July 30, 2005 - Saturday

"Cats", explains writer Sarah Boxer in today's New York Times, "are the soul of the blogosphere." Many thanks to the reader who called that one to my attention.

My old friend and former islander, Chuck Smith, chimed in on the rail issue yesterday from his home in the SF Bay area:

Good points raised by your correspondents re: light rail. I would add a few.

1. here in the Bay Area, panic ensues when BART threatens to strike (a regular occurance at contract time). Even if "only" X number of people use it daily, the additon of X number of cars to the highways pushes congestion over a threshold to nightmare level.

2. Someone should note that highways are heavily subsidized by gov't funds, and if bus/light rail were effectively free (i.e. as heavily subsidized as highways) then ridership would go up. Instead these agencies are starved and riders pay a significant share of the expenses.

3. people are happy to drive when gas is $3, but what if it inexorably goes to $5? Everyone is continuing to assume the era of cheap oil will continue indefinitely, when every indication suggests that era is ending within the next few years.

Then there were several comments from Gerald in Portland:

You might want to look into the allegation that "rail in Europe is declining"

In the UK trains are carrying more than ever before, and are bulging with riders escaping highway congestion.

In numerous cities, especially France, new light rail systems are springing up to provide alternatives to driving, and to provide a catalyst for enhanced urban living. The allegation of decline is either a twisted statistic (eg in Eastern Europe it's probably true), or an untruth that the perpetrator knows you can't easily refute.

Gerald Fox, Portland.

But the most substance came via Roger Morton, a stalwart in the pro-rail Committee for Balanced Transportation, who takes a detailed look at the Texas Transportation Institute's methodology and the comparison between Honolulu and Portland. Very interesting.

A Sunday morning cable program by the Community Television Producers Association promises to "Shine the light on Maui" by examining the June meeting of Akaku: Maui Community Television. It's the meeting that set the stage for the firing of access activist and then Akaku's president, Sean McLaughlin. The program airs tomorrow at 10 a.m. on Oceanic's Channel 54.

It airs again:

8/1/05 Mon 3:00 pm VIEW
8/2/05 Tue 9:00 pm VIEW
8/16/05 Tue 10:30pm VIEW

July 29, 2005 - Friday

I wandered down to bed last night and reached for some random bedtime reading. What I came up with was Michael Beschloss' "Taking Charge, The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-64". Then a random opening to Lyndon's conversations on Wednesday, May 27, 1964. After talking to press secretary George Reedy and UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson, he turns to Senator Richard Russell of Georgia to talk about Vietnam.

"Got lots of troubles," LBJ says, referring to "this Vietnam thing."

Russell replies: "It's the damn worst mess I ever saw, and I don't like to brag."

But what caught my eye was a comment by Russell that seems to describe what's been happening in Iraq:

"If it got down to...just pulling out, I'd get out. But then I don't know. There's undoubtedly some middle ground somewhere. If I was going to get out, I'd get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem to get rid of these people and get some fellow in there that said he wished to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out...."

That certainly has a familiar ring to it.

Being Friday and all, I think it's time for the cats, dogs and, this time around, puppies. We were introduced to this little newly adopted gal this week. Puppies are almost as cute as kittens, even if they don't use a litter box. Anyway, just click on her photo for a few more.

On the cat front, Romeo is stalking around this 8-foot buffet filled with collectible dishes from Meda's thrift store runs. He seems to think there's prey hiding behind it, which could be true given these cats tendency to carry rats into the house and play with them. They can hide, but they can rarely escape. In any case, Romeo's on guard.

Silverman showed up limping a couple of days ago, and we started the "how to get the pill into him" game. The raw fish has been successful so far. He's suspicious, but the lure of the fish overwhelms his better judgement. But for the last two days he's shown up about 5 a.m., and so I get raw fish way before coffee. I'm not sure it's my favorite early morning taste, but trying to manually insert pill into Silverman would be far worse. I've got scars from one of our epic pill battles to prove it.

And so it goes. Happy Friday.

July 28, 2005 - Thursday

"What am I missing?"

That's what one reader asked after scanning the Star-Bulletin's online edition overnight.

Star Bulletin online front page

Urgent:
Warriors picked to finish third in WAC football

Huh? Urgent? Breaking News of Utmost Importance?
Duh.

I guess it's never too late according to the New York Times, which ran the following correction this week, more than 12 years after the original:

From The New York Times, Monday, July 25, 2005

"An obituary on Jan. 6, 1993, about William G. McLoughlin, an emeritus professor of history and religion at Brown University, misstated the date and cause of his death. Professor McLoughlin died on Dec. 28, 1992, not on Jan. 4, 1993; the cause was colon cancer, not liver cancer. The article also misstated the location of his World War II military service. It was at Fort Sill, Okla., not in Europe. The Times learned of the errors through a recent e-mail message from a family member."

And now back to the question of rail. Responses to my comments earlier in the week ranged from the concise to the extended. Here's the concise version:

I live in Kapolei. I honestly don't care if rail transit doesn't improve traffic congestion for those who choose not to use it. I just want it to improve MY commute. And it will, immensely.

Then another on the longer side but a similar sentiment:

There’s another approach too which involves changing the subject Cliff Slater prefers to base his argument on. Cliff likes to say that people like their cars, and they will drive them up to the point of congestion. Hence mass transit won’t solve the congestion problem.

Probably true, but here’s the slight of hand and what’s missing. The issue isn’t whether there will be congestion, but whether there will be transportation freedom and a better quality of life. The likelihood mass transit will not end congestion is not a reason to give up on mass transit. It’s not intended to end congestion, but it is intended to provide transportation freedom and a better quality of life. If mass transit does that we should consider it.

As it is I don’t have a good choice between driving my car and public transportation. With a better public transportation option, I’ll have transportation freedom. I will be able to chose between my car and an effective public transportation option. Right now I pass up a lot of moving around because I don’t want to be in the gridlock zone, which seems to grow year by year. I’ll eat at my desk instead of heading off to a lunch spot for example. This hurts my quality of life, and it doesn’t help our business community. 

I’ve lost my transportation freedom because the Cliff Slater’s of Honolulu have so far managed to prevent us from having an effective choice. The question is not whether mass transit will reduce congestion, it’s whether mass transit will increase our transportation freedom and quality of life.

I also enjoyed this comment from a reader who's opposed to tax increases but disagrees with Cliff Slater's transit analysis, although perhaps it isn't fair to get so "personal":

As you understand, beware people who call themselves researchers. Neil Abercrombie's use of the phrase "flat earth society" hits home with the Slater crowd. I wonder if Cliff is more opposed to the tax increase or Light-rail? Hard to tell. Will Cliff ever ride the bus when he's too old to drive himself? Maybe he's wealthy enough to have his own personal driver? Wouldn't that be ironic? Cliff Slater riding the bus at age 90--the same guy who wrote columns about privatizing and even getting rid of our bus system.

Then another extended comment from a reader with a different perspective:

Ian, I think you left out the most important part of that equation which is the question: Do people use rail? According to everything I have read, rail ridership has remained totally deminimus and in some cases has declined over time rather than increased (with the exception of a small number of large metro areas).

If this is the case -- and perhaps you can find numbers to prove me wrong -- then its clear that the voters are voting with their feet and electing to drive. I'd also recommend you do some deeper research here -- the New York Times magazine did a very deep story on this a year or two back with much more extensive facts than Slater. One key finding -- in Europe, even though gas prices are double or triple what they are here and congestion is equally as high if not higher, rail ridership has dropped steadily for the last decade.

So then all of this leads to the question of what the marginal value of congestion savings for rail versus other mechanisms? And to answer that question we need to look not only at how much time it saves but also how much time it saves X dollars spent versus how much time other options save X dollars spent.

One last thing. In all the other cities on the mainland, rail has augmented but not replaced surface transit. In Hawaii, it seems it is a distinct possibility that rail will replace surface transit (i.e. lanes on the H1) in some of the area where it is being discussed simply due to the space constraints. This introduces a new factor which also needs to be analyzed. And one last factor. The Honolulu freeway system is totally substandard compared to other places with major traffic. Even in congested urban areas its very rare to have 11 exits within a two mile stretch of freeway, something that happens in downtown Honolulu. So its entirely possible that changes in the freeway configuration could have an outsized effect (we already see some of this -- there is a marked increase in free efficiency Ewa bound in the downtown corridor when they shut down the Pensacola on ramp during heavy hours).

And I'm waiting for permission to reprint another extended analysis, so there may be more to follow.

July 27, 2005 - Wednesday

I really should go for the change of pace and just stick with dogs and cats this morning, but there was a lot of feedback to yesterday's entry that deserves sharing.

First, though, was this inquiry:

Local news reports have reported the Kayo Hatta, the acclaimed local director of "Picture Bride" died July 20 of an accidental drowning in Encinitas,CA. I used to lifeguard the beach at Encinitas for many years, so I started Googling to try and get more information.

The San Diego Union and the North Coast paper had nothing. The North County police blotter list nothing. In fact if you Google "Kayo Hatta drowning" you get nothing substantial. The same goes if you use Lori Hatta, her real name.

What is up with this?

Well, I don't know what's up, but a search in Google News (http://news.google.com) did turn up an Associated Press story out of Los Angeles that was reprinted across the county yesterday, although it has nothing more about the circumstances of the reported drowning. Although I don't have any other answers, I can at least share the question.

Regarding professors salaries, two very different viewpoints were expressed by readers. Here's one:

"Nor, we could add, do those professors earn as much as a reporter with five years experience at a Honolulu daily newspaper."

No shit? I knew that was true in '83-'84 when I was a Gannett fellow at UH. I marched on their picket line after I found out that as a 35-year-old copy editor at the Sannazay Merc News, I was making more than some UH profs I knew. Not lecturers or instructors, but profs. Back then, California was still cheaper living than here.

But I thought UH profs got pretty substantial raises in their last contract. Top Guild scale for reporters in this town is now about $60 grand a year ... though I believe the Star-Bulletin may be paying less to any it has hired in recent years, under terms of its present contract. I could be wrong about that last part.

The professor bidness has gotten unbelievably difficult. I have a friend with all the right credentials, including a doctorate from Harvard and lots of publications and a stint as a prof at a less-famous New England university. For years, in the deep south where his wife (also a prof) took a job, he couldn't get hired anywhere down there. They'd take one look at his resume and ask why in hell he wanted to work in a place like that. Guess they suspected he must be a federal felon or a sex offender or something. He finally got hired at her school, but that was after spending five or more years doing whatever freelance consulting jobs he could dredge up.

The Star-Bulletin did implement a two-tier wage scale in David Black's first contract, with new hires being paid on a lower scale. However, for competitive reasons, new hires of experienced reporters could still be placed above scale and, in any case, the new and old scales merged after five years, bringing new hires up to the higher pay, at least as I recall the contract terms.

And while professors got a good contract settlement, the contract is "back loaded", meaning that most of the pay raises are buried in the last years of the contract. Beyond that, there are obviously many remaining disparities in various parts of the campus, as those excellent undergrad teachers are learning.

But then there this rival view:

If you want to make a lot of money, you have to be popular. You or your product have to be in demand. We all know that. So, why are people still carping about the disparity between the salary of a foreign language professor and that of the football coach at the University of Hawaii?

June Jones is paid more than $800,000 per year. A tenured foreign language professor, on the other hand, is paid about $54,000. If the latter wants more money, she should try to attract 36,000 paying students per lecture (the average attendance at football games) and have her rich fans commit to paying her $400,000 per year (what Jones gets from his supporters).

Life isn't fair. Certainly, the Honolulu Symphony musicians envy rock stars who draw capacity crowds and stratospheric incomes. And writers like me wish their books were bestsellers like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. Unfortunately, the demand just isn't there.

The most popular star of all, of course, is Jesus Christ. Centuries after his death and resurrection, he still touches the hearts of the masses who, in turn, contribute immense time and treasure in his name.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have to be content with plodding along, doing what we do for love, not for money.

So take your pick.

And former islander Karen Waygood, now in Atlanta, reports that her blog, "Monkey Town", is a "featured" site on Typepad's home page! Just scroll down to their featured list. Monkey Town is still there now, but if it's removed later, click here to see what it looked like.

Waygood's comment: "Woo Hoo!"

Disclosure: I've got a bit of a conflict reporting this news since 'Ian boy' and 'Meda' are residents of Dollyville and friends of the sock monkeys.

Tomorrow: Readers rail on.

July 26, 2005 - Tuesday

Both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin had their Tuesday editions online by 4:30 this morning. That's a lot better than the 6 a.m. schedule the Advertiser had slipped to at one point. Is this a result of their redesign?

