LTE Forum: Senior Looks Forward To Riding Rail; Writer Knocks Potholes, but At Least He’s Moving, Plus: US Transit Ridership in ’11 Was 2nd Highest

The letters to the editor column has at least one rail-related contribution nearly every day, an indication of the community’s ongoing interest in the one Oahu issue that’s been boiling on the back or front burner for decades – traffic congestion.

Today’s LTE forum highlights two letters in the Star-Advertiser (subscription) that we hope benefit from additional exposure Yes2Rail gives them.

Improve bus system for sake of seniors (Star-Advertiser, 3/15)

“Twenty years from now when the rail system is completed, many of us seniors will not be able to walk to the rail station. I agree with former Gov. Ben Cayetano’s suggestion that we should spend more money to increase the number of city buses. For those who can’t drive, it would be most convenient for buses to stop along neighborhood driveways, so passengers can go shopping at nearby shopping malls or the to the rail station….”

The Pearl City letter-writer overlooks the key plank in Mr. Cayetano’s mayoral campaign platform – his intention to kill rail. That means this senior and all others could anticipate continued reliance on TheBus as their only public transit option in a Cayetano administration.

Many seniors are looking forward to Honolulu rail because of its potential to expand their mobility significantly. By walking or taking TheBus to a nearby station, they’ll be able to travel much farther through town in a given amount of time than they can today.

Enhancing mobility is one of rail’s four main goals, and another one is ensuring transportation equity to all persons regardless of age and economic circumstances. We wish the writer good health so he can enjoy the traffic-free benefit of rail travel within 10 years, not 20.

Why Can’t Honolulu fix all its potholes? (Star-Advertiser, 3/15)

“Try to drive through Hawaii Kai for any considerable distance without having to take drastic evasive maneuvers to avoid a pothole…. I recently traveled to Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney. I did not see any open potholes. How come these destinations are faced with similar challenges but found a way to maintain good roads? It can be done…. If we cannot main our existing roads, how can we build and maintain both our roads and a new rail system?”

The public's disdain for potholes helped push the issue onto page one today. Road maintenance is an easy target for disgruntled citizens, and rail opponents tend to be among the most vocal pothole protestors.

We have three reactions: Potholes and roads are being repaired, as driving through many Oahu neighborhoods, including Hawaii Kai, will show. Numerous streets are being completely resurfaced, not just repaired.

Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney may have found a way to simultaneously maintain their rail systems and eliminate potholes, although the existence of their disappearance from those cities is not a certainty based only on the writer’s observations. Honolulu will benefit from those cities' experience and manage to maintain roads, trains, sewers and water systems because that’s what responsible cities must do.

Finally, west Oahu residents might envy the writer’s ability to drive fast enough through Hawaii Kai to make pothole-evasion maneuvers necessary. West-siders who now creep along in traffic on their daily commutes are looking forward to avoiding that congestion once rail is built. We suspect they’ll happily pay for the system’s upkeep, just as they paid for the widening and improvements along Kalanianaole Highway that East Honolulu residents now enjoy.

Transit Ridership Up

Americans took 200 million more transit trips last year than in 2010 and 1 billion more than in 2000, pushing total rides to 10.4 billion – the second highest annual ridership since 1957, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

Only 2008 recorded more transit trips when citizens pulled back from driving then as oil and gas prices reached record levels. The national average price of a gallon of regular gas topped $4 that year.

Today’s national average according to the AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report is $3.821 and rising. Hawaii leads the nation at $4.445. Gas on the neighbor islands traditionally costs much more than on Oahu; the photo was taken this week at the Kaunakakai station on Molokai. The other member states in the “$4 Club” are California ($4.362), Alaska ($4.217), Illinois ($4.071) and New York ($4.001).

In reporting on the increase in transit ridership, The New York Times noted the trend follows an improvement in the nation’s economy:

“With the return of jobs came a return of straphangers. Studies have found that nearly 60 percent of transit rides are taken by people commuting to and from work, and there were big increases in ridership in parts of the country that gained employment.”

APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy said, “What is exciting is that the uptick in ridership occurred in large, medium and small communities, showing the broad support that public transportation has nationwide. In fact, the largest rate of growth was in rural communities with populations under 100,000, where public transit use increased by 5.4 percent.”

Commuters also are expected to be the primary users of Honolulu’s future rail system as they travel between their homes and jobs along the 20-mile line, including in downtown Honolulu.

Cayetano Will Use Harris’s 2000 BRT Plan, Says More Buses Are What Oahu Needs To Fight Traffic; HART Board Member Takes Candidate to Task, Plus: How Media Can Influence Opinions on Rail

Ben Cayetano and Walter Heen, his campaign chair, at Tuesday's event.

Mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano held a campaign event disguised as a press conference yesterday, and sure enough, the media rolled on it because – well, that’s what they do with the former governor. He’s the big gun fighting rail and is always good for two minutes on the evening news or a six-column story.

But Mr. Cayetano’s future campaign pressers might attract less attention if yesterday’s event was a prelude to more of the same. The session was billed as an exposé of the city’s “lousy practices of public manipulation” in the early years of the rail project’s planning phase. Civil Beat even headlined the event in advance as a revelation of a “conspiracy.”

But the smoking gun promised in the media advisory was nowhere to be seen at the event itself. The “conspiracy” turned out to be snippets found in several emails among 500,000 documents filed as part of the Administrative Record in the lawsuit by Mr. Cayetano and several other plaintiffs that seeks to kill the Honolulu rail project.

FTA Responds

Here’s one of the excerpts Mr. Cayetano read – an intra-office email exchange in 2006 between two Federal Transit Administration officials: “We seem to be proceeding in the hallowed tradition of Honolulu rapid transit studies: never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over.”

The author presumably would like a do-over on that one now that the email has been used as alleged proof of “lousy practices and manipulation” by the city. Here’s the FTA statement on Mr. Cayetano’s event:

“There is no question that this project has overcome early obstacles because of a much improved Federal partnership with the City of Honolulu and State of Hawaii over the past several years. The Federal Transit Administration believes that this project will bring much needed relief rrom the suffocating congestion on the H-1 Freeway and provide a real transportation alternative for the people of Oahu as gas prices rise.”

Mr. Cayetano’s ‘Alternative’

We’ve been prodding the media to start asking questions about what exactly Mr. Cayetano has in mind instead of Honolulu rail to give commuters relief from H-1 and surface traffic. Yesterday’s event was the perfect opportunity, coming as it did 54 days into Mr. Cayetano’s anti-rail campaign.

A reporter did ask Mr. Cayetano what he’d tell west side residents that he’d propose to address their traffic congestion problem if he’s elected mayor and kills rail. Paraphrasing the former governor:

“We’re working on a plan, and I’ve been asked for that plan by some people, including a blogger who’s here today.” (Yes2Rail was there.) “The specifics are in the Bus Rapid Transit plan compiled in 2000 by the same company that’s advising the city now on the rail project – Parsons Brinckerhoff. They compared all the alternatives and found that BRT would cost a fraction of what rail would cost.”

Mr. Cayetano then said the Alternatives Analysis for the rail project should have started with adding more buses to TheBus system. Instead of tossing out BRT, he said PB should have considered adjustments to the plan written in 2000 – such as using Beretania Street instead of Kapiolani Boulevard for a dedicated bus lane. Of course, the exclusion of cars from the proposed bus-only lanes was a major factor in  BRT's failure a decade ago.

We predicted yesterday that the candidate won’t “describe and defend a detailed transportation plan” during the campaign, but we may have been wrong about that. Mr. Cayetano said he has a team working on the 12-year-old BRT plan, and he may roll out a new plan any week now. We can certainly hope so, because without something to show the public as a better option than rail, we’re all just guessing at what it might be. Yesterday’s event made it clear that whatever it is, it won’t be new.

Mr. Cayetano was also asked yesterday for his BRT plan’s cost and how it would be financed. He said he doesn’t have a figure yet – just another one of those vexing details that by rights he should have been ready to discuss on Day 1 of his campaign.

