 This is Think Tech Hawai'i, Community Matters here. Hey, we're back real live. I'm Jay Fidel here on Hawai'i, the state of clean energy with my co-host and the co-chair of the Hawai'i Energy Policy Forum, that's Sharon Moriwaki. Aloha. Hi, Sharon. Hi, Jay. And our special guest who is here from the mainland from Portland, and he came here to participate in the conference yesterday, the Hawai'i Clean Energy Day, what, what, what? Gapways to clean transportation. Clean transportation day. And he talked about integrating energy and transportation very important. OK, we're going to get to that in some detail. Craig Dirksen, thank you for coming down, Craig. My pleasure, Judy. Thanks for having me on the show. Craig is a counselor in the Oregon Metro Organization, and that means the guys who planned the Metro Organization in Portland, which is a really win, win, win kind of a rig. Terrific thing called MAX, and it gets you all around town economically. Yeah, well, why don't you tell us about yourself? Include the part where you were mayor of Tigard. OK. I'm a resident of the Portland metropolitan area, which is actually 24 cities, including the city of Portland, but 23 others as well. I actually lived in the city of Tigard. Lived there since 1977. And I was the mayor there for nine years when I was term limited and couldn't be mayor any longer. So I decided to run for the Metro Council. The Metro Council is the regional government that has responsibility for land use and transportation planning, as well as some other things, like running the zoo and the convention center. Oh, so this is much broader than just the train, the transit in Portland. Absolutely. In fact, we don't actually do transit. Trimet is the organization in the Portland Metro area that does transit, but we are responsible for funneling federal funding because we're the metropolitan planning organization for the Portland Metro area. So we work in very close partnership with Trimet and the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Portland Transportation Bureau to fund transportation projects all across the region. This is like our Oahu Metropolitan OMPO. OMPO, yeah, planning organization. But it's much broader than what Ongo does. Because we are the only MPO in the United States where the members of the board are actually directly elected by the people instead of being appointed to that position by someone else. I think it is. And it also gives us because we're accountable directly to the people. And being an elected body, it allows us to have our own taxing district so we can raise money to do things. Oh, it's important. So we have some authority there. Most MPOs, all they are is funnels for funding coming through from the federal government. So you've been there for a long time. Well, I've been in elected office now since 2000. OK, see, that goes back. I've been on the Metro Council for five years. I've just been my first year of my second term on Metro Council. So you can come and speak to us about transit in Portland. I can. Yeah, that's the important thing. And he did. He did. So now, Sharon, from your side of it, Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, why did you bring Craig in? We looked around for somebody like Craig because it's not just about transit. It's about transportation and energy. And we are coming from the energy perspective. And transportation has always had its own problems and challenges. So it's been focused on roads and not really. And the planning is where the roads go and not something bigger and seeing the big picture. And so we saw that Portland was doing it. Vancouver was doing it. And Portland had that energy sustainability focus to what it was doing. And it was broader in scope than just transit, just a rail. And so we looked around. And we were in touch with the Spark Transportation Institute people. And we said, who can we bring? And they said, we know the person. All fingers pointed to Craig. And pointed to Craig. And we were so pleased that he was available. They're on break now from Metro Council. So it just worked out perfectly. And we're pleased that he was able to come and join us. And he's been open to meeting with everybody. We just came from meeting with some of the representatives at the Capitol on talking about the issues that we had and how Craig's experience has been able. And he was able to answer questions on autonomous cars even beyond rail. That's very valuable to have somebody do idea arbitrage between Portland, which is a special place, a successful place in transit to Hawaii. So you were there yesterday. You spent the whole day. I saw you. I know. I got witnesses. How was it for you? What did you think of that conference? Well, I loved being there and being part of it and being able to share what we're doing in Portland. But it was great hearing what's going on here in Hawaii too. And then going beyond that, questions like, where do we go from here? What's the future mean when we're looking at alternative fuels so that we can reduce our dependence on oil, on imported oil? And is that the right thing to be focusing on? I really like that you dug right down into the weeds and say, what are our goals? Let's articulate what the goals are. Once we can agree on that, then we can start talking about what actions we can take to achieve the goals. So not taking anything for granted, looking at all different options, and really figuring out what everybody really means when they talk about what do we do next. So let's go back and talk about Oregon for a little while in Portland. Your experience, I mean, not only your