 Aloha. Welcome to Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Appichella. On July 14th, salvage the rail organization held an expert panel of speakers to explain the benefits of option 2A. This option would convert Hart's heavy rail system into light rail cars and bring the rail down the earth from Middle Street to Alamoana. Statements that option 2A will save taxpayers three billion dollars in four years of construction time was not just tantalizing to hear, but by the end of the meeting seemed as credible statement that could be accomplished. At the meeting, renderings of our downtown streets is pedestrian friendly, yet coexisting with the light rail cars running along the avenue conjures up images of what Honolulu voters had in mind when they approved the rail project versus the megalith-like concrete pillars that will straddle both sides of our streets, blocking our sunlight, and creating a star-war-like station structure hovering high above our heads, blocking out our beautiful easy breezy waterfront views. With us today is Scott Wilson, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects and spokesperson for salvagetherail.org. Scott, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Thank you for having me. We had you back in February, so this is kind of an update on where we're at. Things have changed. Things have changed dramatically. So that was a great meeting. It was really a great meeting. It was packed full of great information and I guess the thing that really caught my mind was the fact that, and you guys have, you know, you've stayed firm to this, that this option 2A could save taxpayers three billion dollars and save four years of construction time. Yeah, it's an option 2A wasn't something we created. It was created by the FDA, actually. So back in June of 2016, FDA sent a letter to Hart and said, you guys, we need to get a recovery plan going. Here's six options. Look at them. Figure it out. We'll figure out what you want to do. So I had no idea that was the case. That's why we titled our forum Option 2A, because Option 2A is end the heavy rail at Middle Street and then from there use light rail on the street to go on into downtown and points east. So we brought in these experts and they were national and international experts on light rail, both planning and costing as well as just overall technology. And they gave us a ringing endorsement. Do our legislators know that fact? Or do they think that the Honolulu Transit Task Force came up with 2A? No. I mean, I think anybody who's familiar, I think that the thing is with the legislators is that they try to keep all that technology issue separate from their work. They are, they're sort of, they're in charge of taxes and raising funds. And so they kind of tend to say, okay, Hart, you are the experts. We don't know, you know, we're going to have to just take your word on this. You say you need another $3 billion. We're really troubled because we've been giving you funding so far and now you want even more. And it's going to, it's going to limit all of our other ability to pay for other needs in the state. So we're trying to give the legislators a preview of the fact that from a technology point of view, there is an option and it can save a huge amount of money and time. So it's okay if they don't approve any further funding. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's talk about cost then because I think that was the operative point of the meeting. Certainly, that's what I walked away with and how you guys broke down, how you could stay within budget without having to increase the excise tax as far as putting it out for further duration. Right. And that's where I thought the value of that whole meeting was all about and that and some other things that we're going to talk about in the show is some, you know, the livability issues that light rail could bring to our downtown versus this megalov structure that we're going to potentially have. So let's take a look at some of the costs, that cost sheet. And this is how we're going to get to that point. This is how we're going to get to to the lower costs. So why don't you just describe what this is? Well, we put this into our show just to remind people that light rail construction is very shallow. It is really no deeper than existing roadway construction. And as you can see in that picture, this is a typical, this was taken out of a technical manual. It's 14 inches deep and it's eight feet wide. So this does not, we will not be disturbing any EV. This has been a misinformation put out by heart is that we are going to dig five feet deep and 30 feet wide and that we're going to be unearthing just all these bones when we dig our light rail. But actually, we're not changing any existing streets because all we're doing is digging up the street bed, the normal road bed, and then putting in concrete and steel. Next one, please. So this is the actual. And then this is an actual one in Portland, Oregon. And as you can see, that's like a two by 12, that board that's propped up that's that's the depth that you normally go out two by 12 or maybe that's a two by 14. I can't really see but anyways, roughly a foot or 14 inches deep. You know, I just keep hearing, you know, comments that you have to dig so deep and so far. Isn't it true that by holding up the stanchions on the elevated system, the pads are going to be unbelievably large and there is Yeah, the as you know, the the enormous six to 10 feet wide and depending on the soil and the softness of the soil, but some of these columns, if you go out and look at what's been already built, I mean, they range from six feet to eight feet to 10 feet in diameter. So they take up an entire entire length. So I'm not I'm not looking for you for an answer on this, but if the concern is if if option two a may dig up bones, or archaeological issues are presented by that, what is the the plan one eight going to bring for that same issue? Right? I mean, there's actually far more digging involved, because these some of these go down 280 feet. These these 10 foot wide eight to 10 foot wide columns that you're going to see in the downtown. They are admittedly they're 100 feet to 150 feet