Senator Bunda Weighs In

The political careers of former Senate President Robert Bunda and Mr. Cayetano took them both to the State Capitol at the same time. Mr Bunda’s commentary supporting Honolulu rail appears in today’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription) under the headline Cayetano has no realistic plan to solve West Oahu traffic mess. It’s a message we’re likely to hear a lot more often now that TheBus seems to be Mr. Cayetano’s answer to congestion.

Mr. Bunda, who's now a board member of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART), minces no words in criticizing the former governor’s position on rail. He recounts the Cayetano administration’s securing of land for a new UH-West Oahu campus and efforts to encourage economic activity on the ewa plain.

“Massive development did take place and the population continued shifting at an incredible pace to West Oahu,” Mr. Bunda says. “While much of the area infrastructure built is essential and important in the development of Kapolei, there was no clear vision by the Cayetano administration of any transportation infrastructure to move people from West Oahu to downtown as part of their commute.”

The Bunda commentary notes what has been obvious to observers since Mr. Cayetano announced his candidacy in January – that he has offered no detailed plan to replace Honolulu rail.

“Cayetano’s campaign website states that he supports dedicated freeway bus lanes and more buses, but there is no detail, nor funding in place for that, and no guarantees of anything other than wasting more time piling on additional impact studies.

“…the biggest problem with BRT is that it takes away freeway and roadway lanes from other vehicles to be used exclusively for buses. Anyone driving from Leeward Oahu into town in the morning knows the shutdown of even one freeway lane becomes a traffic nightmare.”

With HART board members showing more inclination to speak out on behalf of Honolulu rail, Mr. Cayetano’s “clear sailing” in the media so far may be heading toward a stormy patch.

The Media – Present Tense in Headlines

The media obviously have a tremendous ability to influence public attitudes on any issue, especially when they show up with bright lights and cameras (yesterday's over-exposure is at right). We’ve seen that played out already in 2012, from their public opinion surveys earlier this year on Honolulu rail to something as seemingly arcane as headline writing today.

The Star-Advertiser story on Mr. Cayetano’s presser was headlined Emails suggest problems with rail. Headlines are almost always written in present tense except on the obituary page, where both the headline and the subject of the story are in the past.

It’s not until you read today’s sub-head on the rail story that it’s clear the present tense doesn’t accurately reflect the facts in the story: Former Gov. Cayetano releases documents that show federal officials HAD concerns (emphasis added).  In other words, the “problems” and “concern” were yesterday’s news, not today’s.

The only thing current about them in light of the FTA’s several approvals that have allowed construction to begin in a matter of weeks is Mr. Cayetano’s alarm about six-year-old emails.

The Media – Lack of Attribution

Something else the media often do is simply repeat a newsmaker's words without applying attribution to comments that clearly are opinion, not fact.

Hawaii News Now did this in last evening’s report on Mr. Cayetano’s event. Its story began, “Ben Cayetano has released some damaging emails written by the federal government…emails he’s using to show the Federal Transit Administration shares some of his anti-rail concerns.”

The reporter didn’t attribute the “damaging” observation to Mr. Cayetano; he simply said the emails are damaging as if that’s a fact, but it’s not a fact. It’s Mr. Cayetano’s opinion.

Even that assertion is demonstrably not true. If it were, the FTA would not have approved rail’s environmental impact statement in 2010 and given the city a Letter of No Prejudice on February 6 authorizing it to begin construction with local funds.

If the FTA ever did actually “share” Mr. Cayetano’s concerns, which isn’t at all clear, it certainly doesn’t now. Hawaii News Now’s story implied something about the status of city-FTA relations that simply isn’t true – which makes you wonder what kind of journalistic oversight is in effect at Bob Sevey’s old station.

The Media – Push-Pulling about Polls

Civil Beat’s reporter on the Honolulu rail project, Michael Levine, attended yesterday’s campaign event and managed to prompt an answer from Mr. Cayetano to one of his questions. The candidate apparently has thought better of banning Mr. Levine from his sight.

Mr. Levine let Yes2Rail’s author know that he didn’t appreciate our characterization of Civil Beat’s recent rail public opinion survey as a “push poll.” “If you understand what a ‘push poll’ is, you’d admit you were wrong,” he said.

Our response is that he’s right about one thing; the Civil Beat poll wasn't one of those unsavory telemarketing campaigns that sound legitimate but end up blackening the reputation of one candidate. We don’t think Civil Beat is anti-rail, and given the opportunity for a do-over, we would say the poll could have been improved by eliminating one push-poll characteristic that remained in the survey.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research’s website says legitimate opinion surveys “usually ask about more than one candidate or mention both sides of an issue.” Civil Beat’s poll presented only “concerns” to the respondents and none of rail’s benefits and in so doing excluded all positives about rail, such as traffic-free commuting.

Also, the survey excluded people who said they’re not likely to vote in the 2012 election. That seems reasonable in a poll about the mayoral horse race, but its weakness is that it ignored approximately half of the populace who are non-voters. That’s the half more likely to use public transit and rail, and their opinions on rail are no less valid than those who vote.

What’s Ahead?

Everyone at Mr. Cayetano’s campaign headquarters yesterday – reporters included – exhibited the cordiality we’ve come to expect in Hawaii. It’s still early, and the heavy slogging in the Great 2012 Rail Debate will play out over the next five months.

The other two major mayoral candidates – Mayor Peter Carlisle and former managing director Kirk Caldwell – have yet to really begin their campaigns except for a few radio spots. Television advertising, the great determining factor in most political campaigns, hasn’t started for any candidate to a noticeable degree.

HART board members like Senator Bunda are taking the initiative more than previously to stand up for rail, and HART’s new executive officer, Dan Grabauskas, will begin his duties here in early April after wrapping up his work in Boston. He’s articulate and certain to be influential in this debate.

Then there’s Mr. Cayetano’s "Truth Squad" that he said will hold a press conference next week. We’ll likely attend that one, too, but we doubt the local media will cover such an obviously politicized campaign event with another full-court press, as they did yesterday.

New Prediction: Candidate Cayetano Will Not Offer Details of a Plan that Would Replace Honolulu Rail

We’re batting 1.000 in the prediction department so far this year (see below), and we’re going out on a thick and sturdy limb to make another:

Anti-rail mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano will not describe and defend a detailed transportation plan to replace the Honolulu rail project.

The latest evidence of his aversion to addressing the intolerable congestion that’s strangling the community is in Richard Borreca's Star-Advertiser column today (subscription): Tough-talking Cayetano takes aim at rail officials

Mr. Cayetano is not taking aim at traffic congestion, according to Mr. Borreca. He’s vowing to go after members of the board of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART), which voters approved 16 months ago to plan, build and operate Honolulu rail.

Hoping for Wrong

We hope this prediction is wrong, because instead of attacking HART, what the community needs to hear from Mr. Cayetano is an actual transportation plan he’d try to implement if he were elected mayor. Without a plan, there’s no expectation of action to address east-west congestion on Oahu’s streets and highways.

Knowing details of his plan would give the community something to digest and dissect instead of the candidate’s heretofore vague references to the San Diego trolley, express lanes and bus rapid transit.

No limb is required to predict that whatever he proposes, Mr. Cayetano’s plan will be incapable of matching rail’s deliverables – fast, frequent, reliable and safe transportation through the city.

Opening the Poke

Without details, Mr. Cayetano is running a “pig in a poke” campaign so far – something that’s offered with no evidence that it even exists, or in what form. The idiom dates to an era when farmers delivered goods to the marketplace in pokes, or sacks. A purchaser of what supposedly was a piglet in the poke might later find a cat instead.

Will Mr. Cayetano actually have a transportation plan, or will he let the cat out of the bag in the end by offering “alternatives” that already have been considered and dismissed?

The Honolulu news media should be asking these questions, of course, but like the candidate himself, they’re avoiding mentioning Mr. Cayetano’s transportation poke and what it might contain.

We already can predict that whatever the candidate has in mind, it can’t provide traffic-free travel to beleaguered west-side residents in place of their highway commutes between the ewa plain and downtown.

