 Yeah, we're back. This is Think Tech. This is Think Tech Live. I'm Jay Fidel here at the 12 o'clock block on a given Thursday. And we're talking about transportation and transit and how we can save it from the ravages of COVID, which is affecting it. Okay, for this fabulous analysis, we have Anu Hiddle. She's a researcher, an adjunct researcher at the East West Center, especially environment, especially climate change. Hi, Anu. How are you? I'm good, Jay. How are you? Thank you for having me here. Good. Thanks for joining us. So let's talk about it. I mean, you know, somebody has to be thinking about this because the paradigm has shifted. You know, up until COVID, we had certain specific ideas about our community and how we wanted to design it and all these progressive, if not visionary ideas for improving Hawaii and transit and transportation in Hawaii. Now we have to take another look at it. So what look should that be? So, Jay, I'm coming at this from obviously a climate change perspective. We've been trying to push transportation. It's one of the fastest growing and is the largest emissions sector that's emitting greenhouse gases. And that's a problem. So how do we, you know, the energy sector, the power sector, if you will, that's, we've got a nice renewable portfolio standard for that in Hawaii and in other places. But nationwide and in Hawaii, we are finding that transportation is a very big and actually the leading growth sector for emissions. And don't forget that transportation is one of the most expensive things you can do. It's development is very expensive. It's development is expensive, but you know, everything that way could be expensive. It's just, I think that we are looking at, well, pre-pandemic, we were trying to push, make a push for mass transit, for walking, biking, pedestrian, all of those kinds of things. Multimodal, right? Oh my, those are big words. Where'd you find those? I have them tattooed on the inside of my eyeballs. But the question, the question is, is multimodal over? Right. So it's multimodal over and has the pandemic struck a nail in the coffin of multimodal, right? So you know what H1 used to look like or maybe you don't go on H1, but H1 used to be a parking lot before the pandemic. So now imagine, imagine that the pandemic is over, over. And we've got nobody wanting to get into any kind of shared unsocially distanced, socially not distanced, whatever. So there's no social perceived, no social distancing. It seems like this would, these would be COVID hubs basically in a bus or of course walking, you could walk alone, but then again, you've got narrow sidewalks, how do you keep social distance, bike trails, non-existent basically, bike paths, how do you get to work, how do you get to your grocery store, et cetera, right? So when you have a pandemic, something like a pandemic and you put pressure on a system, you put pressure on any system, then the cracks appear, right? And here are the cracks. So what's that going to look like when we get back to normal or some people want to call it a better normal? Well, I think before you, before you use a word like normal, you have to qualify what you mean by that, because normal is not going to be the way it was. Let me, let me digress to tell you a short story about our life here at Think Tech 10, 15 years ago. It was on the radio, Hawaii Public Radio, and Jack Balkan, who's the Dean of Constitutional Law at Yale, was on the show. And we had a post-show conversation with him. It was the time of W in office, Bush. And I said to him, you know, Jack, can we go back? Can we go back to the normal that existed before Bush? Because, you know, he's undermined a few important things. And we'd like to get back, like a yo-yo, you know, just go right. As soon as he's out of office, we'll go back and do it the way we did it before and feel better. And he said, no, no, you don't understand. If you look at the evolution of the species as history, it's never going back, because everything that happens, it's complex. Human evolution is very complex. And there are many events that take place. And so all those events have an effect on the line of history. Sure. And there won't be... You could never go back. Correct. And there won't be the same normal. It'll be a different normal. But no doubt about that. So whenever we get to that different normal, what's H1 going to look like? That's been on my mind. And H1's going to look like a parking lot because before that it looked like a parking lot. Only this time it's going to be a long-term parking lot because people are going to get out of the buses and get back into cars. So already transit ridership nationwide and in Honolulu have been declining, you know, pre-pandemic even. So we've been sort of putting our heads together and I've been thinking about this. And how do you... I'm here to tell you that there is a way to make people move from one place to the other and to do it in a pandemic-proof way without getting in your single occupancy vehicle, meaning one person, one car. So I have some thoughts on that. And I've been... That's pretty safe though. One person, one car, if you really want to be uptight about it, wear a mask in the car by yourself alone in the car. Right. Except you might go nowhere. Right? So the cost of congestion of sitting in traffic is huge. It's in the