experience, but before your experience, how has transit in Portland evolved and where is it now? Take a few minutes to tell us. Well, I think I can give a good perspective because Metro is not responsible for transit or just for transit. But we're responsible for all the transportation planning for the Portland Metro area. It's very connected, isn't it? Exactly, my mantra has always been that what a region needs, what a metropolitan area needs, is a complete transportation system that includes all the different modes, whether it's roads, transit, bikes, ped, and you need all those things in the right proportion to each other so that everybody has different options and each person's needs can be met for what they need today. And it is achievable. Absolutely. We have the tools and the software, whatever we needed to achieve exactly what you were talking about, and you did that in Portland. Well, I wouldn't say we've done it, but we are doing it. It's not something that you do and are complete. It's a process that you're continually going through. You mean it changes? Absolutely. So if I look at Portland today, even with the success you had, and I look at Portland in five years from now, it'll be different. Portland is growing so fast. We're growing about 1 and 1 half percent a year, and that comes down to, because of the size of our area, we're seeing about 111 people a day moving to Portland, which means 33 families and maybe 50 cars, more that we need to deal with every day. And so figuring out. Real estate prices is probably going up. Portland isn't the most expensive place to live on the West Coast, but our real estate prices are going up faster than anybody else's in the West Coast. We're going to go. We should go now. Yeah. I've lived in the house. I live in now since 1987. And today, I could not afford to buy the house that I live in. That's so in Hawaii, too. That's pretty new. Yeah. I thought that might be a good idea. That's a similar problem, yeah? So tell us the good things that have been established and achieved with Portland Metro. Well, one of the things that we've been able to do, the Portland Metro has certain responsibilities. There are other areas that aren't our responsibility. But because of our position as the entire region, we can act as the convener to bring together all those people. We've got 24 cities in three counties. All those cities have their own mayor and city council. Each county has its county commissioner board. But we are the place where all those folks can come down and sit at one table and hash out these issues, whether it's transportation or housing or homelessness or equity or water or emergency preparedness. We're the place where everybody comes to talk together. OK, big question now, Craig. Is that table, the discussion of that table, is it rational? Big hard no. We need to hear from you about this. It can be contentious. There's no doubt about it. Portland has this reputation, this certain reputation. But it's not like we're all a bunch, we're a monolith, all walking in lockstep. We've got a large urban center. We've got big suburbs around ex-urban areas where people, it's still rural. So a lot of different people with a lot of different opinions on how things ought to be and how things ought to be done. And so no, do we agree all the time? Oh man, that is not the case. But we have a place where we can all sit down and hash it out, and I think that's what makes the difference. Well, what's the magic? As they say, what's the special sesame sauce? Involve people early and often through the process so that when you do come to a conclusion, the advocates and opponents from different areas all feel like they've had a hand in the decision and some ownership of it. That's good advice. I don't know why, but this reminds me of the way David Bissell talks about Kauai. Because Kauai is a smaller island, smaller population. And yet, and a lot of different opinions there, and yet they have achieved a kind of rational discussion, a discussion which actually is moving the needle in. Which is bolded in, it's a co-op. So same kind of idea where you have lots of people, lots of opinions. But they allow those opinions and they deal with those opinions. Well, but I have to really compliment Kauai and the people of Kauai. Because what we heard yesterday is the thing that makes the difference there is the folks are really engaged and they're willing to go and talk. And air, how they feel. And hear how other people feel as well. That's what makes the difference. Being able to have everybody come and be involved to be part of it. Okay, so now we have the special sauce. We have the rational conversation. We have the five years you've been there, but actually longer. What has been the evolution of transit in Metro Portland? Well, of course Portland had a bus system going way back. But we made the decision, we were looking at in the 1970s a greatly expanded freeway network. And there was a lot of pushback against that. And so we made the decision to basically stop building more freeways and instead build a high capacity transit system. So we started building a light rail system in the early 1980s. And we're still building it today. We opened our fifth light rail line last year. Light rail, is that grade? Most of it's at grade. Typically it's a grade, it will rise on a structure to fly over other infrastructure where you don't want to have an intersection, but for the most part it's at grade. And is that, is it electrical? Yes, it's powered by electricity, overhead wires. I always wondered what happens if the rail car moves away from the