That’s the unmatchable benefit of the rail project – something at-grade transit, buses and toll roads can’t achieve.

That Other Prediction

Our prediction in January was that the Star-Advertiser’s columnists “will write not a single paragraph of positive content about the Honolulu rail project in 2012.”

So far this year, the prediction is holding true, and that’s unfortunate for the community, since David Shapiro, Cynthia Oi and Mr. Borreca are what’s called “opinion leaders” in the trade. They do the thinking for far too many people who can’t be bothered to spend the time required to be minimally conversant about the Honolulu rail project.

We noted in January that the anti-rail opinions on display in the three columns are to be expected. “Afflicting local government, elected and appointed officials and their projects is what they do and have done for decades. It’s their calling, and they’ve made it work for them.” The three have a total of more than 100 years working in Honolulu journalism.

What’s missing elsewhere in the media is any sense of curiosity about the details of what Mr. Cayetano wants instead of rail. Maybe reporters will begin such an inquiry, but that’s a prediction we’re not prepared to make.

Conditions Favor Rail as Debate Intensifies: Media Coverage Will Increase on Candidates, including ‘No-Plan’ Ben; Survey Quality Will Be Better, too

Hawaii’s Primary Election on August 11 will be five months from yesterday, which means supporters of the Honolulu rail project have that much time to ensure at least one pro-rail mayoral candidate moves on to the General election three months later.

We think the rail project is much stronger today than conventional wisdom would suggest for these five reasons:

1) The two major pro-rail candidates – Mayor Peter Carlisle and former managing director Kirk Caldwell – haven’t even begun their campaigns. They’ll use these five months to make rail’s case stronger than ever before.

2) Anti-rail candidate Ben Cayetano will be revealed to have no transportation plan that would give commuters what rail will deliver – fast, frequent, reliable and safe congestion-free travel through the city.

3) The media eventually will step up to their “Fourth Estate” responsibilities and peel away the layers of deceit in the anti-rail campaign.

4) New public opinion surveys on rail will be crafted and timed better than the two media polls that already have been taken this year.

5) A revived sense of “community” will lead Oahu residents to conclude rail must be built as an alternative to highway congestion in the east-west corridor.

Pro-Railers' Campaigns

Anti-rail candidate Ben Cayetano officially launched his campaign on January 19. Despite their own efforts so far, the two pro-rail candidates have had a fraction of the coverage enjoyed by Mr. Cayetano these past several weeks.

That won’t last. Simple math suggests that if Messrs. Carlisle and Caldwell conduct effective campaigns, they could generate twice as much media coverage as Mr. Cayetano, with this caveat: The media flock to controversy and negativity. By opposing a big government project, Mr. Cayetano will unleash colorful sound bite after sound bite, so the pro-railers will need their A Game when speaking about rail.

Paid media advertising will be as critical as ever in this race, of course. If the candidates manage to attract relatively equal contribution totals, it’s conceivable the pro-rail spending will exceed Mr. Cayetano’s. But this a rail blog, not a political blog, so we’ll leave this to the pundits.

Candidate Cayetano

It’s now 53 DAYS since Mr. Cayetano’s campaign announcement, and he still hasn’t detailed a plan to improve transportation through our city to replace rail, which he has vowed to kill.

All we’ve heard and read so far are snippets of ideas about a preference for bus rapid transit, a concept rejected by the community a decade ago. Even Mr. Cayetano’s brain trust – Cliff Slater – worked hard to defeat that concept, although he speaks favorably about BRT now that rail is so close to realization.

Mr. Cayetano also has alluded to express lanes and toll roads, but that’s as far as it goes. If you can find 20 words strung together about what he’d create instead of rail, please point us in that direction.

The Media Factor

Reporters should be asking for these details, of course, but they’ve shown a remarkable lack of enterprise so far. That also presumably won’t last once editors and reporters wake up to their responsibility to question the candidate on his “plan,” whatever it is.

But what’s the reason for the media’s lack of interest in the magic bullet that Mr. Cayetano is hiding? Are they intimidated by his semi-celebrity status? Don’t they see the story they’re missing?

We’ve said it before: The trio of celebrated journalists who directed media coverage in this town for decades – George Chaplin at the Advertiser, Hobe Duncan at the Star-Bulletin and Bob Sevey at KGMB-TV – wouldn’t have tolerated Candidate Cayetano’s silence on what he’d do instead of rail.

And it’s not just Mr. Cayetano. Mr. Slater seems to be the author of just about everything the candidate has said about rail so far, and that’s probably going to continue. The media therefore have an obligation to dig deeper than ever into Mr. Slater’s rhetoric.

His “future congestion issue” in particular – “congestion will be worse in the future with rail than it is today” – is ripe for peeling. Of course it will get worse as the population grows; rail’s purpose is to improve mobility within the community, not eliminate congestion. That’s how it works in cities all over the world. Mr. Slater is getting away with murder with this argument, and the victim is common sense.

Better Polling

The two rail-related polls conducted so far this year left a false impression that rail has lost the support of a majority of Oahu residents. Three scientific opinion surveys conducted in 2008, 2009 and 2011 averaged about 58 percent support for rail, so the two 2012 polls deserve scrutiny.

The Star-Advertiser/Hawaii News Now survey’s January timing was suspect from the start. It began only seven days after Mr. Cayetano officially announced his anti-rail campaign for mayor. With his media coverage dominating the news during the two-week polling period, the results simply can’t be taken seriously. Also problematic was a survey question that could have caused some respondents to wonder about the timing for the project to “proceed."

The Civil Beat poll that dominated its online reporting last week had issues of its own. The poll reported only on what likely voters think about rail, excluding those who indicated they aren’t likely to vote in the upcoming election. Sampling only voters may make sense in the mayoral horse race, but by excluding nearly half of the population, it failed to engage a representative sample of the entire community on rail.

The other problem with Civil Beat’s survey is that it had some characteristics of a “push poll.” The survey “pushed” only concerns about rail to the respondents and had not one word in it about rail’s considerable benefits, including traffic-free travel through the community.

We’ll have to see if our suggestion goes anywhere to include both rail proponents and opponents in the crafting of future media polls. Doing so could identify problems within a survey before it's conducted, thereby reducing the potential for erroneous conclusions that in turn drive public opinion.

Sensible Citizens

Just like they approach Christmas shopping, most citizens pay closer attention to major campaign issues as an election nears. Media coverage will increase, the candidates’ visibility will do the same and the public will have more information about rail than ever to reach personal conclusions about the project’s worth.

We believe pro-rail messages will resonate more deeply than a campaign built on negativity. Among the positives will be the “community spirit” message that will influence a majority of the electorate to support rail as a rational response to the intolerable highway congestion that even opponents acknowledge.

The west-siders' message is simple: The H-3 freeway was built to benefit  windward residents, and East Honolulu residents benefited from improvements to Kalanianaole Highway. “It’s our turn now,” west side residents say, and most citizens will respond to it.

Mr. Slater’s dumbed-down “future congestion issue” will be seen for what it is. By August, our population will have been exposed to enough information to allow common sense to kick in. Elevated rail – not toll roads and more buses on streets and highways – will give riders their first ever congestion-free commute.

Not everyone will ride, but those who do will become outspoken proponents for rail’s expansion. Of course, that depends on what happens in the next five months.

Saturday Review: Civil Beat Poll Dominated the News but Left Key Questions Unanswered, e.g.: ‘How Big an Issue Is Traffic on Oahu?’ ‘Would You Ride a Train that Bypassed All Road Congestion?’

Public opinion polling is an imperfect science, but let's keep striving for perfection. We made a “radical suggestion” early this week to improve media-sponsored surveys on the Honolulu rail system because of issues with Civil Beat’s new poll that can’t be easily swept aside.

The suggestion was to involve both rail supporters and opponents in crafting the next public opinion survey and thereby hopefully identify and avoid problems within a poll’s set-up before the survey begins and those problems are in concrete.