apart. But still, there's a lot of them and the and they're right in the exact wheelhouse of where the Hawaiians used to bury their dead. Right. Well, I got to tell you that I'm based on what the pictures I just saw here, I'm scratching my head on that criticism. So yeah, okay, let's go to the next one. Again, this is Dallas, just a quick shot showing the Dallas light rail and you can just see the depth. I apologize it was taken at night, but it's, it just shows a typical light rail tracks in the street. And then here's your cost breakdown analysis. Right, okay, let's talk about that. Yeah, I know these there's a lot of numbers here. Let's start at the bottom just so everybody understands the current funding for heart is 6.8 billion down there at the bottom. Current funding cost to Middle Street 6.22 billion. So we're dealing with about 600 million point six little around there of extra money that we have left over. So that's the money that we want to use that we're saying we can use to build the light rail into downtown into Alamoana. And, and, and there's you see at the top of the screen is the construction costs, the redesign costs. Just look at that total number 611 million. Okay, so we are really in the very close magnitude to what we already have. So the $450 million for three miles of rail, that's basically the photos we just saw that's right. Yeah, the and that's being generous. They these things on the mainland are we're built for 70 million 100 million a mile. We've added in a construction cost factor for Honolulu. We've in some cases we've actually doubled the local cost. So that we're using 150 million. And then of course, the criticism I see in the paper all the time is that we can't do this because the rail cars have already been purchased and therefore option 2a has no viability. Right. So actually, now that we've gotten this option 2a out, we actually have two alternatives within this option. And those are not on here. But one of them involves just using the existing cars. So where it says eight new rail cars, we can actually wipe that out because our newest alternative is to just end the light rail, sorry, the heavy rail at middle, and actually start up another system, a light rail system. So use the cars that have already been ordered. And they'll there's no, let me that's that's an interesting concept. That's new. I hate to throw that said you it's like it's like on on air, I'm giving you a curveball. Okay, well, let me cast a curveball and see if I can throw it back to you. Okay, by getting off the heavy rail, and then entering on a light rail, would that jeopardize any FTA funding? Because you're not a one seat one ride? No, not that's one seat one ride is never an FTA requirement. That was never a requirement. Okay. Yeah, so it is a two seat ride. Yes. But actually, when you look at option to a they, they actually said in their option to a end like Evan have heavy rail and begins light rail at middle. So we were the ones who said, Well, we would like to make a one seat ride. We think that would be more desirable from a writer point of view. And it is. Yeah, the trouble is, a we've got some cars already on site. We've got some some stations that are already being built. Those stations are what you call high platform or high floor. So so people are getting on about three feet above the rail. So we have a problem. We, you know, we would have to go back in some of those stations. I think there's two that have already appeared to be they've already cast the floor, cut that floor out, recast it three feet lower. Okay. So so this is what we're we've got some wheels moving because given the pragmatics of what's already been built and is continuing to be built as we discuss, you know, we know there are nine stations that are have already been contracted. And so every day they're out there, they're starting to work on these. So so our newest is sort of an alternative to where instead of a one seat ride, it's a two seat ride. Okay, well by doing that, you are saving 18 million dollars. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can't object to that. Who can? Yeah, yeah, as a taxpayer. Well, and modify equipment. So and of course, what we haven't even talked about is the savings on all of the land that was going to be bought on Dillingham. Dillingham, they are paying they are paying about $100 a square foot for a 10 foot strip, the entire length of Dillingham, which is about two miles. So, so my calculation is actually that's a million dollars per every 100 feet. Therefore, they're going to be paying somewhere around 50 million to 100 million for all that land that is no longer needed. So that is actually money we can take back. Not to mention all the impact of businesses, legal costs for people fighting the, you know, fighting the eviction just that one blood bank is just been it's just been a travesty for heart because blood bank is like everybody's favorite anti and you're attacking them and telling them, give us your land or else, or else, you know, no, it's not and it's very you don't want your ability. We just want your parking lot. Yeah, I know. So it is and our experts also went with I drove them up and down Dillingham and we looked at all the conditions and besides the the fact that it's a very narrow right away and you're gonna have to buy land. There are both sides of the street have very high voltage utility lines right there. Some of them are literally six inches from the curve. So you have some major utility relocation costs, which have never been calculated and never been put into the hard budget. What about option two a would that have to deal with those utilities or not? Zero, zero. No, because option two a goes on. So there's an unknown factor of relocating the utilities, but that hasn't been disclosed as yet. Yeah, that's 400 million was the rough number that Hico has always said they need to move those utilities. So there's 400 million. That's almost okay. Well, as a taxpayer, yet another disclosure that's unbeknownst to the total costs required to fund this thing. Okay. Yep. Alrighty, well, so let's just go down to the bottom line. And that is, well, actually, let's, you know, you still have your, your