wires overhead. Well, the track would have to move away. Oh, okay, this is all on a track. There's no wheels involved. That's great, well, there's wheels, but there's steel wheels. No rubber tires involved. You heard that here on Big Big. Wheels can be steel. Does it make a lot of noise with steel wheels, because that's what people are complaining about. Oh, they've got a lot of discussions about wheels. There's a certain amount of noise. I have to say that on the train, if you're comparing the level of service and the quality of service between buses and the train, the train is so quiet, it is smooth, it moves very quickly through traffic. The beauty of the train, of course, is that it's not in traffic. So no matter how congested it is, the time it takes to get from point A to point B takes the same amount of time, whether it's eight o'clock at night or eight o'clock in the morning. That's really important. Traffic is not gonna jam you up. That's right. We're gonna take a short break, Sharon, if it's okay with you. And Craig, when we come back from this break, we'd like to talk about the challenges you have because we have our own challenges, and maybe the way you've dealt with those challenges can help us deal with our challenges. Challenges, Sharon's favorite word. I know. I love challenges. 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Hey, we're back. We're live with Craig Dirksen. And he's with the Oregon Metro Council. There's a councilor there. And we're talking about what happened, what they did in Portland, which is really a good study for us. A case study, if you will. So I'm speaking for Sharon now when I ask you. My favorite question. There had to be some serious challenges because you're dealing with an interface of technology and government and the public and everybody's expectations. What challenges? Well, we had, let me give you the example of that I experienced with the last light rail line when that hasn't been built yet that was envisioned as part of the system when we first started talking about in the early 80s. The only line that hasn't been built that was envisioned back then is the Southwest Corridor, which unfortunately goes to where I live. And it runs through the Southwest suburbs or will run through the Southwest suburbs of Portland and then through Tigard where I live and then onto an ex-urban area called Tualatin. And there's a lot of anti-rail sediment around the region. What's it based on? Concerns about, well, there's several things. It's too expensive. There are people who call it the crime train. They're concerned about these. Worried about crime on the train. Yeah, people. Crime coming from the center too. But you did have an incident about a month ago, yeah. Yeah, but yes, we did. But it wasn't imported from somewhere else on the train. It was within the neighborhood where the people lived anyway. The studies have shown that crime doesn't travel. People commit crimes in their own neighborhood. I've given people the example. I picture it's 2026 and the light rail line is in place. And it's 11 o'clock on a Friday night and two guys get on the light rail train in Tigard headed for Portland. One of them's carrying a flat screen TV and the other one has a big bag of jewelry. And they're sitting there on the train trying to look nonchalant. This is funny. My point being that a light rail train is a really lousy getaway vehicle. Because everybody knows where you're gonna be for the next 20 minutes. Everybody's got a cell phone too. And of course, but we've got people who say we just wanna drive everywhere. I don't wanna ride transit, quit spending money, quit wasting money on transit and just widen all my roads. Why do I feel that that is similar to what we have here? So the sediment got so great that when we were going through the early planning process there was a small group of citizens in Tigard who managed to actually get a measure on the ballot in Tigard to change the city's charter to oppose light rail unless it was voted on by the people of the city. They felt like the citizens of Tigard should be able to decide whether that the entire corridor got light rail or not. And it passed and became part of the charter of the city. It's not a way to build a railroad. No. Fortunately, in the response to that, we worked on working with the people. We had dozens of public meetings where we shared what the plans were, showed what the different options were, showed what the different consequences would be and the cost would be for the different options to try to improve traffic through the region. Would you say that Craig? Were you just having there? Absolutely, I was part of it from the beginning. And when we started the process of looking at this light rail line, TriMed and Metro, which I was a member of at the time, I was the mayor of Tigard, they came and said, okay, we're gonna do this light rail line and here's where we're gonna draw the line. And I and the other mayors of the other cities that it was gonna go through said, wait a minute, we all have comprehensive plans with development plans for this region and we know where we want development to happen and we know what kind of transportation is gonna be needed to support it. So let's start with our comprehensive plans and then identify where we want the stations to be to serve the communities we want and then you can figure out how to hook those together. So we actually hijacked the system and made them do it backwards and do the land use planning first and then create the transportation plan to support the land use. Sounds right to me. It's become the standard