Civil Beat’s poll on Honolulu rail had significant problems, the first being whom it surveyed. Civil Beat’s pollster – the Merriman River Group – surveyed only likely voters. Civil Beat sees that as a legitimate approach, since much of rail’s coverage involves the mayoral election that will pit anti-rail Ben Cayetano against two rail supporters, Mayor Peter Carlisle and former managing director Kirk Caldwell.

But by eliminating about half of the population from the survey (only 52 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2010 gubernatorial election), Civil Beat disregarded attitudes about rail among non-voters. Their opinions on rail are just as valid as voters’ opinions, and there’s no legitimate reason to ignore them except for Civil Beat’s preoccupation with the mayoral race. After all, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation was created in large part to remove rail from the political arena

The ‘Push’ Effect

The other significant problem is that the Merriman River Group (which has its critics) conducted a survey that has some characteristics of a “push poll,” a style condemned by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

Civil Beat’s survey asked respondents for the level of their “concerns” about rail without mentioning any obvious benefits for those who will ride the train, such as giving train riders completely congestion-free travel through Honolulu’s urban corridor.

The national research industry group says legitimate polls “usually ask about more than one candidate or mention both sides of an issue.” Civil Beat's poll excluded benefits entirely. It’s just that kind of problem that a collaborate effort among rail supporters and opponents could eliminate from the start. Since that wasn’t done, our conclusion two days ago was that Civil Beat’s poll did not provide “a legitimate and accurate representation of Oahu residents’ attitudes about the Honolulu rail project.”

Obsessive? Compulsive?

We’ve taken some flak at Civil Beat’s website from a rail opponent who says this Yes2Rail blog has “an unhealthy obsession with Cliff Slater and compulsively (posts) a myriad of photos of train wrecks. Honolulu’s current rail plan seems a distant second among your interests.”

Focused, yes, but unhealthy, obsessive and compulsive, too? Mr. Slater is more responsible than anyone for defeating attempts 10 and 20 years ago to build mass transit systems as a reasoned response to Oahu’s growing congestion problem. His influence is enormous even today – witness Mr. Cayetano’s use of Mr. Slater’s talking points to the exclusion of any messages that Mr. Cayetano himself seems to have crafted.

Mr. Cayetano officially announced his candidacy 51 days ago, and it’s no exaggeration to say he’s proposed next to nothing about what he’d back as an alternative to Honolulu rail. You’re invited to peruse his campaign website to see if you can find more than 20 words strung together that might be called a vision or workable plan to speed commuters through town.

Isn’t that what the public – and the media, most of all – should be demanding from the former governor if he’s running to kill rail after years of study and planning to build the project?

About those Wrecks at Right

It’s obvious why Yes2Rail prominently displays photographs of at-grade rail accidents in our right-hand column. Opponents of Honolulu’s elevated plan avoid talking about the safety issues of their preferred at-grade systems, and if they should stumble into that swamp, their advocacy can look embarrassingly ridiculous.

Honolulu’s elevated trains will be safe – as well as fast, frequent and reliable – by removing the potential for collisions with cars, buses, trucks and pedestrians that happen too often on at-grade systems.

We highlight the at-grade safety problem to illustrate why it can't be shoved into Honolulu's dense urban environment with its aging population. If that’s a symptom of AACD – accident adverse compulsive disorder – so be it. At this critical stage of the Honolulu rail debate, a little AACD doesn't hurt.

Civil Beat Poll Identifies Rail As Issue Number 1; More Surveys Are Needed for Better ‘Snapshots’

Day 5 of Civil Beat’s coverage of its public opinion survey reports that Honolulu rail is “Top Issue for Honolulu Voters”

Of the several issues investigated in the survey – rail, homelessness, local economy, infrastructure, local taxes and fees, or something else – rail has received more media coverage than the others combined. That’s a guess, but a good one.

Of the three mayoral candidates, no guesswork is needed to know which has received the most election-related coverage. Anti-rail Ben Cayetano officially announced his candidacy on January 19. Mayor Peter Carlisle and former managing director Kirk Caldwell both support building the Honolulu rail system, but neither has received much if any campaign-related coverage so far.

Snapshots

The “snapshot in time” description of public opinion polls certainly applies to Civil Beat’s poll, as well as the Star-Advertiser/Hawaii News Now survey conducted during the two weeks immediately following Mr. Cayetano’s announcement.

The pro-rail candidates and their supporters are still on the sidelines this year. That doesn’t invalidate the polls’ findings, but that fact does provide more perspective than what the poll sponsors have observed.

The bigger issue with Civil Beat’s poll is what we focused on yesterday. It was a “push poll” that pushed only “concerns” about rail at the Oahu residents who participated in survey and ignored rail’s benefits.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research “condemns” push polls that give only one side of an issue, which is what Civil Beat did on rail, so it wasn’t surprising the poll found residents are “concerned” about it.

You have to hope future media polls on rail will be balanced more appropriately in their set-up and will be conducted after all the candidates are off the sidelines and in the game.

Civil Beat Publishes Survey Questions on Day 4; Respondents Were Asked Only about ‘Concerns’ and Nothing about ‘Benefits’ in ‘Push Poll’ – a Style Condemned by National Research Group

One thing’s certain – and maybe it’s the only thing – about Civil Beat’s public opinion survey on the Honolulu rail project that the news service has highlighted all week at its website: CB staffers may have learned something about the perils of opinion polling.

Civil Beat publishes the questionnaire online today; infrequent visitors to the website might be able to read it without signing up for the subscription service.

This survey is known as a “push” poll’ inside the business. It “pushes” a concept or issue at the recipients and asks them to respond. In Civil Beat’s case, the poll pushed “concerns” about the Honolulu rail project.

Not one “benefit” of building rail or riding the train was mentioned in this survey. It pushed only negatives and excluded anything that would qualify as a positive about the project, such as completely avoiding traffic congestion on surface streets, saving considerable time and money with each trip, and more.

AAPOR on ‘Push’ Polls 

The American Association for Public Opinion Research has a statement on “push” polls that “explains how to tell the difference between fraudulent political polls – commonly referred to as ‘push polls’ – and legitimate polling, including message testing. AAPOR condemns political telemarketing under the guise of research….”

Let’s assume Civil Beat harbors no anti-rail attitudes – not consciously, at least. By sponsoring a poll that includes only “concerns” and no “benefits” of rail, the news organization nevertheless participated in what the AAPOR statement calls “an insidious form of negative campaigning, disguised as a political poll.”

Beginning with question 7 and continuing through number 10, the questionnaire asked the respondents to express a level of concern about the rail project – “too expensive,” “will damage Oahu’s natural beauty and landscape,” “not enough people would use the rail line if it is built” and “will disturb Native Hawaiian burials.”

Question 11 asked respondents “which of those issues concerns you most about the rail project” and then listed the concerns again -- won’t solve problems, cost, beauty, not enough use, burials, not concerned, not sure.

Participants in this automated telephone poll heard only concerns – enough presumably to sink a project like this one if not offset by a host of benefits, not the least of which is fast, frequent, reliable and safe travel through our increasingly congested urban corridor.

One-Sided Polling

The AAPOR statement suggests ways to message-test a survey to determine if it’s legitimate. Civil Beat’s questionnaire seems to satisfy five of the six so-called tests, but not this one: “The questions usually ask about more than one candidate or mention both sides of an issue.”

Quite obviously, the Civil Beat poll that mentions only “concerns” and nothing about “benefits” failed the both-sides test.

The AAPOR might also have an opinion about a questionnaire that first mentioned candidates in the one-issue mayoral race (all rail, all the time) before continuing on to the list of concerns about rail. Doing so undoubtedly influenced the responses to the “concerns” questions.

Civil Beat may have innocently stumbled into the opinion survey swamp by commissioning this automated-call push poll, but however it got there, this particular survey quite reasonably can be dismissed as a legitimate and accurate representation of Oahu residents’ attitudes about the Honolulu rail project. 

That's not a conclusion we come to gladly. We've admired Civil Beat for its independence and space-unconstrained investigative coverage of the rail project and many other local issues since it launched its online service nearly two years ago.

