From: Miyamoto, Faith Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 2:30 PM To: 'Ted.Matley@dot.gov ' Subject: FW: Frpm Ian Lind's Blog today.. .-b

Hi Ted —

Transmitting a copy of a blog that was received today. One question — Did FTA respond to the 6/2/09 letter to Undersecretary for Policy Roy Kientz?

As a heads up, I am preparing a letter to Leslie Rogers asking for confirmation (?) that we are properly following FTA requirements for DEIS/FEIS as evidenced by FTA's signing of the DEIS document, etc.

Faith

From: Hamayasu, Toru Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 9:21 AM To: Miya moto, Fa ith Subject: FW: Frpm Ian Lind's Blog today.. .-b

From: Brennan, Bill Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 9:06 AM To: Yoshioka, Wayne; Hamayasu, Toru; Nishioka, Edward M. Subject: Frpm Ian Lind's Blog today.. .-b

Consultant says Honolulu transit project open to legal challenge, but light rail alternative would not significantly delay project

October 9th, 2009 • 3 Comments

Phil Craig, the consultant who prepared the alternative rail study for Kamehameha Schools, spelled out in a recent email the reasons he believes the city's rail project is vulnerable to legal challenge.

I'm taking the liberty of quoting him at length.

I suggest a carefill read of the Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for High Capacity Transportation Improvements in the Leeward Corridor of Honolulu, HI, as published in the Federal Register, Volume 72, No. 50, pages 12254 to 12257, Thursday, March 15, 2007. For your convenience and those of others copied on this message, I am attaching a copy, which I used as one of the appendices to my light rail transit report to Kamehameha Schools.

This notice, placed in the Federal Register by the United States Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration and by the City and County of Honolulu, specifically stated under V. Alternatives, Fixed Guideway Systems (page 12256):

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" The draft EIS would consider five distinct transit technologies: Light trail [sic] transit, rapid rail transit, rubber-tired guided vehicles, a magnetic levitation system, and a monorail system."

In contrast with the above, the DEIS prepared by CCH, and upon which a 45-day public comment period (ending on February 6, 2009) was held after its approval by Region 9 of the Federal Transit Administration, considered only one transit technology, rapid rail transit [the all-elevated automated light metro] with three routing variations: via HNL Airport, via Salt Lake Boulevard, and via both the Airport and Salt Lake Boulevard

Simply stated, the DEIS did not conform to the Notice of Intent published in the Federal Register. This was brought to the attention of USDOT' s most senior officials by the late Councilmember Duke Bainum and his colleague, Charles Djou in their June 2, 2009 letter. To date, however, both CCH and USDOT/FTA have chosen to ignore that fact as they attempt to "railroad" the HHCTC Project through the environmental review process (no doubt encouraged to do so by certain members of Hawai'i's Congressional Delegation).

It is my understanding of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the agency regulations implementing it that it is mandatory that parties responsible for preparing, reviewing and approving an Environmental Impact Statement must adhere to that which was published in the Federal Register.

Inasmuch as the USDOT/FTA and CCH failed to comply with the published intent of the DEIS, it is my belief that this deficiency alone is sufficient grounds for a successful legal action in the Federal Courts that, if pursued, will result in setting aside any Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) or Record of Decision (ROD) based upon it published or approved by the Federal Transit Administration. The end result would be that construction of any part of the Honolulu High Capacity Transit Project, as currently constituted, would be enjoined for failure to comply with NEPA.

While there are other significant areas in which the DEIS is defective, I hope that this fundamental and glaring lapse of process does not pass unnoticed by those concerned with the future of the Island of O'ahu.

Craig has also spelled out why it is not "too late" to consider more flexible light rail technology, as the Hannemann Administration claims.

The EITICTC Project is only in a conceptual engineering phase; preliminary engineering is yet to begin, let alone final engineering. If the City Administration were to issue an addendum to its Request for Proposals seeking a Design, Build, Operate and Maintain (DBOM) Contractor calling for the use of low-floor light rail vehicles (instead of high-floor light metro cars) with rolling stock maintenance and storage facilities to match, and allowed an additional 90 days to allow its three bidders (AnsaldoBreda, Bombardier and the Japanese consortium) to revise their proposals for the initial East Kapolei to Peal Highlands segment, Notice to Proceed still could be issued to the successful bidder by February/March 2010 instead of November/December 2009 as currently proclaimed to be possible.

