm here to help you. Yes, don't be afraid by that car. In this case, he really is there. Or she is really there to help you. Yeah, no, they really are. And actually, and people can call it, it's a free service, but overwhelmingly the number one service that they help people out with is changing a flat tire or a busted tire and things. But they also give a free gallon of gas to people if they run out of gas. They'll see that too loud. I know, exactly. Well, actually, when gas price is around $5 a gallon, we did see a spike of people calling in for that free gallon of gas. They have to wait on the side of the freeway for a little while until they get there. But yeah. And they'll also tow people. They won't tow you to your favorite mechanic on the other side of town, but they will tow you to the safest, nearest spot off the freeway. Yeah, so you're not in congestion. Exactly. That's really important. Here's one thing that caught my attention. You've mentioned flat tires, number one, no gas, accidents. Down the list was 6% of abandoned vehicles. Now, my imagination tells me that they're stuck in traffic and they said, that's it. I'm done. I'm just walking away from the car and I've had enough. Well, no. That does happen. But fortunately, that's not. And actually, yeah, they'll go and sometimes someone will go park their car and then walk to go try to make a phone call or get gas on their own. I was in Kapolei and I was at the new shopping mall. And I had the opportunity for about 45 minutes to talk to one of the drivers. And I was fascinated because he said, you know, traffic could go so much better if people just had the courtesy to let each other car come in on a merge lane. I mean, just simple things like that. He said, would speed the delay so much more. And so I'm wondering if there's any opportunities for a PSA about don't text while you're waiting in traffic because the second that car moves, you're still texting or you're doing something with your phone. And that car now has moved, what, 25 yards before you realize, so you have that backup delay all the way down H1. I don't know if that's an issue with those guys. We know for a fact, the fastest way to cause traffic congestion and backups is an accident, a motor vehicle accident. I mean, it ruins a person's day for both those cars involved, but it'll compound the traffic as well. And a lot of times people think if they're speeding, they're going to get there faster. But in all reality, speeding will not necessarily get you there any faster as following the laws of the road and not causing other congestion for other people and things, especially when the weather is bad. I can't tell you how many times people think they could still travel their same speed when it's pouring rain and the roads are slick and visibility is not as good because of the weather. And then they cause an accident and get involved in anything. I mean, we've seen the accidents on the Leewardside and Parenton Highway and Kalani on Olay Highway. I mean, as soon as something like that happens, it just brings the traffic to a halt. So we certainly urge people to drive safely. That's also another reason why we did support numerous bills in the session this year to actually increase the penalty for highway safety bills, for things like excessive speeding, for DUI, for distracted driving like you're talking about. What happened to that bill? Is that still alive? Well, they're technically not dead, but we're hoping that they can be revived. And if not this session, then in the future because 120 people died on highways last year in the state of Hawaii. Half of them were related to drugs or alcohol. Another 25% of them were related to speeding. So if you took away just those two factors, drinking and driving or speeding, 75% of those people, almost 90 people, would have gone home to their families instead of having a funeral. And those are things that the DOT believes is preventable. Those are preventable accidents. It's a bad choice by the driver. And so that's why we're trying to actually stiffen, triple the penalty for those types of violations to really make it hit home for people that it's not worth it. Absolutely, I agree. And just before the show, I met a guy that I knew years ago out in the street and he had been in an accident and he was really badly injured. So it created a disability for him. And that's also the kind of net effect of all these accidents. But it's not accidental that we have to take a break. You know that from your experience with KGMB, Hawaii News now. The transition. Yeah, thank you. We work on that. But I think one minute break would be right back. You'll see. Aloha and happy new year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at one o'clock. Mahalo. Aloha. This is Gordo the Texar here at Iwachi Talk. I want to thank you guys for joining us every week from one o'clock in the afternoon to 130 Hawaii time where we talk about tech. But this year we're kind of branching out and we're talking about all other interesting kinds of facts and figures. And Andrew, my security guy will be joining us as he always is giving us a weekly security tip. And we will also then have Angus giving us some gadgets and some things that's really starting to irritate his okole. So we're going to have him coming out as well. Anyway, Drew, do you have anything you want to say? Glad to be here, man. Happy to help. Here we go. Thanks again. Iwachi Talk. We'll see you soon. Okay. We're back. We're live with Tim Sakahara and Tim Apacheva. Both? Two Tims. The two Tim shows. So, you know, one of the things we talked about before was this whole thing about accidents on the highway to congest everything. But part of that has to be police reports and how long it takes, HPD, at least on this island, to write the police report. And when they do that, if they're casual about it, you know, thousands of cars are backed up, happens all the time. No, I know their county, your state. And it's not too much you can do about that. But do you have any thoughts about what would happen if we speeded up the process on investigation reports after accidents? Man, you're getting me in trouble talking about HPD. I'm going to get pulled over on the way home. No. Well, so I guess there are only a couple ways to respond to that. But first of all, when they're dealing with a fatal accident, you do want the investigators to do their due diligence in trying to really figure out what happened because you could almost guarantee there's going to be a