But like other Honolulu media, Civil Beat can trip itself up when covering Honolulu rail – a project too big and complicated to be easily explained in two-minute TV stories (where most people get their news) or even in long newspaper and online pieces.

All media are encouraged to devote more time becoming acquainted with rail before they report on it, including rail's goals and benefits. Citizens need complete coverage if they're expected to have informed opinions about the biggest construction project in state history.

On Day 3, Civil Beat’s Rail Poll Story Says Voters Don’t Believe Rail Will Eliminate Congestion, but City Never Made that Claim; It’s Cliff Slater’s Spin

Civil Beat’s latest posting on the results from its public opinion survey on Honolulu rail is so convoluted it’s impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions from it.

The set-up to today’s issue is in editor John Temple’s opening paragraph: “Honolulu’s leading rail opponents argue that the public has been hoodwinked into believing that traffic congestion will be better than it is today if the project is built.”

His piece starts to unravel almost immediately. After noting the poll’s finding that a majority of the participants say they don’t support the rail project, Mr. Temple writes:

“But do (voters) believe what some rail proponents have said to sell the project? To answer that question, Civil Beat asked likely voters on Oahu the following question: ‘Do you believe that if the rail project is built, there will be less traffic congestion in Honolulu than we have today?’”

Fifty-five percent of those polled answered “No,” they don’t believe rail will mean less traffic congestion than today. In other words, they know the truth and that traffic, congestion and population growth are connected. Only 30 percent said they think traffic will be less, and 15 percent weren’t sure.

So with those results, you’d expect Civil Beat to then determine who’s responsible for stirring the pot about future congestion levels and the rail project. Incredibly, the link in that paragraph quoted above isn’t to a city website with statements about the project’s effect on future congestion. It’s to a Cliff Slater website that’s notorious for its misleading statements on congestion and for misrepresenting what the city communicates on this issue.

Spin Job

The linked website quotes former Mayor Mufi Hannemann as saying rail will have the effect of “easing traffic overall” and that “the city needs a rail system to alleviate increasing traffic congestion.”

Those statements are irrefutably true, and Mr. Slater can’t credibly claim otherwise. The project’s EIS estimates that by 2030 there will be 40,000 fewer vehicles trips each day in the urban corridor. Vehicle hours of delay are expected to decrease by 18 percent, which is an even bigger reduction than when the University’s system is in summer break (about 11 percent).

Even with these reductions, the EIS accurately predicts – and the city accurately communicates – that congestion will continue and eventually will be as great as it is today. The city has never misled anyone on this issue – especially since the Federal Transit Administration has been overseeing the project.

The link to the Slater website for examples of the city’s alleged argument is egregious. Mr. Slater consistently spreads misleading information about the congestion issue, as we’ve noted repeatedly and as recently as in yesterday’s Yes2Rail post.

Who’s Argument?

Later in the piece, Mr. Temple writes: “A majority of every income level doesn’t buy the congestion reduction argument….”

WHAT congestion reduction argument!? The city makes no such argument! Mr. Temple seems to be confused on the whole issue of who has said what about future congestion.

His confusion might be traced to the interview he conducted with Mr. Slater in July 2010 that gave unprecedented video exposure to Mr. Slater’s chief talking point – “traffic congestion with rail in the future will be worse than it is today.”

Of course it will be worse. Rail won’t be the magic bullet that “solves” congestion. With a hundred thousand more people on the island by 2030 along with maybe that many more vehicles, congestion will unquestionably be worse in that and any future decade you want to choose than it was in 2010.

As we noted yesterday, Mr. Temple didn’t question Mr. Slater’s primary talking point during the interview, and neither have Civil Beat’s or any other reporters since, which is incomprehensible.

For Civil Beat to now impute an argument to the city it has never made about future congestion is equally incomprehensible.

What Slater Never Says

Rail’s biggest benefit (among many others) is that users will completely avoid being caught in traffic congestion as they travel through the city. That benefit can’t be found on Mr. Slater’s website, and as far as we can tell, it wasn’t given to the respondents in Civil Beat’s public opinion survey. Had it been, the survey’s results might have been much different.

We made a “radical suggestion” in our Monday post – that before the next media poll on rail, the sponsor should seek input from opponents and supporters. Doing so would reduce the possibility of unintended influences in the questions (see Star-Advertiser January poll), and it might actually improve the survey’s quality.

Since that’s not likely to happen, we can anticipate even more convoluted results like what’s reported today by Civil Beat.

Civil Beat Poll Reveals Success of Anti-Railers' Talking Point: ‘Rail Won’t End Traffic Congestion.’ Next Question: When Will Media Call Them on It?

George Waialeale’s photo shows a slice of Honolulu traffic life this morning during the heavy downpour. Rain always jams up traffic in Honolulu; the small photo shows H-1 traffic around 7:30 am.

The cars in Mr. Waialeale’s photo are creeping down Kaimuki Avenue from 6th Avenue. Honolulu rail won’t be a commuting option for East Honolulu residents, but we can imagine that ridership will spike on days like this as drivers become riders. By the way, the “wettest spot on earth” is Kauai's Mt. Waialeale.

Civil Beat’s Poll

It seems likely we’ll be treated to more stories on Civil Beat’s new rail poll all week. The online news outlet undoubtedly intends to extract the maximum value of its investment in a survey that already has prompted two posts here at Yes2Rail – post 1 and post 2.

Post 3 today asks when the Honolulu news media – including Civil Beat – will look beyond the poll numbers to examine why the public believes what it believes.

Today’s Civil Beat headline continues the theme: Civil Beat Poll – Honolulu Rail Authority Hasn’t Won Voters’ Confidence

Not to belabor the points we made in yesterday’s posts, but the poll did only survey likely voters, a decision Civil Beat defends as reasonable due to this year’s mayoral election pitting anti-rail Ben Cayetano against pro-rail Mayor Peter Carlisle and Kirk Caldwell. Nevertheless, that methodology ignored the views of transit-using non-voters who live along the line – people who actually will benefit the most from rail’s construction. (See yesterday’s posts for more.)

Today’s post is all about whether Civil Beat and other Honolulu media intend to report on why their opinion surveys have uncovered the relatively recent alleged slippage of support for rail. In other words, what has created this recent divergence from the results of opinion surveys in 2008, 2009 and 2011? And once they do that, will the media examine the messages that are driving public opinion?

The Civil Beat Interview

Cliff Slater has been rallying citizens to his anti-rail cause with one primary talking point – one that achieved unprecedented prominence in July 2010 thanks to his video interview by Civil Beat that was posted on July 12 at CB’s website.

We immediately posted that day and the next about Mr. Slater’s “whole argument,” as he described his main talking point in the interview. We said this argument is a cynical, dumbed-down and deliberately misleading statement about Oahu’s future traffic congestion.

Any reputable transportation expert will tell you congestion’s growth is inevitable as long as Oahu’s population increases. By implying in this pitch that rail’s purpose is to reduce congestion – that’s not it; see rail's goals – Mr. Slater says rail shouldn’t be built.

It’s a slick presentation that gets laughs in places like the Rotary Club of Honolulu a few months ago, but it obviously fails to achieve the level of an honest description of congestion’s inevitable growth. Even Mr. Slater admitted before the City Council that congestion will be worse without rail than with it.

The Unchallenged Pitch

Civil Beat editor John Temple conducted the interview and wrote about his visit with the anti-railer-in-chief:

“Slater seems to relish the ironies he sees in this fight. He seems to get the greatest pleasure from the fact that the city has had to admit that traffic congestion will worsen even with the rail project. He keeps coming back to this point. Not only doesn’t the project make financial sense, in his view, but it won’t do what people most want, and that’s reduce (sic) congestion.”

Mr. Temple accurately described what Mr. Slater says people want rail to achieve. Congestion reduction isn’t one of rail’s goals, but rail will in fact free up lane space by eliminating approximately 40,000 daily vehicle trips from our roads.