since then. Yeah, good experiment, good result. So as the result of doing all the public outreach, lots of public meetings, allowing people to come in, look at the maps, look at the plans, we'd give the maps and colored markers and say, where do you think the line should go? Which neighborhood should it serve? Where should the stations be? How did you change the charter? You had to go back and change the charter to make this happen. Well, what the charter amendment said that before you could have a vote of the people on the light rail line, we had to show them what it was going to be. So the charter amendment allowed us to go ahead with the planning to that point and then two years later, the Tigard City Council put the measure on the ballot as required by the charter change. Do the citizens of Tigard support this light rail plan? We never had to change the charter. No, no, no. It was operated within the charter. Well, correct. The charter change was to require the vote. And so we had the vote. Two years later had the vote and the people voted yes, we support it because we know what it's going to be. It's a lot of lessons in all of that. But it took a lot of information, providing people with the information that they needed so that they could make at the ballot box their informed decision. Yeah. So how is it now? How does it work? What are the good points and what are the bad points? Well, it's very expensive, as everybody knows. Expensive to the rider or to the city? To the city. Well, yeah, it's expensive to build. But the thing that you need to... Well, we haven't built it yet. It's still just... Oh, it's over the Southwest car. The Southwest corridor is still in the planning process. We anticipate that we'll probably start construction in about 2020. And it'll be open for operation probably in 2025. It's about a 15-mile-long route, not as long as yours, but still longer than the average. But longer than the average. Most light rail lines that are funded by the federal government are only about eight miles long. So both of us are stretching to the limit. Five billion? No, no. We're anticipating somewhere between 2.6 and 3.2. For 15 miles. Yeah, yeah. Well, why am I shaking? Because we're spending a lot more for miles than you're going to know. Well, you've made the choice to elevate a large portion of your line, which adds a lot to the expense. It's less impactful on the existing infrastructure, but the initial construction costs are way higher. The good news about light rail line, as opposed to just improving or increasing bus system, two things. First of all, you put more buses on the road. You're putting them on a road that's already really congested. It just adds to the congestion. And the buses can't move any faster than the congested traffic that it's in there with. You need to add capacity, not just switch capacity from roads. Can you get sufficient capacity at grade? Oh, sure. Because we've had people speak to both sides of that. In other words, right now, there's a thing called option 2A, which you must know about this. It stops at Middle Street, which is on the west side of the city. And then it goes under option 2A. It goes down to grade. It continues to grade into the downtown and termination, as opposed to overhead in all segments of the project. So does at grade work? Do you think at grade would work here? Do you think option 2A would work? I don't have the facts about each of the two options specifically, but almost all of our stuff is at grade. Does it give you sufficient capacity? The capacity isn't the issue. The concern is travel time. It's going to impact travel time because you're going to have to interact with the rest of traffic. You're going to have intersections with signals. But you can do things where you give the transit signal priority before cars, those kinds of things, to mitigate that. And I'm sure that you will do that as well. That's a standard way to deal with it. Well, let's put your colleague, Eric Sunquist, yesterday from the University of Wisconsin, was saying you make an analysis electronically, the GPS, and all that, and you connect the dots. Literally all the dots are connected to find out where the travel time is. And you use a lot of computer database work to do that. And then you can figure out how this organic thing, this organic community, neighborhood, what have you, city will work and how it will work differently with what kind of rail. That's a great way to model it. The cars and the signals and the trains, it becomes the big, huge ballet. Unfortunately, we've got computer programs that are- Ballet. Did you hear that? You heard it on Facebook. Ballet. Beautiful thing. But we have computer programs that can choreograph it so that it works. The other thing that's great about light rail as opposed to just improving bus services is the operating costs, which is an ongoing cost that the state would burden every year. When you build a light rail line, it's very expensive up front to build, but it's one-time money. And once it's done, you have it for a long, long time. And your overall operating costs go way down because our estimation in Portland anyway is that your average light rail travel per passenger only costs about half to two-thirds as much as a bus trip cost. Interesting. Buses are much higher maintenance. They don't last as long. We're still running the light rail cars that we started with 30 years ago. You only have one operator for every 288 passengers instead of an operator for every 40 passengers. You're going to go automated? Because our plan is to go automated. I think no operators. Because