engineering costs and your architectural costs of 83 million. Yeah. And then your total is within the guidelines within the budget. Yeah. And, and as I said, there's one thing I, if we go to this option to this option alternative to that I've been telling you about with a separate system, right? Okay. At the middle street transit hub, we're going to have to put in a new operating and maintenance shed, because we have a new, new train. Right. So that is a cost, it could be 100 million, it could be 200 million, which we have to figure in. And of course, that's a, that's a new alternative. You have cost savings of 14 million, 18 million, and then another for the equipment modification, there's 68 million right there. I don't know, frankly, we have the land that there's a the city owns a big hunk of land at Middle Street bus transit stuff. But basically, it's going to have to be reconfigured right to be able to bring in the trains and service them. All right, well, we're going to take a break here and we'll talk a little bit more about cost and we're going to move on. I'm Tim Appachel with Scott Wilson, and this is Hawaii moving forward. And I'm DeSoto Brown, the co host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4pm. And with the show's host, Martin Despeng, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4pm on Think Tech, Hawaii. Hi, welcome back. I'm Tim Appachella. And this is moving Hawaii forward. I'm here with Scott Wilson, who is the spokesperson for salvage the rail. And today we're talking about a presentation that took place about a week ago on how the the option to a could actually be within budget and not have to extend taxes any further. And it's a fascinating topic. And Scott, thank you for taking the time to share it with us. You're welcome. I think before the commercial break, we basically said this could pretty much be done within the cost allocation for the existing budget of rail. And this option to a plus, we'll call it to a plus, I don't know what you want to call it. Yeah, could actually have a very viable way of getting this thing through. I know, I think a lot of us were a little bit, you know, uncomfortable that we're going to have to change change the all the cars, the rail cars, the eight rail cars that are supposedly out here. And then the fact that the stations are under construction is a little bit of a troubling because there's there's platforms that have to be cast. I mean, that's, that's one of the main elements of the station is a platform. And suddenly we're saying that those have to be lower because we want to use low floor cars. So as our experts talked with us last week, they they kind of spun out this new alternative. So, but either way, we have the money now. And I think the the kind of the end message of our forum was, we need to talk to our legislators and tell them no more money right now. That's, I'm glad you just about ready to bring that up because I had Randy Roth on the show about a week ago. And he said, as long as they're getting funneled the money, there's no incentive for them to consider any alternatives, whether it's option to a your your new idea, or it's the bus rapid transit idea, it doesn't matter what good ideas on the table, they don't even want to look at it because as long as they're getting the money, why do I need to look at it? Yeah, I mean, so that's a that that was a hard thing for our experts to hear stand because they they're, they're focusing on how do we solve the problem? What's the best system? What's the best and then they had it. And then they said, Well, why can't we just tell that to your, you know, to your mayor? But but we had to explain to him, no, they've been very comfortable with a stream of money so far. And they haven't really been listening to us. Right. You know, there was one point last point on cost that I thought really caught my eye or my my attention was that they said that New York has 470 stations. And of those stations, there was only 150 escalators that serviced all those stations. We know that, be it elevators or escalators, that is a huge component of cost. And certainly the maintenance and upkeep of escalators, they're always breaking down. And particularly in this high salt atmosphere that we have here, it's, you know, I could see that doubling from a normal city's cost of maintenance. Yeah. So yeah, that was Doug Tilden. And he he is his his expertise is really designing stations and both the light rail as well as heavy rail. And he brought up some really good points about about why do you have all of these escalators escalators are not an ADA requirement. Okay, ADA requires an elevator. Okay, we need an elevator. But these escalators in an open air environment with with salt air blowing through all the time. And our rain and our sun, we are just going to have incredible maintenance costs trying to keep those things going. So would we need elevators if it was, you know, light rail on the on the street? Not at all. Not at all. No, you know, we we've got pictures. In fact, you go on right there, a guy rolling on with his wheelchair. Yeah, there's that's a huge cost savings. Well, again, this plan doesn't really talk about the annual maintenance. You know, they throw out numbers of 100 million 120 million, just for an annual cost, not to mention all the cost replacement they should set aside for reserve capital replacement. Right. Those numbers aren't even out to another 100 million. Randy Roth had had estimated that that's another 100 million. You'd have to create a sinking fund. Because basically, all this equipment is going to wear out after 20 years. And so you've got to be building up money along the way. I want to talk about how this all kind of kind of delves into what this concept of a livable city that the city should be meant for people rather than for vehicles. And I like there's a long history of that. Frankly, this goes all the way back to Frank Fosse in 1992. AI has has been trying to talk with mayors for 25 years now about this. And when Mayor Fosse proposed an elevated system right along the waterfront right by a low tower, we were doing hand drawings in those days. And we had these, you know, big renderings of that