But Mr. Slater doesn't in any way mention rail’s primary purpose or greatest contribution – traffic-free travel through the city, a feature that’s impossible now and would still be missing if rail weren't built regardless of how much new concrete Mr. Slater wants poured for his toll road preference.

Mr. Temple did not challenge Mr. Slater on this point during the July 2010 interview, and neither have his reporters or any other reporters in town since then.

Why It Matters

Mr. Cayetano is running for mayor on an anti-rail platform with Mr. Slater’s #1 talking point as its primary plank. We suggested in our email exchange with Mr. Temple yesterday that the media are giving Mr. Cayetano a pass by not asking for details of what he’d propose as an alternative to Honolulu rail. Mr. Temple responded:

“I agree with you about questioning his transportation plan, but based on what I see I’m not sure it’s going to matter if it’s not thought through. There’s a swelling sentiment against rail.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s not thought through? It doesn't matter that the candidate wants to throw out rail without something to replace it? The reason there’s allegedly a swelling anti-rail sentiment is precisely because Messrs. Slater and Cayetaon have successfully spun their anti-rail talking point – that congestion will continue to grow with rail.The candidate is selling that spin but isn't willing to tell us what he'd do instead of rail, and that doesn't matter?

We obviously don’t agree with Civil Beat’s editor about the candidate’s transportation plan not mattering. Nearly seven weeks into his campaign, Mr. Cayetano has provided no detailed description of what he’d try to implement if he were to successfully kill rail – along with the traffic-free travel option and the jobs rail would provide.

This obviously matters. The media have an obligation to be more than a unfiltered pipeline for campaign rhetoric, and it’s past time for reporters to start digging into that rhetoric.

Civil Beat Editor Responds to Questions about His Rail Poll, Says Maui Call Is ‘Red Herring,’ Defends Telephone Survey that Called Only Likely Voters, a Decision that Excluded Half of Oahu's Residents

This is a follow-up to today’s first post, below, which raised several questions about Civil Beat’s new rail opinion survey that allegedly uncovered a “tide of public opinion (that’s) running strongly against Honolulu’s proposed rail project….”

That summary in the story's lead paragraph doesn’t reflect anything close to what the survey actually revealed.

What was uncovered were attitudes about rail among Oahu's voting population alone, not the entire population, and that’s not enough. Civil Beat can’t reasonably discount a huge segment of Oahu residents  – about 50 percent – because they aren’t regular voters for one reason or another.

We’re long past the Poll Tax era in America, yet Civil Beat would have you believe the tide is running against rail based only on voters' attitudes. Whatever happened to the concept of removing rail from politics?

And that’s not the only eyebrow-raising feature of this survey. Fully 70 percent of the respondents have college degrees, according to what’s been published at Civil Beat. That’s approximately 40 percentage points higher than what the the Hawaii State Data Book says the population has attained – 29.6 percent in 2009 with a “bachelor’s degree or more.”

Education, Income and Transit

So in addition to not sampling citizens in the half of the population that doesn’t regularly vote, the Merriman Group’s results are way out of line with the state’s actual education levels. That also matters, because the more education a person has, the greater the earning power and the less likelihood a person will ride transit.

The Federal Transit Administration says in one of its publications: “Lower income-households are more transit-dependent and less likely to own a car than other demographic groups, and are more likely than higher-income households to use transit for non-work trips during ‘off-peak’ hours.” There are numerous online references to the impact of education and income on transit use.

Another way to evaluate the poll’s results is to anticipate the effect on transit ridership that current and future increases in the cost of gasoline will have on the population. The American Public Transit Association recently issued a press release that said, based on current gas prices, Honolulu residents can save $949 a month and $11,388 a year by giving up one car and using TheBus instead.

Rising gas prices matter more to those with fewer financial resources – which again means by being so focused on the other end of the education/income scale, the Merriman Group survey didn't reflect how the broader population will be likely to react to those increases – by riding transit.

Civil Beat Responds

In the hours since our initial post, Civil Beat has told us that only seven neighbor island residents completed the survey, “and it’s likely that many more were called and did not complete the poll.” The polling company caught the error and removed all neighbor island respondents from the final result, CB says. Editor John Temple called our interest in the neighbor island calls a “red herring” – a pretty remarkable assessment in light of the magnitude of the mistake, calling neighbor island residents about Oahu issues.

Mr. Temple (at right) wrote to us six times today regarding our questions about his survey’s integrity, including two or three times about the poll's focus on voters only. In one he said: “We didn't ‘exclude’ voters. We sampled the population that will vote.” Another said: “I wouldn't have done (the) poll this way if I didn't believe it would produce the most accurate reflection of what would happen at the polls if the election were held today.”

In narrowing the focus to voters only, however, Civil Beat and the Merriman Group seem to have discounted entirely one of the main reasons to create the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation in the first place – to remove the rail project from the ebb and flow of politics.  In so doing, they're reducing the rail project to a popularity contest at election time.

Another response from Mr. Temple said, “I don’t believe you will find a poll in Hawaii that has shared more about its methodology than the Civil Beat poll. Look what’s on the site today. Read the methodology….” It’s not the methodology's transparency that concerns us. It’s the methodology itself, for reasons we’ve outlined above.

Mr. Temple also suggests we’re upset with his poll because we don’t like the results. We responded that he was only half right. The other half is that we’re questioning the validity of the methodology – a legitimate inquiry that’s intended to help all of us better understand the survey's results.

April 2013 Update: The 2012 mayoral election pitting pro-rail Kirk Caldwell and anti-rail ex-Governor Ben Cayetano validated our view of public opinion on this issue. Mr. Caldwell won with a solid majority. Mr. Temple has moved on and up to become the Washington Post's managing editor. 

Questions Are Raised about Civil Beat Rail Poll Showing Alleged Slippage in Support for Project: Why Were Neighbor Islanders’ Views Solicited, Why Was Half the Electorate Excluded from Calls?

It isn’t just the Sunday newspaper that often starts the day with a bang, as it did yesterday. Mondays also are a favorite for outlets like Civil Beat to break their news, as the online subscription news service does today.

“Casual visitors” are allowed access to the site, CB says, and presumably can read this story, which tops CB's news today: Civil Beat Poll – Honolulu Voters Oppose Rail Project

April 2013 Update: See Yes2Rail's final post -- the results of the 2013 mayoral election that revealed the extent of Civil Beat's misunderstanding of public opinion on rail.
 

It took a second or third reading to appreciate the precision with which that headline was written. The Merriman River Group “touch-tone poll” truly did survey only voters, according to this note below the results: “No calls were made (a) to residents of the state who were not registered voters or (b) to registered voters who did not have a demonstrated record of participation in recent General Elections"

But There’s More
The reference to “residents of the state” is noteworthy, because the phrase just as easily and more precisely could have said “residents of Oahu” if that were the case. But incredibly, this survey on the Honolulu rail project solicited the opinions of neighbor island residents!

We know that for a fact because of the February 26th email we received from a friend living on Maui who maintains no residence on Oahu. After describing the questions and issues in the automated poll, he observed:

“Seemed to be pretty straight-forward -- meaning, unbiased -- but the reporting of the results could appear skewed against the project, meaning a large percentage of respondents could be "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about the cost, but a large percentage of that group could still favor the project.

“Big question: What the hell are they doing calling someone on Maui??”

What, indeed. That’s the question we’ve sent to John Temple, Civil Beat editor and author of today’s story on the survey. It seems almost inconceivable that a Maui resident and presumably other neighbor islanders would be asked about these issues.

And since it wasn't just Honolulu voters who were surveyed, the headline does appear to be misleading after all.

A List of Questions

Here’s the text of the email we’ve sent to Mr. Temple:

John, did the polling company have any comments on how the demographics and related issues may have influenced the poll's results?

• Only 52 percent of eligible voters statewide participated in the 2010 gubernatorial election. Did Civil Beat's poll not contact the other half?

• What is the presumed outcome of not contacting residents who don't exhibit an interest in "public affairs" based on their voting pattern? Did the polling company comment on that?