billions of dollars, okay, in nationwide. The cost of congestion, the cost of lives, of injury. So I was just reading that there's been a study done in Massachusetts looking at the Massachusetts car vehicle economy. And basically that economy is about $64 billion a year, billion, okay? And I'll put that billion in context. It's one state. It's one state. It's a big state. It has a lot of vehicles, but $64 billion, and I'll put it in a global context in a second here, of that more than half is borne by the public, those vehicle costs of that vehicle economy through their state budget, through injuries, deaths, congestion. I mean, you name it, right? So there is a huge cost. It's just, we've taken it into consideration. It's become a cost that's become invisible. It's like our flu deaths. We've got 40,000 flu deaths a year. We've got 40,000 annually nationwide traffic deaths a year. That's okay. So until we normalize how many deaths are acceptable from the pandemic and from these other things, I mean, that's what you're back to normal will be at some point, right? We'll be okay with not seeing these numbers in the news. It'll be all right. There'll be people dying quietly in hospitals somewhere, right? You're starting to scare me, Anna. So this is meant to be scary. So the cost of a vehicle economy is great. And let me put that $64 billion in some context, a global context for you. So the Green Climate Fund, right? Which are climate groupies we like to follow. The Green Climate Fund is $100 billion a year, $100 billion. The Massachusetts, one state in the United States, that only one part of their economy is $64 billion alone. So that's, I mean, you know, the climate fund, all countries got together, decided climate is a priority and they're putting in $100 billion a year. Okay. So these are huge costs. I mean, it's a small fund, but still, the vehicle economy is huge. So I think it's not that safe, actually, sitting in your car, you know, and it's not that cheap. So that's my point with all of this. Okay. Let's just accept all of that. Let me ask you, and again, the word normal subject to interpretation, but where are we going on this? Let's assume that there's a better life ahead in a year. And that's not, I mean, I want to assure you, that's not because we're going to have herd immunity. We're not going to have herd immunity. That will be through a vaccine, probably. Herd immunity will be through a vaccine. Maybe we'll just get used to it, you know. Some people think that our lives are going to change and we're going to build it in the way you were talking a minute ago. But let's assume that life is a little better. It's no longer a deep breathing exercise. That's the wrong way to frame this. A deep breathing exercise to deal with COVID that we sort of incorporated into our community, our lives. What is transportation going to look like then? Right. So I'm here to say that the car economy is a very expensive economy. The pandemic is a great time to rethink how we spend our public monies and what we really want to do with our lives and our quality of living, quality of life. So does that mean getting back in your grungy old bus to get to work? Does it mean that you have to get into spandex and ride a bike? Does it mean that you wear, I don't know whatever it is you want to wear, but sensible walking shoes to get to work? What does this mean? It means that we have to give up certain things and think of a different way of living, but it's not actually that we're giving up. I think when you really look at the costs of the vehicle economy and then you look at also for recovery, you're looking at where does your recovery dollar have the best return? So the ARA monies that were spent in the Recovery Act back in 2008, the lessons from that showed us that for every dollar that was spent on just highway growth, that there was more return if you put a dollar into transit or highway repair rather than new highways. So just one place that I was looking at. So it means that you actually create jobs faster if you put money in transit. Explain how that works. Well, you're putting money in a place where basically you get more bang for your buck. So you put in your, this is again the cost of that vehicle economy. So if you're putting it in for one single driver, one car, that money, you're not getting back in terms of congestion, in terms of air pollution, all of those costs and deaths and injuries versus transit. I mean transit, a bus is a huge thing. If it collides with something, I mean my family was in a bus crash. Not that I'm trying to minimize, there have been bus accidents and they've been lethal, but my daughter looked up and she said, what's going on? Because we are stopped. She had no idea that we had actually, we had actually crashed and transit associations will tell you, I forget the numbers now, but transit associations will tell you that these are public transport is like 90 something percent more safe than riding in your car. Sure. You never have a bus crash. That's why your daughter, she was so surprised. Well, she's like, why are we stopped? She didn't even know that we had like bumped and crashed against something. So here I am. Let's take me. I'm your case study today. So I need to get to work, not as much. I don't have to go as much and I would prefer not to take my car. I'll