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Monday, August 8, 2011

"Trains Helped Kill the Greek Economy – They’ll Kill Hawaii’s too..." 'Panos Prevedouros'

We are honored to have guest blogger Panos D. Prevedouros, Ph.D, he ran for mayor of Honolulu in the 2008 election and finished 3rd in the primary elections with 18% of the vote from a field of nine candidates...  He  is a professor of traffic and transportation engineering at the Department of Civil Engineering at UH Manoa.  Panos graduated from the Aristotle Univ. of Greece in 1984,  with Masters and PhD degrees. He chairs the Freeway Simulation Subcommittee of the Transportation Research Board. He was president of the Hawaii Highway Users Alliance from 2006 to 2008. Panos co-authored a Transportation Engineering textbook and over 100 reports and technical papers. He received the 2005 Van Wagoner Award of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He co-organized the 1st International Symposium on Freeway Operations (ISFO) in Athens, Greece, and the 2ND ISFO in Honolulu in June 2009. Dr. Prevedouros served in the Transit Advisory Task Force in 2006 and in the Technology Selection Expert Panel in 2008 of the City Council of Honolulu.

Trains Helped Kill the Greek Economy – They’ll Kill Hawaii’s too

“Some years back a Greek finance minister, fed up with his country's waste and extravagance claimed that he could save money by shutting down the national railway and driving around its passengers in taxis.” [1]

Too bad he didn't execute his plan for the closure of the railways. In 2009 the Greek railways collected $250 million in fares and posted a net loss of $1.4 Billion. A Billion wasted here, and a Billion wasted there … the rest is history for the Greek economy. Greece is now in a debt crisis.

In 2000 a Greek colleague and I conducted research on Greek railroads and we developed models which predicted that the rail freight service would soon carry nothing [2]. No way, they said. Four years later the freight operations of Greek shut down for good. Unfortunately, investment on Obama-like medium-speed rail passenger service continued unabated in Greece. So the budget hole got even bigger.

The lesson here is that public investment in non-performing infrastructure will eventually swamp the budget and saddle current and future generations with a heavy debt burden. Non-performing is any infrastructure in constant need of subsidy whose contribution to the economy is less than its true cost. Roads cost a lot, but contribute much more to the economy, health and safety of the population. Trains cost even more, but offer much much less.

What do you think the future holds for our tiny island that "wants" a five to seven Billion dollar train?

What do you think the future holds for the car-dependent, and highway and airport vested state of California which still plans for a $35 Billion “high speed rail”? A lot of good answers can be found in the article: High Speed Rail and Social Equity. Basically, the only high speed rail that makes sense (and money) is the 340-mile Shinkansen. All the rest, including California's, are A Fast Track to Nowhere.

The lessons about trains "modern" trains can be summarized by three common sense idioms, as follows.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Trains went obsolete for a reason. You can’t solve 21st century mobility problems with 19th century technology. There are always a few exceptions, but Greece, California and Hawaii trains have nothing exceptional.

Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense. One can write a book on this but I will mention only three rail related “math” of Honolulu mayor Peter Carlisle: (1) Get Honolulu’s financial house in order ... by spending over five billion on rail, (2) HART will cost us nothing, and (3) The Ansaldo contract will save Honolulu tens of millions in rail costs. All of them pure nonsense.

They are taking Honolulu for a (train) ride. Biased politicians, biased government officials and their paid consultants deceive the public in order to get elected, become chief of a new division and make millions, respectively.

To read  other blog's by Dr. Prevedouros go to; http://fixoahu.blogspot.com/
The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this blog site do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Publisher of Dakinetalk the blog...

To all politicians and non-politicians,  we are interested in your views about what you are most passionate about. We would enjoy your guest blog submissions, whether we agree or not we like hearing all sides. Please submit your guest blogs to; jrsensei@hotmail.com   

"I'm kicking the Habit..." 'Douglas Dunn' (Cosmic Tuesday's)

Welcome guest blogger Douglas Dunn, On Stage with Barack Obama
California Democratic Convention
April 2007


Douglas Dunn runs a small publishing consulting business in which he works with individuals who are self-publishing books. Doug has been a certified American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter (for Deaf people), and  last but not least he has also been a Democratic Party media spokesperson for San Diego County, and has appeared at numerous forums in which multiple parties were represented. Please enjoy as Doug blogs about kicking the addiction of petroleum... To be continued when Doug's new car is delivered to him.
Doug welcoming Hillary Clinton to the San Diego Democratic convention in 2007  as she consults with him about kicking the petroleum  habit..Check out the You-tube of Doug signing Hillary Clinton's speech!
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DDWiz27#p/u/1/k3UsCQWOHSg  

Time to kick the habit. Time to “just say no.”

I’m tired of pulling into gas stations and pouring dollars and oil-based energy bought from terrorist pushers down the hatch.

Definitely time to move beyond the gas guzzler. Yep, that gas-guzzling Prius and been a sweet ride for lo these eight years (and 160,000 miles) but time to upgrade to the 100% electric Nissan Leaf.

Did the test drive.
Placed the order.
Got the home charger installed.
Got some nifty “I kicked the habit” stickers sent to me by Nissan USA.

Now just waiting for a car to stick ’em on — waiting impatiently for the dealer to call and say my car has finally pulled into port and ready for me to come in and pick it up. Delivery is scheduled for the first week in September. If any variation, hope it is because the car got here early.

Looking forward to the day when I can plug the Leaf into my solar panels and drive off, powered by sunshine -- the free gift of energy from Apollo the sun god or whatever other deities there may be.

Looking forward to the day when I can just say NO.

NO gas.
NO oil changes.
NO tune-ups.
NO valves, rings, pistons, timing belt.
NO radiator or coolant to maintain.
NO regular power train maintenance.
NO smog checks ever.

Of course, the biggest drawback to an all-electric car, especially here in auto-addicted Southern California where we drive long distances routinely, is “range anxiety.” (For my friends in Kaua‘i, where short local trips are more the norm, this might not be as problematic -- and, yes, Hawai‘i is one of the 9 roll-out states.) But the Leaf is designed to go 100+ miles on a charge, and “rapid charge” stations are now being installed throughout the roll-out areas so that one can get almost a full charge in only about 20 minutes. It would still be inconvenient stopping for a 20-minute recharge every 100 miles or so on a cross-country long-distance drive, but for routine driving it meets most needs, and we’ll be keeping the trusty Prius as a second car and backup.

Delivery of the car is still several patience-challenging weeks away. But I eagerly wait my turn to climb into the sleek, smooth silence and ride off into the sunset ... or plug into it.

Check out DougsDoug's websites below...
Politics website:
http://www.wordwiz72.com/dem.html
Sign language web pages:
http://www.wordwiz72.com/interp/
http://www.wordwiz72.com/interp/aslvideos.html