• The respondents appear to have been "overly educated" compared to the population at large, with 70 percent in the "college degree" and "grad degree" categories. Did the polling company have any comments on what that might suggest re their preference or lack of same for transit?

• Similarly, the household income chart says 67% of the respondents had household income above $50,000. Again, how does that compare to the entire population on Oahu?

As always, the devil is in the details, and I hope you and your colleagues can provide more of them to help the rest of us understand this poll better.

A Radical Suggestion

This isn’t the first time questions have been raised about a rail-related public opinion survey. The Star-Advertiser and Hawaii News Now sponsored a poll that began one week after anti-rail mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano officially launched his campaign.

It’s difficult to believe his strong support and the anti-rail majority found in the poll were not influenced by the heavy media coverage Mr. Cayetano enjoyed during the survey period. That poll had a poorly worded question that required an element of interpretation by the participants. At least the Civil Beat poll avoided that problem in asking its first question.

In 2008, the Honolulu Advertiser reported the results of a survey that, while showing strong pro-rail sentiment, included an extremely misleading and frankly inaccurate question that contributed to the results.

Now comes the Civil Beat survey that raises questions about how it was conducted. So here’s our radical suggestion:

The next time a media outlet wants to survey public opinion on the Honolulu rail project, it should involve both rail supporters and opponents before the survey begins on both the conduct of the poll and the questions.

Nothing would be lost in such a collaborative effort, and a lot of misinformation might be avoided. If Civil Beat had taken this approach, it presumably would not be asked to answer the questions that reasonably must be raised about the validity of this new survey.

Newest Piece of ‘Sunday’ Journalism Fits Pattern: Just Like Future Congestion, Transit Subsidies Would Be Greater if Rail System Were Not Built

Right on schedule, the Sunday newspaper hit the streets with another big and bold headline on page one written for maximum impact to make the average citizen wonder if building rail transit is worth the price.

Here's the main headline and its subhead you can read without a subscription: Transit system cost estimate could be way off, report says  The city’s financial plan did not include possible increases to support TheBus and Handi-Van services in the future

It isn’t until you read the story’s final paragraphs on page 13 that you learn subsidies for TheBus and Handi-Van services would be higher without rail than with it!

Burying information deep in a story that diminishes the impact of an alarming headline is so ingrained in newspaper culture that we doubt it’ll ever change. But a different newspaper – maybe the one that died, leaving Honolulu with only one daily paper – might have played the story differently:

Rail will control future transit system subsidies, city says  The project's financial plan predicts higher taxpayer support if system isn’t built

Professional headline writers would do a better job, but then, they’d never write that one – not when presented with a story that doesn’t bring in this fact until the 24th paragraph, six paragraphs from the end. That’s not a knock on the reporter; other levels in the hierarchy influence the Star-Advertiser’s rail coverage.

Worse without Rail

It’s clear that another pattern emerges from all the stories on the rail project: Honolulu rail will produce positive results in a number of areas that have received little coverage -- by reducing congestion from levels it would grow to, by dampening the increase in taxpayer support for transit, by channeling growth predictably in station-centered communities, and so on.  For a number of reasons, Oahu would be worse off without rail than with it.

That’s a reasonable conclusion regarding transit subsidies, since Honolulu’s population will be tilting toward the aged end of the demographic scale as the decades unfold. We’re already one of the “oldest” populations in the country, so future generations of the elderly will rely on transit much more than today.

Rail therefore emerges as an ameliorator of future trends and conditions. Even anti-railer Cliff Slater admits congestion would be worse without rail than with it. Today’s new issue about future transit subsidies and what they’d grow to without rail actually turns out to be a positive for rail, not the negative suggested in today’s headline.

Yet another Pattern

The numerous journalistic “scoops” the Star-Advertiser is enjoying thanks to the information request process has pushed the rail project into a reactive mode.

Today’s editorial – Rail needs to add seats and optimize experience -- says the recent report recommending more seats for passengers “should have been publicly released and been made accessible online” rather than have the issue explode onto page one.

While we still think the alleged insufficiency of seats has been blown way out of proportion by rail opponents, the editorial strives to make the point that pre-emptive release of project information is the right course.

That at least might put an end to the “death by a thousand paper cuts” that rail seems to be confronting week after week.

Sports Columnist Offers Insight on Why Honolulu Reporters Don’t Ask Mayoral Candidate for Details On His Plan to Help Commuters after He Kills Rail

NOTE: While not a political blog, Yes2Rail necessarily covers the politician who vows to kill Honolulu rail if elected.

We keep returning to this point because somebody has to. It’s been six weeks and two days since Ben Cayetano’s official entry into the mayoral race with a vow to kill Honolulu rail, and he still hasn’t offered any details on the major transportation effort he’d initiate after scrapping the project.

What’s more, few if any reporters have asked him for those details. All we’ve heard since January 19th are vague references to alternatives the candidate says are better than rail. His softball interviews in Honolulu Weekly and with HawaiiReporter.com on Wednesday outside an anti-rail forum where rail supporters were loudly chanting GO RAIL GO were typical.

After calling the supporters “trained seals,” Mr. Cayetano said he intends to go to places like Kapolei to tell residents rail “won’t reduce traffic congestion and it is not the best alternative. The best alternative is bus rapid transit….”

And that’s where it always stops, without telling the public any details about his alternative to rail. We’re left wondering how his BRT system would work, which communities would and wouldn’t be served, how much BRT would cost to build and operate, what its operating characteristics would be and all the other necessary details.

Sports Page Wisdom

Retired journalists who once worked in newsrooms commanded by George Chaplin (Advertiser), Hobe Duncan (Star-Bulletin) and Bob Sevey (KGMB-TV) must be wondering what’s happened to their craft.

The first question on the first day of Mr. Cayetano’s campaign from those reporters likely would have been about his plan to address Oahu’s growing congestion issue instead of building rail, and they wouldn’t have stopped asking until they got an answer.

Not so with today’s crop of reporters. Far as we can tell from the media coverage over the past six weeks, Mr. Cayetano has not been pressed to expand on his “anything-but-rail” plan. All we have are a few phrases dropped here and there about BRT, express lanes and even the San Diego trolley.

How can this be? Where is the reporting that Oahu residents -- especially those on the west side -- require to understand exactly what this candidate proposes to serve them? The explanation just might be found in the Sports section of today’s Star-Advertiser in a column by T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times (linked here at the Times' website).

His column explained in a round-about way why he refused to attend a press conference that had been called to hype a boxing match and pump up closed-circuit TV sales. What follows is an extended quote from Mr. Simers’ column in which we’ve replaced his references to sports and athletes with words in parentheses that are applicable to the coverage of Honolulu’s mayoral race.

“It’s a funny thing when you ask questions for a living. You can be the bad guy because (politicians) are held in awe, and it’s not good to upset them.” If you do upset them, a politician might ban you; Mr. Cayetano did that recently and refused to talk with Civil Beat’s rail reporter.

“And so a lot of reporters do their best to remain harmless.

“It’s not a fair exchange. The guy with the microphone has the reputation, the floor and the admirers.

“So how far do you go? Should the media make like shills, and just go with the sales pitch? (Politicians are) good, and oh, please follow the dos and don’ts list before asking (them) questions.

“And how about not upsetting (the candidate) as he goes about the business of convincing people to (kill rail).”

Maybe that’s the problem with Honolulu journalism. Reporters might be awed by tough-talking politicians and avoid being snubbed or ridiculed. Maybe a good 10-second sound bite is enough to satisfy the bosses back at the station, since everybody knows the audience won't't tolerate stories bogged down by details.

Whatever the explanation, Honolulu media outlets continue their cursory coverage of the transportation “planning” by the one mayoral candidate who wants to do what someone else did to a similar rail project 20 years ago – kill it.

We’re left to imagine what Bob, Hobe and George would say about 21st century journalism if they were still with us.

Cayetano: Rail Supporters Are ‘Trained Seals’ in Passionately Supporting Rail, Says He Wants BRT But Has Provided Absolutely No Details on ‘Plan’, Plus: HART Picks Grabauskas to Lead Rail Project

NOTE: While not a political blog, Yes2Rail necessarily covers the comments of the politician who vows to kill rail if elected.