Please note that all three of these companies have light rail vehicles in their catalogs that would be suitable for use in Honolulu. Indeed, were the City Administration willing to revise the DBOM Contract and reopen the bidding, it is probable that firms like Alstom and Siemens that dropped out and others like KinkiSharyo of Japan and Hyundai/Rotem of South Korea that chose not to enter the competition — which also could provide suitable vehicles — would reconsider their previous positions and expand the competition for this work.

The only other significant revision to the proposed contracts would be to require that the height of the high-level platforms of the planned elevated station be lowered to fourteen inches (14") above top-of-rail to match the floor height of low-floor light rail vehicles. The major impact of this change would be to result in shorter rises in mezzanine or street to platform rises of escalator, elevator and stairways. Station designs also are preliminary at this point — to something changing also would not delay completion of the project by four-to-five years.

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And why should we take Craig seriously?

You can make your own assessment of his credentials as an experienced rail planner and consultant, which appear to me to be impressive.

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Tags: Politics

3 responses so far

• 1 the amoeba II Oct 9, 2009 at 6:26 am

Sigh. I suppose the pattern can be traced back to the Hawaiian and haole royal families, and popular resentment of their arbitrary actions. But, to me, the peoples of Hawaii are so trussed up in the web of mutual suspicion, resulting from endless cycles of regulation and circumvention of regulation, that they're about to lose their footing and topple into the deep blue Pacific, leaving the islands to what's left of the native wildlife.

• 2 rlb_hawaii I/ Oct 9, 2009 at 6:35 am

As if the bickering over elevated or light rail weren't frustrating enough, now we have someone from from the East Coast who has just dipped his toe into the rail issue pronouncing a lawsuit and roomfuls of lawyers mucking up rail.

My perspective is this: we blew it in the 1990s when the City Council turned its back on rail. As Ian has pointed out, that rail system was elevated, just like this one. Since then, our island and particularly the core of Honolulu, Kalihi, Pearl City and Waipahu — all along the route — has gotten more urbanized, we have way more cars on the road and traffic has gotten much suckier. If an elevated rail system worked then, why wouldn't it work now? And please don't trot out the tired horse about how mainland cities have rail that is elevated and then goes on the ground and so should we. As we like to say when it comes to our culture, our food and our racial diversity, we aren't like mainland cities. Our island geography is more like Thailand or Japan than Phoenix or Seattle. And Thailand and Japan have elevated rail.

Cut to today. Mufi took up the rail banner. The City Council backed him and their votes approved the elevated rail system we are looking at today. Thanks to a carpetbombing of the rail issue the media last year, this rail system was on people's minds when we voted for rail last year. And there is a couple of years worth of planning, engineering going into elevated rail.

Plus the jobs created by rail construction are desperately needed. Revenues are falling, people are having their hours cut back, teachers are being furloughed. We need to do stem the tide cuz a tourism rebound is a l00000ng way off from what I can tell.

Enough frustration. Let's do this. Let's build the frickin' rail system.

• 3 PRT Strategies // Oct 9, 2009 at 8:19 am

We made the following comment on the recent Star-Bulletin article (http ://www. starbulletin. com/editorials/20091001 All- elevated rail will be costly inflexible and ugly.html) on light rail:

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The solution to Honolulu's transit issue is NOT light rail. Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is also elevated, but at much LESS cost in terms of not only money (1/5th to 1/10th the expense, or about $30 million/mile), but also with less visual intrusion and a much smaller footprint. Many PRT vehicles on multiple interconnected guideway loops can carry the anticipated ridership (computer models will prove this) with far more flexibility.

PRT can operate 24/7/36 without drivers providing point-to-point non-stop private rides averaging over 30mph. PRT's all electric as well, and emission-free. Any number of "offline" PRT stations can be used on the system with no decrease in throughput.

PRT fosters public/private partnerships as well — imagine that a hotel or big box retailer can fund their own station, and even their own vehicles for guest use, thus reducing the overall expense of publicly funding the system.

PRT's been long proven on the mainland, and has implementations underway now in England and the middle east. Testing of very sophisticated, computerized systems have been completed with safety approvals obtained in Sweden.

Our firm has tried to explain this to your AIA group, but they've refused to comment on our analysis or even return our phone calls. There's more on PRT at http://www.prtstrategies.com

Elevated light rail makes no more sense than at-grade light rail for this application. A different approach, as we recommend, should be encouraged, with bidding opened up again for different ideas based on newer technology.

Adhering to a strict linear alignment is nonsense — different technology as we've proposed can be routed anywhere practical, to serve both your residents and "bread and butter" tourists. And of course, the amount of money either light rail or streetcar alternative will cost is simply infeasible in this fiscal climate.

There are better alternatives on the Honolulu page of our website: http://www.prtstrategies.com .

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