your line is almost all elevated, so you've got grade separation from the rest of traffic, I think that's a feasible option to consider. For us, it wouldn't be. You need a public, you need an adult. You need a human operator. Even with that, we still have problems with cars stopping on the tracks. We have people on headphones walking in front of the train. So you need a human brain there to respond to that. Sharon, you probably want to ask Craig about the energy effect of all of this. I do, and Craig can tell us. Because he's told us, but he's looked at the whole picture, and that's what I want Craig to talk about, is energy in transportation, energy efficiency in transportation, and looking at it with the whole sustainability effort that we've done there in Portland, which we haven't integrated that, and a way of, how do you look at that? How might you give us lessons learning how you pull that together? Well, another way to measure energy efficiency is what kind of emissions do you get from your transportation as well? One of the things that have really driven this for us is that the Portland region has been required by the state government of Oregon to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2035 per capita. And the state rule. It's a state law, state requirement. And our study and analysis showed that the best way to achieve that would be to improve our transit. So more people use transit instead of their cars. The transit is either with the light rail, it's electrical. Now, in Oregon, most of our electricity comes from very sustainable sources. We have hydro power, is too bad you guys. Too bad you guys can't import the Columbia River. The Columbia River, right there, yeah. We've got a river that runs right past Portland that's half the size of the Mississippi River, and it's got multiple dams on it that generate thousands and thousands of megawatts all the time, whenever it rains. We get more, yeah. What does it pay for a megawatt? I know this is gonna hurt me. Okay, well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what I pay as a residential customer. I pay about 6.8 cents per kilowatt hour. Oh my God. I think in here in Hawaii, you guys pay about 33, 34 cents. Depends on where you are, about six cents. Same for us, it depends on where you are, it varies from place to place. So this is really the best source of energy. Use electrical energy for these cars. Right, yeah. And so they're all electrified. All the light rail, the light rail line is all electric. So you never get to the question of fossil fuel because, I mean, assuming people use this, you just use electricity in the cars. All of our buses, the TriMet buses all operate on biodiesel. We have, the TriMet has long-term contracts with a company that manufactures biodiesel. Do you have incentives for electric cars over there? Not very many. The horse says the federal incentive, you purchase an electric car and you get a $7,500. It's a tax rebate. Some people can use that, others can't. You don't really get the money back but you can deduct it off of your taxes. And the state of Oregon just a couple months ago passed a new transportation package and part of the deal was some of the new funding will actually fund a subsidy so you get a rebate from the state if you buy an electric vehicle. So I guess the question, and I know what Sharon's gonna ask you, is whether you have succeeded in getting people out of fossil fuels and into non-fossil fuel? And to what extent? I was gonna say, define success. Have we succeeded in improving it? Absolutely. We are the second highest city in the United States for people riding their bike to work instead of driving their car, despite the fact that our winters are pretty rainy but they still do. And latest statistics I've read that for people who commute into the Portland center city for work, 30% of the people that commute do so by transit, about 5% by bus, about 25% on our light rail system. That shows how well our light rail system, we have over 60 bus lines in the Portland metro area. We have five light rail lines but those five light rail lines carry five times as many people as the 60 bus routes do. You drive? Most of the time, as I said, I'm the only metro counselor that lives in a corridor of the city that does not have a light rail line. That's why you're working on this Southwest Carter project. You want to take rail instead of drive. I sat on the steering committee for the Southwest corridor as the mayor of Tigard when I was in the mayor and now that I'm on the metro council, I co-chair the committee. Nice work. Sharon, it's time for you as a co-host to summarize all of this huge body of knowledge from yesterday, this morning, the legislature, and now. Well, I'm pleased that we were able to get Craig and to hear that Portland, while different, have some similar challenges and we've been able to hear from Craig about what we could do, planning long-term, planning for people, planning so that we have all options and people aren't, you know, the pedestrians aren't taken off the road or the buses or bikers take precedence over cars but looking at a system that is truly multimodal and multi-people oriented and I think that takes us a long way forward if we keep our eye on that price. So thank you, Craig, for sharing with us. My pleasure. Thank you, Craig. One other thing that Portland has in common with Holland Lulu is we also have a volcano within our city limits. Oh, that's right. Well, but it's been dormant for 200 years. All right. Thank you, Craig. Craig Duchess. My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor.