The administration of Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi has been touting the virtues of a rail transit system for O`ahu for some years now. To judge from the recently published Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the rail system, however, the environmental advantages would seem to be non-existent.
A Wash on Traffic
The introduction to the SDEIS states that “fixed guideway transit systems may be a part of a transportation solution to local travel problems” — that is, a rail transit system might reasonably be expected to reduce congestion, shorten commuting time, and the like. However, there is no support for this view in the document itself.
Consider traffic levels. The SDEIS and the earlier Alternatives Analysis/Draft Environmental Impact Statement (to which the SDEIS is supplementary) forecast traffic levels, measured by the expected number of vehicle miles traveled (or VMT) each day, for 1995, 2000, and 2005 under three scenarios: the so-called “no-build” alternative, the “Transportation System Management” alternative (which would expand the bus fleet by nearly 1,000, add park-and-ride lots, and increase the use of high-occupancy-vehicle lanes on arterial highways); and the rail system integrated with bus service.
According to the city’s analysis, “the fixed guideway alternative” — that is to say, rail transit — “would result in a 1.1 percent decrease and 4 percent increase in auto and bus VMT, respectively, as compared to the No-Build Alternative. The TSM Alternative would result in a 0.5 percent reduction in auto VMT, but a 50 percent increase in bus VMT.”
Air quality as a result of vehicular emissions is closely linked to the number of vehicle miles traveled. According to the SDEIS, rail transit “would result in a slight (1 to 3 percent) reduction in emissions over the 10-year period when compared with the No-Build Alternative. The TSM Alternative would result in negligible differences compared to the No-Build Alternative for most pollutants by the year 2005 and a 2.5 percent increase in sulfur oxide emissions.”
Negligible Differences
Table 5.3 of the SDEIS allows for more specific comparisons among the alternatives. In the year 1995, carbon monoxide emissions from the TSM alternative would be 0.6 percent less than they would be with the rail system; they would be 0.9 percent less for TSM than for rail in 2000; only in the year 2005 does the rail system gain the advantage, with the table indicating that rail would result in 1 percent fewer emissions of carbon monoxide than the TSM alternative. Differences for other pollutants are also so negligible as to be erased by the margin of error one might expect in these sorts of forecasts.
In any case, the emissions projections are made only for mobile sources — that is to say, cars and buses. The figures do not include emissions associated with the rail system, which will be powered electrically. While technically there will be no “mobile source” emissions from the trains themselves, there will be the incremental emissions from power generating plants providing electricity to the system. The SDEIS indicates that 60 million kilowatt-hours of electricity will be consumed each year by the rail system. It does not calculate what pollutants will be added to the atmosphere by the fuel (coal or oil) burned to generate this power. It states only the following: “A comparison of emissions anticipated for the fixed guideway alternatives assessed in the AA/DEIS with the O`ahu emissions inventory suggested that the additional emissions would be relatively small (0.5-1.7 percent) but do add to the growing inventory of power generation emissions on O`ahu.”
Energy Effects
Inasmuch as the difference in automobile vehicle-miles-traveled for both the TSM and the rail system is so small (less than one percent — an amount that surely is within the margin of error of these predictions), the rail system is at no particular advantage when it comes to reducing the amount of energy consumed by automobiles. The SDEIS contends that the TSM alternative will result in increased consumption of diesel fuel by buses over the no-build alternative. It fails to translate this into a unit of energy — therms, for instance, or barrels of oil — that can be meaningfully compared to the extra electrical energy that will be consumed by the rail system.
The SDEIS acknowledges that the rail system will require a “substantive increase in electrical energy consumption,” but provides no quantitative measure of how “substantive.” It states only that “Coordination with the City and County of Honolulu electrical power suppliers … confirmed their ability to supply sufficient electrical energy to operate a fixed guideway system.”
Over and above the energy costs associated with running the rail system, there are those associated with its construction. Here, too, the SDEIS is sketchy. The entire discussion on this matter reads as follows:
“Construction of the rail transit system would require energy. Energy is consumed in operating equipment at the construction site, in producing and transporting construction materials, and in manufacturing vehicles and other equipment.”
Unmentioned here is the energy used by vehicular traffic that is detoured or delayed by the construction — a cost associated with the rail system that would be avoided altogether by expanding bus service.
Apart from that, the energy associated with construction of rail systems has been determined in the past to be significantly greater than the SDEIS would give one to believe. According to the HALI-2000 Report, prepared in 1984 and addressing the various impacts of the earlier Honolulu Area Rapid Transit (HART) system, the day-to-day energy savings of a rail transit system were so marginal that it would take 150 years to recover the energy consumed in its construction.
A similar study for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system came to the same conclusion — although this one was made after BART was built. That study, published in Transportation Research Record (No. 648, 1977), calculated energy required to build the system as well as energy saved by avoiding new highway construction, energy used in the construction of automobiles, bus and rail vehicles as well as that used in their operation, and calculated net energy savings (or losses) based on a variety of assumptions about BART patronage. “Under most of these assumptions,” Charles A. Lave, author of the report, wrote, “the BART system can never repay the energy investment.”
Noise Impacts
The rail system has gotten a lot of public-relations mileage from images of quiet trains whizzing along at two or three times the speed of cars and buses on clogged roads. The reality — as depicted in the Supplemental Draft EIS — is something quite different.