lawsuit with it. And there's going to be a criminal trial as well, most likely. So they really do have to do their due diligence. And yes, it's a terrible inconvenience to the people that are stuck in traffic. But if you look at it in perspective, that's still better. I would take that any day than being the family of the victim who just died. Right? So yes, it's unfortunate that they're waiting time. But I trust that the investigators are working as fast as they can to reopen the roadway as quickly as possible. Hope so. The other thing that comes to mind about police is one of my favorite subjects is the van cam. Years ago, when the van cam came out and they took pictures of people speeding, there was all a hue and cry and the legislature repealed the thing within a few months after it had enacted the thing. It was in the same session, I think, or maybe the year after. I personally supported the van cam because I thought it would slow driving down. And it did slow driving down. But a lot of people, you know, they didn't like the van cam, so they fought it in every way possible. Is the van cam, do you think the van cam will ever come back? Well, similarly, maybe baby steps. This session, there was a plan to have red light cameras at intersections to catch those people who are running red lights, which we know is a problem in Hawaii, actually everywhere, pretty much. But to really, as a deterrent, to get people from running the red lights and things. So that was actually a proposal in this legislative session. There was mixed reaction on both sides. There were a lot of people who saw the safety benefits of that. DOT supported it as well because of the safety. But it kind of did get the red light at that legislative session right now, at least as of right now. But you never know. I mean, something like the red light camera or the van cams can come back again because speeding continues to be an issue with speeding. That's why we wanted to triple the fines for excessive speeding. And of course, that's the people that are 30 miles per hour over the speed limit or the speeders in the school zones or construction zones as well. We wanted to increase the fines for those because no one should be speeding around the school. I hope everyone could agree with that. This leads me to a couple of organizational issues. One is you have lots of roads that are state and lots of roads that are county. And I guess that's mostly in Oahu, but it's on the neighbor islands too. How do you deal with that? I mean, you have a certain standard. You're going to have a certain way of philosophy, a way of looking at it, trying to make it better for lubricating our economy, whatnot. But the counties may or may not feel the same way about it. Don't you think all the roads should be one kind? Well, fortunately right now, the state and the county administrations both work really well together, actually. There's a lot of collaboration and coordination between the state and the county agencies on all islands. So that's actually very beneficial right now. And it's actually a very good climate to work and to get things done. And they do get things done. In the areas where there is a county versus state road and there's issues going on, I mean, they work through it the best they can and try to get things fixed and improved as quickly as possible. One other thing, another structural question is, it's been suggested, and this has been the case in many states on the mainland, that there be authorities for the airport, maybe for ship, the harbor, so to speak. And the authority would have greater authority, so to speak. You know, the classical model was Robert Moses in New York and he was able to build incredible infrastructure by himself and he made New York what it is today because he had that authority. He was a very Akamai guy, he knew how to get it done and the authority concept really helped him. Would that help here? Absolutely, and I'm glad you asked that because yes, that is another plan that HDOT supports right now in the legislative session to form an airport authority. And what does that mean? Well, we actually want to take the airport system out of the hands of the state and give it control to an independent board that is appointed, so there still would be transparency in public meetings, disclosure of all public policies and protocols, but we believe that it would make things much more efficient because let's be honest, we go through a project right now and it does take a long time. There is some bureaucracy involved and red tape and we think that like a chief procurement officer for this authority would be able to get things moving quicker than it is now. You know, I mean the people do their best right now but we think that an independent airport authority would actually be much better in the long run for the state of Hawaii and the 15 airports in the system. I'm with you on that, and this came up in the context of the energy authority suggested, in fact by Neil Apocrombie at the very beginning of his administration, didn't go anywhere. The opposition was, well you're going to create another layer of government, what it amounts to, it's going to slow everything down, not going to speed it up, but I disagree with that. I think you are on my side of this. That the authority actually has greater leverage and less bureaucracy, more authority, can get things done quicker and that we need to do this not only for the airport, maybe for other things too. Yeah, and it's true. And one of some of the concerns that came up about that, well what happens to the employees? What if someone's been working at the airport for 19 years, this happens? Are they going to go back down to zero? No, that's one of the things that would be worked out. The employees would keep their benefits in seniority, moving forward, so employees would be taken care of. It might be bad news for people like Ford, Fuchigami, because technically they were taking the management out of control. I'm sure he'd be happy with it though, because it would work, it would work. That's even why he seized the benefit of it, even though he's technically putting himself out of a job as far as the airport's division has evolved, he knows it would be better for the state. Yeah, Tim, you had something? Well, I'm just thinking of the airport, I know that the state would have had some plans on some upgrades at the airport, and I can't remember exactly what those were. Yeah, there's $2.7 billion worth of modernization projects going on across