If you missed it yesterday, go back and read John Radcliffe's letter to the editor in the Star-Bulletin. He points out that none the winners of a top award for excellence in undergraduate teaching at the University of Hawaii have ever earned even half as much as the average Manoa administrator, or 20 percent of the salaries paid the basketball coach and athletic administrator. Nor, we could add, do those professors earn as much as a reporter with five years experience at a Honolulu daily newspaper.

A couple of weeks ago, following a discussion here of the excise tax issue, I received an email from outspoken rail transit opponent Cliff Slater:

I noted your July 12 blog entry.
Please read this and tell me where you think the argument is wrongheaded.

Cliff's recommended reading turned out to be a concise 4-page statement of his position featured on the web site, www.honolulutraffic.com. The author isn't identified, but I'll assume for now that it was penned by Slater. His main point, simply and directly stated: "Rail has never improved traffic congestion anywhere."

That's about as direct a claim as can be made. But is it true?

I wouldn't normally venture down this path. I like Cliff and respect his willingness to get out in front on a controversial issue like this. But since he called the question, I'll take a stab at responding.

His isn't an easy claim to evaluate, especially if, like me, you're not familiar with these traffic studies and the complex factors that contribute to traffic problems and their solution.

Slater begins by stating the obvious. Traffic is congested and isn't getting any better, and he cites federal data showing that only a small percentage of all travelers utilizes mass transit.

Citing studies by the Texas Transportation Institute, he notes that all but one of the eleven largest metropolitan areas have rail systems, and the sole exception, Houston, has had the slowest increase in traffic congestion. Of 27 large metro areas, half have rail lines, and four of those with the least growth in congestion were among the non-rail group.

But then Slater draws a critical conclusion that does not appear to be supported by these data. Referring to the prior description of traffic congestion, he states:

This meant that all U.S. metro areas with significant increases in commuters saw a dramatic worsening of traffic congestion — rail transit had made no difference.

And then he drives his point home:

...since rail transit has done nothing to relieve traffic congestion in any other U.S. city, it begs the question, what makes anyone think it will do it here?

But although I went back to the sources cited, I couldn't find any that supported the conclusion reached by Slater. None of the studies found that rail had no impact. Although Slater gives the impression that his conclusion is grounded in these data, presenting it along with tables of numbers excerpted from the longer transit studies, it actually represents a huge jump away from the data.

In fact, the Texas Transportation Institute, relied on heavily by Slater, finds the bulk of savings in commute times resulting from planned traffic mobility improvements are the result of public transit rather than highway operation management (such as freeway metering or incident management). [See Table 3, 2005 Urban Mobility Report]

The research all seems to point to a different conclusion: No single type of solution, whether new highway construction, operational improvements, or mass transit (including rail), is capable of reversing traffic growth, but all are part of the solution.

Slater believes transit can't work as a solution because it is slower than driving and, he says, "we value our time." But the same Texas report cautions against direct comparisons, such as Slater makes, between driving speeds and bus or rail systems with their frequent stops.

Regular route bus transit service stops frequently to allow riders to enter and leave the vehicles. Train service in many cases also makes more than one stop per mile. The goal of the service is to provide access to the area near the stops as well as move passengers to other destinations. A useful comparison with road transportation systems, therefore, cannot use the same standards or methods.

And Slater doesn't refer to the Texas Transportation Institute's assessment of Honolulu's traffic congestion over time. Honolulu's faces less of a traffic problem than other mid-sized urban areas, according to the Texas report, and their data show growth in traffic congestion has also been slower here than in other areas.

And Honolulu's traffic appears to have actually improved since the late-1980's relative to other similar urban areas, unless I am badly misreading the data presented. In 1988, for example, Honolulu was ranked 17th among these mid-sized cities with an annual per peak traveler delay of 29 person-hours. In 2003, the last year cited, Honolulu's rank had fallen to 50th with a per peak traveler delay of 20 hours.

And while Slater dismisses the value of transit, the Texas report estimates the total annual delay saved by public transportation in Honolulu at 5.14 million person-hours, compared to 153,000 person hours for other operational strategies, including things like the freeway zipper lanes and contra flow lanes. And that's with a bus system that still doesn't provide adequate service outside the urban core and has experienced budget problems and route cutbacks.

