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Offering cost-effective solutions to Oahu's traffic congestion
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas
March 5, 2008.
Dave Shapiro nails the City and PB's dirty tricks:
On Monday, the Advertiser's Dave Shapiro posted the following on his Volcanic Ash blog:
"A fast ride to political glory — It's getting difficult to follow the bouncing subway token as the city rushes at breakneck speed to get started on its $3.7 billion rail transit system from Kapolei to Honolulu. For three years, Mayor Mufi Hannemann has issued dire warnings that taking our time with decisions to be certain we make the right choices would put federal funding at risk.
"Now that he's achieved his mad dash through vital decisions — a city panel selected steel wheels on steel rail technology after less than a month of deliberations — the mayor doesn't want to wait for federal funding to start building.
"He's proposing to begin construction on the first phase between Kapolei and Leeward Community College next year and finish it by 2012, even though the federal government isn't expected to decide whether to provide funding or how much until 2011.
"It could cost local taxpayers as much as $948 million more if the feds decline to participate after the money is spend.
"The mayor needs to get his story straight: Either federal funding is vital to this project or it's not. A reckless rush through due diligence and prudent decision-making procedures only serves to increase the chances of bad choices and wasted money.
"The leg between Kapolei and LCC is minimally useful, and the only apparent point to getting it finished at any cost by 2012 is so Hannemann can make the political boast that he got something built before the end of his second term."
OUR COMMENT:There were many highly critical comments on this post by anonymous responders but (somehow) Dave Shapiro traced their origins to City and Parsons Brinckerhoff servers. Is there nothing they won't do? It is certainly immoral but using the City's servers for this, is it even legal? READ MORE
Lessons from history: The day we were shocked:
On August 3, 2003 our headline read "Privatization study ignored." We then went on to say, "We are shocked — absolutely shocked" that the City had failed to disclose the 30-40 percent potential savings from privatization that PB Consult had provided in a backup study as part of the FEIS for the In-town Bus/Rapid Transit program.
The Parsons Brinckerhoff study concluded, “With regard to competitive contracting, experiences in Houston, Denver, San Diego and Los Angeles indicate that the biggest advantage of competitive contracting is savings in operating costs. In most cases, savings of 30-40 percent were realized by the private contractor, because of its ability to provide the service more efficiently.” From the Primary Corridor Transportation Study, Preliminary Working Document, Technical Paper on Privatization Options. Page 5-1.
Why on earth would the City leave such a harmless statement out of the FEIS?
Here are the consultants' original papers from the study:
4.0 Commercially operated paratransit service
5.0 Case study conclusions
6.0 Paratransit services in the City and County of
Honolulu
Readers are invited to submit their views on why this study was suppressed and also why it was produced in the first place.
December 18, 2007.
And now a few words from PB Americas on HOT lanes:
Recently PB Americas helped write the San Francisco Bay Area High-Occupancy/Toll (HOT) Network Study. Some of the more interesting quotes from that document are:
“High-occupancy/toll
(HOT) lanes are a proven concept based on well-established technologies. Individual
HOT lane corridors have operated effectively in southern
A
regional network of HOT lanes completed by 2025 can pay for itself over 30
years…
By
more efficiently using freeway capacity and thereby reducing congestion, HOT
lanes can reduce the cumulative amount of driving time for drivers in the
regular, general-purpose lanes as well as those who choose to pay the toll for
a faster, more reliable trip. Preliminary analysis suggests the regional HOT network could
reduce the amount of freeway driving time (measured in vehicle hours) in the
morning peak period by 21 percent in the adjacent general-purpose lanes.
Further, by maintaining level of service standards in existing state law,
average travel speeds of 54 miles per hour could be maintained in the HOT lanes…
Because HOT lanes reduce congestion and increase travel speeds, they reduce vehicle tailpipe emissions. In particular, preliminary analysis suggests that compared to a regional HOV network, a regional HOT network could reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the morning peak period by about seven percent.” (original emphasis) READ MORE
No Comment dept: "Parsons Brinckerhoff To Engineer Toll Road":
"Staff — January 7, 2008 — California Builder and
Engineer — San Bernardino, Calif.— The Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC) has awarded a
contract to PB to provide engineering services for a major expansion of the
SR-91 toll road in Riverside County, California. The project will study the
addition of one general purpose lane and two toll lanes in each direction on
SR-91 from SR-241 to Pierce Street through the city of Corona (approximately 12
miles). It includes widening of existing under crossings and water crossings,
and realignment and reconstruction of existing exit and entrance ramps within
the project limits. The project also entails a direct connector to link I-15 to
the toll lanes and potentially extend this connection five miles along I-15.