consider other things. I'll consider biking. That's a long shot, but a walk. E-Bike. You could do an E-Bike. Yeah, there you go. All kinds of other options, and options that are environmentally friendly options, but it rains once in a while, so I have to change my routine. And if I go on a bus, I'll be very concerned that the guy next to me will have COVID or otherwise spread some viral particles on me. So I want to stop you right there about buses and COVID. You're going to be concerned that the guy next to you has this. So there is actually very little evidence that transit poses a risk of coronavirus outbreaks. So this is from an article in July 2020, and it's Scientific American. And they basically are saying that there's very, very little evidence, and that's partly because there is a mandate to wear masks. There is the distancing, and people are not in there as long as they are in places like gyms and restaurants, and all of the other places where COVID clusters have emerged. So in Japan and France, both of these were studied. Both of these found that they had very, very few almost non-existent cases in a recent study in Paris. So cluster is described as more than three cases that can be traced to a common event or venue, okay, excluding transmission within households. In Paris, they found that none of the city's 150 coronavirus clusters from early May to early June originated on the city's transit systems. That was back in June, on June 4th. On July 15th, they had four transport clusters identified in Paris. And that was accounting for roughly 1% of 386 total clusters. So very low. And when Japan went... Anna, if you're on a bus, we're all jammed up. There's no seats. You're not going to be jammed up. You're not going to be jammed up. You need to have social distancing, and that's a case for having more bus lanes so that you can have more frequent bus service. So you can move people, you know, the same amount of people, but you're just putting in more, the buses are coming around more often. And who wouldn't like that where the buses are coming around more often? So that's one thing, is that it is not associated with coronavirus clusters. When Japan went back to opening up, they found that their clusters were actually coming from gyms, restaurants, bars, all of these places that we think, maybe some of us think twice, but most of us have, you know, as soon as they open up, people go to these places, right? Well, we think the government must know something we don't know, but actually we know plenty. So, and to date, they've said that preliminary studies and data from Paris, Austria, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo have not shown transits to be hotspots of coronavirus. But you know, it's a perception thing, and it's the average person who has a, call it an emotional reaction, and there are things you could do to make that person feel more comfortable. For example, I was suggesting to you before the show that if you open the windows, as a regular matter, as well as social distancing and mass, if you open the windows and have some air come in there, if you put in special air conditioning with a flow of fresh air, I'm going to feel a lot better. Right. And so places like King County, they've put in these Merv 8 filters into their bus systems. Places like Greece, they are making it mandatory for you to wear a mask. If you're taking a taxi or an Uber, you have to wear a mask and you have to have the windows open. So this is all fine while it's summertime. I'll be, and it's fine for a place like Honolulu, almost year-round, but I'd be curious to see what they do in the winter or if it's raining. It's like, all right, I'll wear my rib coat and sit here, I'll wear my, you know, I'll bundle up and sit here. So it's going to make us a little more hearty and fond of the outdoors, right? But I think these are all good points. So when you look at what the airlines are doing, for example, they're putting in those HEPA filters. And they, now those are more complicated filtration systems, right? Because they're not just, well, these are just, they're taking the very, very small particles and they're filtering those out and they're doing it very frequently. But airlines, you know, airplanes don't forget have to have their own system up in the air, right? So it's not like just a cooling or heating issue, like we have in our buildings or in our buses or whatever. It's a recirculating system. Well, it's its own system. It's its own independent system, right? It's up there in the air and it's going to do its thing. So it needs to be more complicated. Whereas on the ground, you know, you don't need all those sort of pressurized cabins, this and that. So you're just cooling the air and filtering to some extent. But for example, the, like I was saying, the King County bus system, they put in these very high circulating filters and, you know, they've been, so the filters are one thing, keeping your windows open is another. It may not be always practical. But these are what jurisdictions are doing and these are the lessons we're learning. And it's anyway, these are things we should have been doing from the beginning, right? You should have good air quality. You should have a life where you have good air quality. Why should you get into a, and why should you get into a, you know, to a