Of course, this is only a first look at part of Slater's argument, which goes on to hit heavily on cost comparisons, which I haven't attempted to review yet. But dismissing rail by asserting that it has "done nothing" or "made no difference" in other places--I do think that's wrongheaded, to use Cliff's word of choice.

July 25, 2005 - Monday

Guild members at the San Francisco Chronicle will be voting on a new contract Wednesday night after negotiators reached a deal over the weekend. It's not a good deal, but may be the only available deal. It includes wage and benefit cuts, and possible layoffs if fewer than 120 Guild employees take a voluntary buyout offer.

One bargaining committee member commented: “I view this as a strategic surrender that violates most of our core principles as a union. But the company and the grim realities gave us little other choice,” Hall said. “Ultimately, we decided to give our members the choice – and try to fight on as best we can once this is behind us.”

Here in Honolulu, I've heard that the Star-Bulletin's management have asked for an extension of the current contract beyond its expiration in March 2006, but it is still early in the negotiation process.

The Advertiser made another editorial pitch yesterday for public financing of election campaigns without specifically endorsing the particular "clean elections" bill put forward in the last legislative session, but I continue to have serious doubts about this particular approach.

I have both practical and philosophical problems with the elimination of private contributions. On the pratical side, the "clean elections" bill, in my view, would create a particularly cumbersome and administratively top-heavy system with excessive reporting requirements, tight timelines, and harsh penalties both for candidates opting in as well as those seeking to remain outside the public financing sphere.

On the more philosophical side, the need to mix with voters and supporters and ask for campaign contributions can be seen as a diversion pulling candidates away from their grassroots campaigns, but this is only true when there actually is a grassroots campaign, something becoming rarer with each camapign cycle. Campaign fundraising can also be seen as a necessary task that forces a candidate to attend to community issues and mix personally with supporters instead of relying wholly on the impersonal but effective tools of mass media advertising and saturation direct mail, now the most common campaign techniques.

In this sense, elimination of the need to seek private contributions would be a two-edged sword, cutting for and against the ties that link candidates with the community.

If backers are serious about a system of public financing, it seems to me that an extension of the current state system of matching funds would provide the most direct and efficient approach, replacing today's relatively minimal matching with more robust funding levels that would ensure all viable candidates a reasonable opportunity to fund their campaigns with a mix of private and public money. It would eliminate most of the complicated reporting and constant monitoring required by the "clean elections" approach. I'm still not clear why public financing proponents have insisted on a complex imported plan instead of building on the already existing framework developed in Hawaii.

This is the sad scene in Kaaawa at the site of last weekend's fatal car crash, a makeshift shrine along the side of Kamehameha Highway. Click on this photo for more.

July 24, 2005 - Sunday

AP is reporting this morning that the AFL-CIO could break up today in advance of the union's convention, with the SEIU being the first to withdraw from the federation, possibly pulling other members of its Change to Win Coalition along as well. This follows a vote of the AFL executive committtee to adopt a slate of proposals put forward as an alternative to the coalition's positions. For more insight, check out their blog from the AFL convention.

Okay, so President Bush says everybody should just lay off and quite pressuring him about Karl Rove because an investigation is underway and we we don't have all the answers yet. I realized this line of defense sounds very familiar because it's also what W tried to hide behind when those pesky "weapons of mass destruction" failed to materialize in Iraq. In that case, he put off the public questions by ordering the futile search to continue long after it was obviously going to come up empty, and then saying that the search was ongoing. And then, when the search was finally abandoned without coming up with any evidence to support the president's position, he stubbornly insisted that he was still correct despite all the evidence to the contrary, and Saddam had to go even if he didn't have WMDs. I expect that we'll see the same thing with the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA undercover operative. The president will hide behind the investigation until it's over and then ignore, sidestep, or explain away any damaging findings.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the leak investigation is now shifting to a focus on possible perjury. The same story has been bubbling up in other newspapers for several days.

The LA Times also reportes today on a cache of previously unpublished photographs of the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee that put the teaching of evolution on trial. Some of the photos have been made available online by the Smithsonian Archives. It's fascinating to see the old images, especially with the growing power of groups who would like to enforce just such an anti-evolution viewpoint within an energized Christian theocracy.

Somehow in writing that short paragraph I stumbled across Theocracy Watch, which appears to be monitoring the influence of conservative Christian groups within the Republican Party.

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