Train noise increases with speed, and the noise can be substantial. A person standing 50 feet away from a rail car passing by at 55 miles per hour would be subjected to a noise level of 70 decibels, according to the SDEIS.
To mitigate the noise, the SDEIS suggests, the guideway vehicles could travel more slowly than their design allows. This becomes clear when the SDEIS discusses concerns over noise associated with the rail system’s new route along Ala Moana Boulevard, skirting the makai edge of downtown. A federal agency, the General Services Administration, had “expressed a concern that the amended LPA [locally preferred alternative route] would disturb office workers in the Prince Kuhio Federal Building and children attending the building’s day care center. The area currently experiences high noise levels due to traffic on Ala Moana Boulevard. The closest portion of the building and day care playground would be approximately 50 feet from the proposed centerline of the nearest track. The trains would operate at a speed of approximately 20 miles per hour in this area. At this speed, adverse noise impacts from the rapid transit system would not occur.” (According to the SDEIS, “passby noise” experienced at a distance 50 feet from the centerline would be between 63 and 67 decibels when the train was traveling at 20 miles per hour.)
“Noise impacts are possible for the University of Hawai`i Pathology and Audiology building and the ROTC classroom building,” the document states. The American Public Transit Association recommends that noise levels of 75 decibels not be exceeded for school buildings (assuming, of course, that the buildings will be insulated against that level of sound). “However,” the SDEIS notes, “because of the nature of the activity within the Pathology and Audiology building and the use of hearing test equipment which may be noise-sensitive, it is possible that the APTA criteria may not be adequate in this instance.” In any event, the SDEIS assumes that this building will be relocated when the University of Hawai`i begins construction of its new arena.
Time and again, the SDEIS indicates that although the rail guideway will pass within close range of residential areas, “no adverse impact would be anticipated,” with the threshold for adverse impact being 70 decibels, in the eyes of SDEIS authors.
Other Questions
Perhaps the most detailed criticism of the SDEIS has been produced by City Council Chairman Arnold Morgado. His comments, which run to 60 pages, amount to a paragraph-by-paragraph critique of the document. What follows is no more than the barest sampling:
Morgan notes that in 1990, the City Council adopted a resolution calling on the city to review and refine viable “transportation systems management” options. “The city administration apparently has taken no action to fulfill that Council directive,” he writes. “An explanation of the non-action should be provided.”
The rail system, Morgan notes, would result in reduced service on the major urban bus lines (especially Routes 1, 2, 3, and 9). This “may have a detrimental impact on transit ridership,” he writes, adding that the final EIS should consider this possibility. (Here Morgan is closing in on one of the central problems with the rail transit system. Because it will rely heavily on “feeder” bus lines, with riders having to transfer one or two times more than they now must, when using the municipal bus system, some present bus riders may regard the rail system as far less attractive than the existing bus system. That is to say, each time riders must transfer, travel becomes more inconvenient and the attractiveness of alternatives, such as automobile travel, increases. This helps explain also why overall trip times for commuters using the rail transit system are not expected to diminish significantly. When one considers time spent waiting for feeder buses and transferring from one system to the other, the advantage to be gained from riding a few minutes on the rail transit system diminishes somewhat.)
Morgan notes that the SDEIS refers to and relies on another study, the Transportation Impacts Results Report. “By letter dated March 27, 1992, the Council Chair requested from the Department of Transportation Services” a copy of that report, Morgan writes. The department responded on April 16, 1992, to the effect that while the document was “anticipated to be completed in January 1992, … a delay in obtaining the final input data resulted in a delay in producing this document.” At the time of his comments (May 7, 1992), Morgan still had not received the report.
He writes: “It is difficult to understand how the SDEIS could be published and circulated without complete support data. The Transportation Impacts Results Report is supposed to contain information on transit patronage and traffic impacts. Without the Results Report, the public is unable to adequately comment on the SDEIS.”
Morgan accuses the city of treating non-rail alternatives more harshly in the SDEIS than in the 1990 Alternatives Analysis/Draft Environmental Impact Statement. “Data in the AA/DEIS clearly showed that the fixed guideway alternative would not produce substantially greater transit ridership and traffic reduction benefits than the expanded bus alternative. That conclusion remains evident, notwithstanding harsher treatment of the expanded bus alternative under the SDEIS.” He supports his accusation with two pages of examples of discrepancies between the AA/DEIS and SDEIS relating to bus service.
The Bottom Line
Morgan’s final comment concerns the discussion in the SDEIS of “Significant Trade-Offs Between Alternatives.” He quotes from the SDEIS:
“From the perspective of the annual operating cost, the TSM alternative when compared to the fixed guideway alternative would cost approximately $4 million more per year. Capital costs would be far less, putting less demand on local resources.”
Actually, Morgan notes, operating and maintenance costs of the TSM would be $3.8 million. He adds, then:
“Since the operating and maintenance cost difference is specified, fairness requires the capital cost difference to also be expressed. The amended LPA has a capital cost of $1,652.07 million more than the expanded bus alternative. That amount is approximately 435 times the $3.8 million operating and maintenance cost advantage for the amended LPA.”
Volume 2, Number 12 June 1992