Posted on: Monday, November 1, 2004
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By Cliff Slater
When the Bus Rapid Transit program finally dies, we will then face another public relations juggernaut promoting "light" rail. It is well that we understand the deceptions ahead of us.
First, the city BRT information given to the public was pure promotional hype. There was no effort to give us an evenhanded explanation of the BRT proposal. Instead, it was the opposite: We were systematically deceived.
For example, after being told endlessly that the city had federal funding for the BRT, we later found that the city had not even applied for the funding.
We were also told endlessly that the BRT would reduce traffic congestion. Instead, we found that the city deliberately intended to make congestion worse to drive people onto buses. When you consider that they reduced "the capacity of Waikiki's streets to move vehicles" by 30 percent, how on earth could they forecast a reduction in traffic congestion unless it was to deceive us?
In fact, the deceptions over the BRT have been so numerous I devoted a whole column to it last year.
Advertiser library photo • Oct. 21, 2004 They won't tell you that the last heavy-rail line was built over 20 years ago in Miami and that was a complete failure — Metrofail, the Miami Herald dubbed it. Nor will they tell you that all the other heavy-rail systems were for metro areas that are much larger than Honolulu. Miami is the smallest metro area with a heavy-rail line and it has more than four times the population of Honolulu.
Two years ago, the American Planning Association Journal published the results of an international academic study of cost underestimating for 250 transportation projects around the world. They found that underestimating costs "cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear. Legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts." And they added that "we arrive at one of the most basic explanations of lying, and of cost underestimation, that exists: Lying pays off."
This study is far from being the only one about deception in promoting transit. In the footnotes to this column online are listed another 19 of them. And these have yet to include any studies of the incomplete Boston Big Dig, which at the moment is some $8 billion over projection.
Lying has paid off in Honolulu, as it does elsewhere, with campaign contributions from firms awarded non-bid contracts for the BRT project. Two of the three main BRT consultants have been indicted for illegal contributions, with heavy contributions by the third. Hopefully, the actions of the Campaign Finance Commission are making transit promotion a little less lucrative than it has been.
The only real excuse that the government can have about lying to us so consistently is that most other public transportation agencies do the same. While that is absolutely true, it does not mean that we should stand for it in Hawai'i.
We have been forewarned about what we can expect in lies and spin when it comes to the next transit project. The question we have to ask ourselves is, how do we prevent elected officials, in concert with the bureaucracy, from running amok with our tax money in this way?
We need to insist that the City Council give the new city auditor, the former deputy state auditor under Marion Higa, more money and resources than he thinks he needs. Whatever funding he gets will more than pay for itself in preventing idiotic public expenditures.
Second, it would be helpful to set up a civil grand jury such as they have in California whereby ordinary citizens acting under the auspices of the state courts are given powers to investigate state and county actions.
Third, while presently city officials simply refuse to debate with opponents, in the future we should expect to hear officials encourage both sides of the story to be told by way of debates and pro and con articles in our newspapers.
These actions may help in curbing the more ridiculous public works projects.
Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at www.lava.net/cslater.
The spin has already started about the new "light" rail proposal because what elected officials are proposing is, by the transit industry's own definition, "heavy" rail. They use "light" rail since it disguises what it really is — a train.
This new hybrid electric bus is part of the city's Bus Rapid Transit project.