"The expansion, with an estimated construction cost of $1 billion, is a flagship project within the RCTC's 10-year construction program. The segment of SR-91 is one of the most congested routes in Southern California. The current average daily traffic of 280,000 vehicles is expected to increase by 60 percent to 70 percent over the next 20 years.
"As the prime consultant on the project, PB is responsible for preparation of a California Department of Transportation project report, traffic engineering, preliminary engineering, and all environmental documentation for the project."
January 25, 2008.
Parsons Brinckerhoff settles Big Dig lawsuit:
Parsons Brinckerhoff, the City's consultant for its rail plan, and Bechtel Corp., its partner in Boston's Big Dig will pay $407 million to settle a government lawsuit and avoid criminal charges over the highway tunnel project, part of which collapsed and killed a woman in 2006, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
"The settlement agreement, announced Wednesday by state and federal officials, marks the latest dramatic turn in the huge project, which buried a freeway beneath Boston's downtown and took $14.6 billion and more than 15 years to complete.
"A joint venture between Bechtel, the century-old engineering giant based in San Francisco, and Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering company based in New York City, helped design the warren of tunnels and managed their construction. Massachusetts officials sued the venture for shoddy oversight after concrete ceiling panels in one of the tunnels fell onto the roadway and crushed Milena Del Valle on her way to the airport.
"It's clear from the pattern that we saw over a period of time that there was cutting of corners, there was failure to follow up, there was lack of oversight," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said Tuesday. "I think there was a desire to move (the project) along and get it done.
"Under the settlement, the state attorney general and the U.S. attorney in Boston agreed not to file criminal charges over Del Valle's death." READ MORE
Parsons Brinckerhoff reliably "client-focused" — whoever it is:
-
“The light rail transit alternative was dropped because subsequent analyses revealed that Bus/Rapid Transit using electric-powered vehicles could accomplish virtually all of the objectives of light rail transit at substantially less cost.” MIS/Draft EIS of the Bus/Rapid Transit Program, August 2000. pp. 2-2 to 2-4. Prepared by Parsons Brinckerhoff Quad & Douglas.
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"The Fixed [Rail] Guideway Alternative is substantially more cost-effective than the Managed Lane Alternative when the respective transit user benefits per dollar of cost relative to the TSM Alternative are compared." Honolulu Alternatives Analysis prepared by Parsons Brinckerhoff, November 2006.
November 15,
2007.
Mayor appoints Parsons Brinckerhoff executive as DTS head:
Yesterday Mayor Hannemann announced that Wayne Yoshioka, a PB top executive in PB's local office was his choice for City Transportation Director. The Mayor's press release said, "Yoshioka is manager of transportation planning and traffic engineering and a senior supervising transportation engineer for PB Americas, Inc., the multinational engineering firm." Accordingly, Yoshioka cannot plead ignorance. He must have been involved if only peripherally with the design and evaluation of the Managed Lane Alternative (MLA aka HOT lanes). Now that he is working for the City does that mean that he cannot legitimately answer anything for the Council about what happened in specifying the MLA aka the Unmanaged Lane Alternative during his employment with PB? If this is not the case then our councilmembers could have some fun with him. If it is the case, then does he have to plead the 5th? This could get quite interesting legally.
Now from the Parsons Brinckerhoff highway brochure:
"Managed lanes represent an innovative approach to moving people, vehicles and goods efficiently within congested corridors. Managed lanes projects include high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, express lanes, HOV-toll (HOT) lanes, and lanes designated for special commercial uses.
Sponsoring agencies regulate the use of these lanes with a combination of strategies to provide roadway users free-flow travel regardless of adjacent travel conditions. PB is assisting communities such as Houston, Seattle, Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego [but not Honolulu?] in considering managed lanes as one means of achieving improved mobility. ...
State Route 125 San Diego County, California For over a decade, PB has been instrumental in the development of SR 125, which will be the first privately developed toll highway in the western U.S. PB served as managing partner of California Transportation Ventures, Inc., the corporation awarded the franchise to finance, design, build and operate SR 125, and is currently involved as a nonequity partner through its management consultant subsidiary, PBConsult. SR 125 is one of four demonstration projects statewide being developed under a public/private partnership with the California Department of Transportation. ...
N orthwest Parkway Denver, Colorado PB assisted the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority with the development of a 20-kilometer (11-mile) limited-access toll facility in Denver's northwestern suburbs. This project obtained bond insurance and a AAA rating without any tax funds as a start-up project supported solely by tolls. PB played a critical role in the success of this financing by assisting the Authority on issues ranging from financial planning to organizational management, travel demand forecasting and design/build contract issues."
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_12/issue_17/opinion_01.html
Massachusetts Inspector Gen 2005 Mar on PB
http://www.mass.gov/ig/publ/catwater.pdf#search=%22parsons%20brinckerhoff%22\
Taken for a ride 2003
http://www.abqtransp.org/pb.html