bus where your health is at stake? I mean, it could just be the flu that you would get from your next person over. Ultimately, it's a matter of incentivizing people. And I'm reminded that for a while, not more recently, but for a while, the buses, public buses in the big island were free. You want to take a bus ride? Hop on. Right. Oh, right. And that's a tremendous incentive. So if you want to, you know, wean me off my car and whatever else I might do, including taxi cabs, which I think are slightly dangerous now and onto a bus, then make it free. Let me hop on the bus. So they were doing this in New York, okay, during the height of the pandemic, because they did not want their drivers to be exposed. So they had the front where they had collect money. They had the front door closed and it was boarding only from the back doors. And it was hop on, hop off, basically. Now they're going back to, they've put some things in place where, so here's something else, which I wanted to get to. But before we get to that, I just want to say that Japan, it's a very interesting country, right? Their public health campaigns placed particular emphasis on three things that can help you to avoid spreading the contagion. Okay. So one was, you know, you want to be away from closed spaces. So that was the first C, you want to be away from crowded spaces, and you want to not have conversation. So, so actually they don't want you to talk on the bus, you know, and maybe that's all right. Most of the time, people don't know each other and they're not talking the bus, but they do talk on their phones and so on. So that's another thing is that just, I just thought that was so, it was like, this will never fly here, you know, you can't tell people not to talk, you can barely tell them to wear masks. So we have a different culture, you know, and we need to figure out how we would tell people not to talk on the bus. Right. Okay. So I just thought that was funny, but let's look at the economics though. If I want to outfit a bus with, you know, a different air circulation system or a plane, you know, boy, it's going to cost some money. If I want to have more buses, you know, fewer people on each bus or more planes, fewer people on each plane or fewer seats on a plane, that's going to cost a ton of money. And this isn't a time, okay, when we don't have any money. And likewise, if I, if I want to build rail, okay, let me, I'll just finish, then you can respond. If I want to build rail, you know, it's costing a ton of money. If I would stop, I have another change order here. I want to change the air circulation system in the, in the rail cars. And I want to make sure that there's a capacity in every car. So you guys don't get too close to each other. That's going to cost a ton of money. But no, no worry, because the city and county has so much money right now. Okay, so stop there because I'm good. I'm going to, I'm going to barge in here because we do have money. We have CARES Act money that we can barely spend all of our states, right? And why are we, so there are two, two big places where I can see the money. One is the CARES Act and you can start outfitting buses for air filtration systems. You can start doing things like putting driver compartments separate. You can put automated fare collection at both doors, all of these things that we wanted to do as upgrades to buses. So even if we may not be able to actually buy a bus through CARES money, we can at least make them better. Okay, so that those are, that's one thing. So that's one pot of money. The other one is, remember I was talking about that 64 billion dollar vehicle economy. I think there needs to be, this is a time of pandemic is a good time to rethink things. It's a good time to rethink, is that where we want our public monies to go? And I'll tell you why I think it's really important to have a bus system. It's not just a bus system, it's an essential service. You know that if you don't get the people, this is purely selfish. So I'll speak on it from a selfish as well as an altruistic standpoint. But if you're going to be really selfish for those people who say, I don't care about people getting from one place to another, I'm either staying put or I'm going to go in my car, right? So you're going to go in your car to the grocery store and you're going to find that none of the food has been taken off the pallets and put on the shelves, none of the toilet paper, none of the toothpaste, none of those things that you, the rich person in your rich car, can go and buy, right? So you are stuck. So who's putting those things on? Who's loading up the unloading and loading at the grocery stores? I mean, those are essential items and those are people who are coming. And in Honolulu, this is disproportionately, I think it's higher than average numbers nationally in Honolulu where people of lower income are using the bus to get to work. So this is really important for people. And now here's the more altruistic viewpoint, which is why should anyone have to, anyone that's living a life at a lower income having to deal with so many other troubles, why should they also have to deal with the fact that now they have to wait an hour or two to get the bus? And it's not more frequent for them. And that they are also on the front lines where they are, quote, heroes, you know, we've, we've