the state at all of them, right now as we speak. A lot of the big ones, we're going to talk about Honolulu, you're going on, there's a permanent rental car facility that's a five-story facility. It's going to add 2,500 more parking stalls, bring 1,000 parking stalls back to the public use. It's going to consolidate all those rental car companies in one location, so no one has to jump on a shuttle, get taken off property or anything. So that'll also actually clear up some congestion as well. We want to have one consolidated area for customers, hopefully make it less confusing, more efficient for those customers. It's doing the same thing on Maui as well. The Maui airport is in the process of building that. I was just curious, is there any fun set aside for disaster preparation for the airport? Because in every disaster exercise, in every scenario, mock scenario, the airport is always shut down because of the tsunami risk. I didn't know if there was any kind of enhancements that could render the airport to remain open during the tsunami, but probably not. And you're right in the fact that all the airports go through annual training on a disaster scenario, and then a lot of the agencies do it even more often than that, but the big coordinated one is annually. And yeah, no, they do a very good job of planning and preparing for that. There are emergency contingency funds. There's always the option as well as going for emergency funds from the governor to get funds released. Because we know, certainly, and well, and I should say fortunately, Hawaii has been very fortunate not to have had a major disaster at our airport through harbors, because we know that they're both critical. Life is going to shut down. Right, and airports, I mean, we should talk harbors too, because in this state, not a lot is actually manufactured here. 80% of all the goods and products that we consume are imported in. And within the Department of Transportation. And 98.6% of that is brought in through our harbor system. So yeah, so it's vital, I mean, to keep those harbors open. I mean, we all value our food and products, toothbrushes, toilet paper, all that stuff. Toilet paper, right? Good example, yeah. Yeah, you know, so I mean, I'll take the toothbrush, thank you. How important it all is. But you know, you say that 2.7 billion of, I guess that's in the pipeline kind of stuff. It must be waiting for funding, because otherwise it could be... Well, a lot of the projects are already finished, actually, it's been ongoing. And so a lot of them are finished. We're actually halfway through with all the projects spinning that. The rental car facility is going to be done in 2020. There's a few other projects going on right now. Admittedly, if you go by Honolulu International right now and go on the second floor departure level, you're going to see a lot of barriers, a lot of work, a lot of signs. That's good. It's good. People might have to get dropped off a little bit farther from their airline and to get into the ticketing been normal. But you know, we're repaving that section. We're replacing the planter boxes, which we're leaking with brand new guardrails. Taking the wiki buses off there. Well, that actually area is getting a renovation as well. Actually, there's a project on that. Ford, who she got me, has great ideas to try to make those more sustainable as well. With using biodiesel instead of the regular... Yeah, I've heard about that. Yeah. So I mean, you know, there's also plans not only to make it more efficient but also more sustainable. Here's the thing, you know, we got sea level rise. It's happening. You could talk to anybody at the School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology at UH. It's coming. The airport is in inundation. Inundations. And by definition, you know, the waterfront, the waterfront where the ships come in and go, that's also an inundation zone. And the question is, I mean, I don't know the answer. I don't know if anybody knows the answer, but what do you do in order to make that more sustainable, more resilient, if you will? When it comes, it's coming in, say, what, 20, 30 years. These areas will be wet. And it's hard to run a tourist industry. Well, for that matter, bring toilet paper to these islands, you know, if your infrastructure is covered with water. In fact, the harbors modernization project that's happening right now, half a billion dollars worth of projects going on right there, is actually planning for sea level rise. So the new Kapalama container terminal that's going to be built that should break ground in the fall coming up is actually taking into account sea level rise. That'll be 84 more acres for storage capacity, those cargo containers that come in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the harbour system we talked about is bursting at the scenes. And so that'll add much needed valuable storage space, more efficiencies for the people, also continue to keep trucks off of the surface streets. We'll clear up congestion on Nimitz and Awiki streets over there by the harbour and things. So they are taking that into account, but it is a very big question. There are task force, you know, very smart people looking into that. I think one of the biggest issues with that, kind of like with anything though, is going to be funding. Because, you know, if you have to rebuild highways, that's, you know, and elevate them, it's going to be very expensive. And then what do you do? Do you elevate them? Well, that inevitably someone's going to be mad because they're blocking their view. Okay, well, do we go more inland? Well, someone's going to be mad about that because we're taking more land and property. Probably not all the state's property, right? Do you put it out in the middle of the ocean? Okay, we can do that too. But then there's going to be, you know, people who are going to take a section of that as well. Your plate is so full. No, I don't think people realize how much is going on, you know, at the Department of Transportation to try to keep things moving, may I say. Not only by land, not only by air, but by sea. And it's really interesting. And what that means, Tim, I'm sorry to tell you, is that you have to come back. We haven't finished, honestly, we haven't finished half of the project. That's the other topics I wanted to ask. God, I don't have enough time. We have to come back. Can we have you back? Do you want to? Sure. Anything for family, okay. Tim's on. All right. They're coming on my show now, yes.