system. And we were just saying, this, this is not pedestrian friendly. We want to encourage people to be able to walk over to our harbor from our downtown. Enjoy the waterfront, enjoy the views. And that's, that's actually one reason why they tore down a ramp that had been blocking Bishop Street for years, for about 25 years. So everyone rejoiced when the view was opened up again to the ocean. And yet, and yet, when we made renderings of these stations, and we made a very famous rendering of the downtown station right next to the Dillingham Transportation Building. And it was, it was hideous. And even Governor Bente Caetano picked it up and used it as kind of one of his, his centerpieces of his campaign. But we just couldn't, we, I guess people just couldn't get appreciate the aesthetics of it. But the livability is a key term. We did not use that term. That was that was coined by Buchan Buchek, who was our who keynote speaker. And he, he reminded us of this bigger issue. He actually made a statement, which I really love. He says, you know what, even if elevated rail was cheaper than any other kind of rail, I would still not tell you to do it. And that, that just kind of, you know, kind of set us back on our heels, because we had really, we had really kind of tried to concentrate on the livability aspect that the pedestrian friendly, just the streetscape, making, making, making our streets pleasant for walking and cafes and people sitting outdoors and what looking at the views, all of those things. We had kind of kind of hit our head, you know, against the wall on that. So we started concentrating on cost. And that's, that's kind of how we've been, we've been operating less six months. But that's a subset of your efforts. But our original concept was the aesthetics, the livability, you know, the urban village concept or the term urban village. Yeah. You know, I back in my transportation days, about 15 years ago, that was just coming out. You know, it's been 15 years. And you would think that cities across America, including Honolulu, would have caught on or have caught on many of them have caught on that they're looking for urban villages, rather than, you know, city structures that are megalith in nature. And where is Honolulu in all this? You know, we, we, if you really look to Coq Aco, you can see, because that's a completely separate planning agency, the HCDA is actually getting it. They have they scrapped their entire development code, rebuilt the whole things to concentrate on this on the streetscape and making a lively streetscape. And I think as you walk around on the streets of Coq Aco especially at the Alamona and you're starting to see it all coming to fruition. And so we do have an urban village. And if you talk to millennials, they love it down there, even though they can't afford it, they can't afford those million dollar condos. They love the concept. They love the fact that they can just wander around from shop to restaurant to gallery. And they don't need a car. If they want to, they can ride their bikes. There's good trees. So we have city planning in Coq Aco that has this urban village concept. And now we have, but we have this elevated rail, which is 100% opposed to this concept. Yep. There's a dichotomy is going to drive me crazy. Yeah, it is. I really think elevated rail is a freeway mentality from the, from a long time ago, from the 50s and 60s, frankly, one of our experts called the rail of just freeway architecture. They said, you know, this thing, this thing does nothing for the street. This is going to cause a blight. It's going to cause, you know, shadows and it's blocking views and it's noisy and dusty. You know, why would anyone want to go around it? So much for easy, crazy views of palm trees and sunsets. And another, you know, kind of example is what Waikiki and the hotel association did. As soon as Mayor Hanneman announced that this thing might have a spur into Waikiki, oh, they, they, and it grows up really fast and said, no way, no rail on Waikiki. They were savvy enough to know. What's your position on light rail on Waikiki? They, they welcome that. We've talked to Waikiki. We're running out of time, unfortunately, and what I want to do is just, I want to transition to where we are with the legislature. How much progress is salvage the rail making with our legislators? We are meeting with individual legislators. They are, I think there's, there's a real interest in this. They are really in a, in a overall, in a hard place because they really don't want to increase taxes. They, they have, and they feel kind of lied to with, with the mayor and the heart that, that they came two years ago. They said, we promise no more taxes. Just give us this and we're done. We'll finish a project. Not two years later they're coming back and they're needing another three billion. And, and, and everyone kind of knows in the back of their mind that three billion is still not going to be enough. It's not going to be enough. Well, we already talked about a hundred million per year. We've got a hundred million in operating expenses. We need a hundred million in sinking fund for the, to pay for the cars. It's going to go on and on. And, and we, we think this is actually the sort of perfect moment to put a pause to this whole funding and, and really look at some options. What's the message you would give anyone who's watching this show right now or in the near future? I, I urge, as I did at the end of our forum, for anybody who's concerned about this, talk to your legislature, call them up. They're, they're on summer break but they're in their offices and say no more, no more funding for rail right now. We, we, we need a pause. We need a serious look at some options. We know that the federal money will still come in but we've got to look at some options. I think that's a good message Scott. I want to thank you very much for coming on my show. Thank you. Delivering a very important message to all the people who are concerned about this project and those who may not even have their antennas up about it. So thank you for your time. Thank you. I'm Tim Appachella. This is Moving Hawaii Forward and we'll see you in a couple weeks. Aloha.