The anti-rail editor of HawaiiReporter.com tossed a few softballs to the former governor who’s running for mayor outside the second of two anti-rail forums featuring four mainland highway advocates on Wednesday.

As rail supporters chanted “GO RAIL GO” a few feet away, she asked him what he felt about the noisy demonstration. Ben Cayetano responded:

“They’re like trained seals, you know what I mean? They’re doing what they…they probably practice, but maybe they should practice learning a little bit. Just giving the other side the benefit of free discussion, and they apparently are not willing to do that.”

The demonstrators were outside the forum’s meeting room and therefore were not interfering with “free discussion.” Mr. Cayetano’s dismissal of rail supporters as circus performers might actually motivate them to work even harder and louder for rail.

A Related Development

Less than 24 hours later, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) board of directors appointed Daniel Grabauskas HART’s chief executive officer to lead construction and operation of the project.

As reported in the Star-Advertiser (subscription), Mr. Grabauskas said he knows “…that many people say that they are for rail, but they are not for the way it’s going, and I hear that. So what I look forward to doing is to coming here and…address each of those issues so we can win those folks over to the idea that rail is actually something that can enhance the quality of their lives.”

We anticipate that Mr. Grabauskas will soon discover that he’ll be fighting a determined effort to kill rail that relies on misinformation intended to deliberately mislead and confuse Oahu residents.

The Traffic Issue

That intent was evident in Mr. Cayetano’s Wednesday anti-rail remarks, which are available for viewing on YouTube courtesy of HawaiiReporter.com:

“I think a lot of people on the (pro-rail) side are in denial. They started with reduced traffic congestion. We know it won’t. The city admits it won’t. The FTA says it won’t.”

Following the lead of anti-railer-in-chief Cliff Slater, Mr. Cayetano has made the “future traffic congestion” issue the centerpiece of his anti-rail campaign by asserting the obvious – that traffic congestion on Oahu will continue to increase after rail is built.

In so doing, he and Mr. Slater want the public to believe rail isn’t worth building if congestion will continue. (Our “aggregation” site has links to many uses of this talking point under the heading Mr. Cliff Slater and Friends.)

Freedom from Traffic

We call it a “dumbed-down” argument because of course congestion will grow over the decades as the population grows and so, too, does the number of vehicles on the island.

In constantly referring to congestion’s inevitable growth, the anti-railers are implying that rail isn’t worth building if it won’t “solve” traffic. Mr. Grabauskas will see soon enough that the Slater/Cayetano talking point has successfully turned some residents against rail precisely because of a slick delivery that discourages much of any thinking about transportation.

The new CEO will also discover that Messrs. Cayetano and Slater never accurately describe the rail project’s goals and what rail will deliver – fast, frequent, reliable and safe transportation through the city that is completely traffic-free. In other words, they never tell the public the truth about rail and its purpose.

The truth is that rail will be the missing piece of transportation infrastructure that will work in close harmony with TheBus to serve those who choose to use Oahu’s mass transit system. Highways will continue to serve many more commuters, and that’s a logical assessment of future commuting patterns.

Still No Details

Mr. Cayetano officially announced his campaign for mayor six weeks ago yesterday and has yet to give any specifics on his preference instead of rail – bus rapid transit. From Wednesday:

“I intend to go down to places like Kapolei with my group of city advisors to talk to people, to tell them the other side of the coin, to tell them why this is something we cannot afford and it won’t reduce traffic congestion and it is not the best alternative. The best alternative is bus rapid transit….”

Mr. Cayetano hasn’t gone much further in laying out his BRT plan than that statement. He’s mentioned express lanes and even commented favorably a few weeks ago about the San Diego trolley system. But that’s as much as we know from the man who would kill rail – a classic pig-in-a-poke selling job that doesn’t accurately describe what he’s selling.

Continuing from Wednesday:

“We are the only ones, the only city in the nation of our size that is trying to do something like this. Steel-on-steel heavy rail is obsolete technology, 50 years old at least. The other cities are going to bus rapid transit and other kinds of alternatives. We should be looking at that, too.”

This is what Mr. Grabauskas now confronts in a candidate who intends to kill rail – bizarre opinions about rail's alleged obsolescence (tell that to cities around the world using it) and vague references to “bus rapid transit and other kinds of alternatives” that are unspecified, not articulated and utterly lacking in details.

We welcome him to Honolulu and extend our best wishes and support. The ride he just began in Honolulu may be at least the equal of anything he faced in Boston.

Rail Opponents Say They’ll Never Ride the Train, Then Complain There Won’t Be Enough Seats! Who Are They Kidding? People Around the World Ride Rail To Save Time, Money without Complaint

The first thought after reading the headline on page one of the Star-Advertiser today was that somebody messed up in the back shop and put a commentary where it didn’t belong.

“Rail needs more seats” is the headline, and that’s advocacy, my friend, no matter what they’re teaching in J-school these days.

The headline’s problem is compounded in the story’s lead paragraph, which refers to a consultant “hired by the federal government to oversee Honolulu’s rail transit project (who) is worried that passengers…” will find a trip by rail too uncomfortable and choose not to ride.

Why? Because there will be more space for standers than sitters on Honolulu’s trains.

Rail supporters might well get ready for more “gotcha” journalism” as the project proceeds; it would appear comments, criticisms and recommendations on the system are liable to find their way to the top of page one.

Riding Is a Choice

Let’s be clear about how bizarre this particular issue seems:

A consultant’s report says some Oahu residents may be unwilling “to endure such long trips standing on crowded trains...,” the S-A quotes from the report (subscription). “Substantial fractions of the forecast ridership base may choose to avoid the system under such conditions.”

The implication in the report and the story is that the trains might “turn out to be less popular than expected….,” but stop right there. Some people may choose to not ride the train once they try it and find it not to their liking. Many rail opponents already swear they’ll never ride.

But that doesn’t translate to Honolulu rail as an unsuccessful system. The newspaper story also says the average passenger trip will be less than half the length of the 20-mile line. And as anyone who has ever actually ridden a rail system can attest, standers usually become sitters somewhere along the ride.

“People will get on and off along the rail route, as is the case with any transit system, and seats will open up along the way,” says Jurgen Sumann, the rail project chief systems engineer.

“For train passengers with shorter commutes, standing may be preferred to ensure they are able to conveniently and quickly exit the train at their designated stop. This is common practice with urban rail systems.”

Time and Money

Honolulu’s system will be fully operational within a decade – a period during which traffic congestion will continue to increase and gasoline prices surely will do the same. Honolulu already has some of the worst highway congestion and highest gas prices in the country.

People ride rail systems all over the world to save time and money. That’s why they ride! If saving time and money is the day-in, day-out consequence of taking the train, Oahu residents will act exactly as other people do all over the world, and they’ll ride! Others may choose not to ride, and that will be just fine. Honolulu rail is not being built to satisfy the needs of each and every Oahu resident.

The project’s outreach team mambers make this point each time they speak to an audience or staff a display at a trade show. Rail isn’t the magic bullet that will end congestion or “solve” traffic problems on the island; it’s the piece of the transportation infrastructure that’s missing today – a traffic-free way to travel through the city.

People will make a choice to ride or not ride, choosing not to because they have to pick up the kids at school, deliver them to after-school activities, pick up the laundry, shop for groceries, whatever. Others will choose to continue commuting by car – traffic congestion and all – because that’s what they’ll prefer.

And for every seat or standing room given up by those non-riders, someone else will fill it – to save time, to save money, to eliminate the stress of the daily two-way commute – and they'll be happy to sit or stand to do so, without complaint.

The suggestion that “rail needs more seats” to be successful ignores the daily experience and reality of rail systems around the country and world. What Oahu really needs is a rail system that’s up and running as quickly as possible.

Buried in the last line of the newspaper story is another quote by Mr. Sumann: “…it seems reasonable to say that Honolulu’s seating per train car is sized correctly.” He speaks from experience, not out of worry.