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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.
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
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