sort of, I feel like we've sort of made ourselves feel better by saying, Oh, you're a hero for helping me, you know, and really it's such a, such a selfish way of looking at things. So, so there isn't a huge equity component in this, right? So that's the more sort of the, the better place that we can be in after a pandemic. It goes beyond facilitating the economy. It goes beyond facilitating essential workers. It goes beyond even climate change and, you know, making a sustainable environment is one other thing I want to mention it. And that is, it's a sense of hope. We're in a decline period. Our economy is declining. The number of cases nationally and locally too is increasing. It's really a terrible time. And people do not see government stepping up. They're not encouraged and they're not all excited about all the work that government is doing to save them and save their lives in their society. And if you build better buses, if you build a better transit transportation system, if you encourage incentivize, make it easy, all the things we hope to do before you build hope, that's what we need now. I agree. And that's what actually cities are stepping up on this. So, you know, we are looking at New York having done some excellent things around driver safety. We're looking at King County, as I mentioned, looking at and many other jurisdictions. These are just some examples. Internationally, here's what cities are doing because their subways can have more crowding than buses. They are, Paris, for example, is building 400 miles of bike lanes to do where there were former car parking spaces. So, they're taking away that from that vehicle economy, which benefits one person at a time and one generally richer person at a time as an alternative form of public transportation or public transit, how to get from one place to another. They're using those parking lanes as bike lanes. They're using some of those as bus lanes. Bogota is seeing this potential. They have looked at connecting residential neighborhoods by bikeable streets. Mexico City, Milano, Berlin. I mean, these are all doing their dramatically expanding their bike lane and that network mileage. So, and it's also a way of staying healthy. It's a way of avoiding coronavirus transmission, and they're also reducing the speeds at which cars can travel, which is not a problem in Honolulu because, you know, we don't ever, I usually, I make this joke that when I get off the ramp on the highway, I actually get up to speed on that off ramp. The 25, they're like, slow down to 25 miles. I'm like, yay, now I can go 25 miles. So, that's not a huge problem here, but it is a problem for vehicle related deaths and injury. So, well, let's assume that you and I agree absolutely on these principles and on the need to do this, you know, as we go forward, hopefully to a better time. Tell me. Are you leaving me? Is this sounding like we're winding up? No, yes, it is. But, but we have a little time in a couple of minutes anyway. You to answer my last question. So, where do I start? Where do I start? Where do you start? Where does the government start to make it happen? Because otherwise, it's aspirational. And you know, you and I know that aspirational, you know, aspirational visions don't go anywhere. We have to make it happen. Which foot do I put out first? I say, go look at your bike coalitions and your folks that are advocating for equity and environmental justice on transit and just transportation in general. And I'd say, help those folks advocate and do what they're asking you to do, which is get engaged right to your legislators in Hawaii. Of course, this is easier. You can actually just go meet with them and they will listen. So, when there are bills being put forward, you know, show up in maybe not in person, but in numbers on Zoom or however they're taking testimony. So, I would say that's where you put pressure on your government. Yeah, one of the things, this is a longer conversation, but I just I want to throw this question at you is, you know, in this country, we have plenty of groups that are environmentally conscious and they can speak, they can write, they can, you know, lobby, what have you. But at the end of the day, don't you agree that you need champions? You need champions in public office, in public official positions to advance and advocate for this vis-a-vis the government. Yes, and I think there are champions out there. We just, you know, I don't want to sort of name names and such, but there are definitely champions. And I think that's a great point. But, you know, I think that we need to look for a way not in which, not just in how we can survive this pandemic, but just how we can thrive. And that's been a mantra I've been hearing, you know, it's like, how do we make it better than it was? Because what it was is not actually acceptable. And so we really need to look at how do we flourish, right, after this? It's not just survival. Yeah, I totally agree. How do we realize the hopes and expectations we could not achieve before for one reason or another? Maybe now is the time to reimagine that. Right, it's the Carpe Pandemicus. Seize the pandemic. You heard it here on Think Tech. Anu, Anu Hiddle, thank you so much. It's always great to have you on the show. Always a pleasure. Take care. Thank you. Stay safe. Bye-bye. You too.