Inside Honolulu: Dec. 3
Welcome to Inside Honolulu! City Hall is decked out for December, and Civil Beat is reporting from the inside.
5:46 p.m. Carlisle Calls Rail Analysis “Wrong”
At a mid-afternoon press conference, Mayor Peter Carlisle called the independent financial analysis ordered by Gov. Lingle “shoddy” and “biased.” He scolded the state for what called an immense waste of tax dollars.
Read our related story:
2:50 p.m. City Mulls Combining EMS, Fire Department
Honolulu is exploring a possible merger of the city’s Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services. Other cities 鈥斅爈ike Cleveland 鈥斅爃ave made similar streamlining decisions in recent months.
A national consulting group will spend several months studying whether the merger would be work in Honolulu. Emergency Services Director James Ireland says he hopes the city will have enough information to be able to make a decision by March or April.
He says the merger will only happen if it proves to be cost-effective, without compromising the quality of service in each department.
2:36 p.m. Mayor to Face “Deathly” Fear of Heights
Mayor Peter Carlisle is addressing hundreds of city workers and others gathered at Honolulu Hale to admire the holiday decorations, and trees adorned by city departments as part of an annual competition. In minutes, the mayor will take to the top of the huge tree on Honolulu Hale’s front lawn 鈥斅爓ith the help of a crane 鈥 and cap it with a disco-ball star ornament.
“They are going to elevate me 55 feet into the air,” Carlisle told the crowd. “You need to know that I have a deathly fear of heights. Your job is to stand directly below with your hands out, in case I should fall.”
11:29 a.m. Report Cites Bloated Ridership Estimates as Common
The rail report Gov. Linda Lingle commissioned finds ridership estimates are often optimistic in rail projects like the one planned in Honolulu, but uses a 1990 report to make the point.
“In fact, a 1990 report by the FTA3 reveals that 90% of the studied projects had estimates that more than doubled actual results,” the report reads.
Its authors do acknowledge the data is outdated:
“Computer technology, political pressure, and greater scrutiny by contractors has helped to reach better estimates since the 1990 report (but) there is still much room for improvement.”
The review does include more recent data, and cites a 2007 FTA report that shows project ridership estimates are, on average 47 percent above actual numbers. Why the frequent inaccuracies? Sometimes, it’s just too hard to guess.
“…so much of what goes into an 鈥渁ccurate鈥 estimate depends on specialized local considerations,” the report reads. “Many of these considerations are completely unknown or are too complex to put into numbers.”
12:22 p.m. Carlisle to Respond on Rail Report
Mayor Peter Carlisle met this morning with Honolulu’s chief rail planner, Toru Hamayasu. The mayor announced he will formally respond to the governor-commissioned outside rail analysis this afternoon. On Lingle’s last work-day in office, it’s a fitting representation of her term as governor, and contentious relationship between state and city government leadership in that time: One last political back-and-forth on rail across Punchbowl Street.
11:02 a.m. Rail Report Challenges Estimates on Cost, Ridership
The financial analysis on rail Gov. Linda Lingle’s outside team delivered suggests city and federal estimates about the project have been overly optimistic.
Infrastructure Management Group, Inc., a division of CB Richard Ellis, and bus advocate Thomas Rubin found that cost estimates are underestimated and ridership projections are overestimated.
The review team suggests the City and County will need to come up with “at least $1.725 B more from its General Fund over 20 years to support the rail project than is forecasted in the current Financial Plan.”
The team also found Honolulu has “many of the key risk factors” associated with a spike in construction costs and revenue shortfalls due to:
- The city’s status as a first-time developer of heavy rail
- The geographic island location
- The elevated nature of the project
A copy of the online.
The review estimates the total 30-year amount needed from the general fund to be between $9.3 billion dollars and $14.3 billion dollars.
IMG examined finances, but also looked at Honolulu’s history with rail to gauge how this project might be handled. Attempts at building a rail system in Honolulu have been thwarted repeatedly over the decades, a factor that federal officials have also raised as a serious concern.
