Honda Shipping 81% Rail

Interesting. Why don't more car companies ship this high a percentage by rail?

Product Distribution

* An industry-high 81% of automobile were shipped by rail, the most fuel-efficient means of product transportation.

* CO2 emissions from automobile transport were reduced by 5,493 metric tons though the use of more fuel-efficient Auto-Max rail cars.

Adamantium for Hawaii Rail Composition!

Mayor Mufi won the majority of votes in his re-election bid but not enough to dispatch both of his opponents in the Honolulu mayoral primary. His 49% haul beat out both crazed highwayman Panos Prevedoros and current council member Anne Kobayashi who together rang up 48% of the vote. Close for sure but the totals were reflective of a mayoral race and not November's presidential election which will bring out the city's residents to vote in droves. Out of 900,000 people, only about 150,000 or ~16% came out to vote. In the 2000 election, Hawaii had about a 41% turnout rate however with a native son in Barack Obama running it is likely to be much much more.

Mayor Mufi now faces Kobayashi in the November election and it has been billed as a Rail vs. BRT showdown. On the ballot is a yes or no question of whether to go with steel wheels on steel rail. It's possibly the silliest transit question on any ballot ever, but its there and people are going to vote. A more pressing question in a city denser than most others in the United States should have a rail system, however the technology for the rail should be a bigger question. An automated guideway like Skytrain in Vancouver which is under discussion or a typical metro or light rail system that could be operated using interchangable parts that are not proprietary. I'd personally like to see more of that discussion.

The fact of the matter is that with a higher turnout it is likely that Mufi will win and the rail will pass. The reason being that most people support the rail transit solution and a defeat will only come when numbers are diluted or rail backers do something stupid, which isn't out of the realm of possibility. The next vote however will be on whether they should go with adamantium or steel for the rails themselves. After that, the voters will decide on whether the computer chips in the trains will be Intel, AMD or an abacus.

$3 Frakkin Billion Dollars

Apparently no one cares at the state level. In the last 3 years, $3 billion dollars have been channeled away from transit projects. Sick.

HSR Smackdown

Ah good ole Wendell, we knew you were fibbing, just didn't think it was this bad.

Election Day Coverage on The Overhead Wire

So you all know ahead of time, we're going to have an election night liveblog here at The Overhead Wire. The reason? No it's not to talk about the presidential race, but rather the Transit Space Race elections going on all over the country. Here's a preview of what we'll cover:

St. Louis - An election is being held to give Metro a half cent more in order to keep up with operating expenses and expand Metrolink, the region's light rail system. It's called Proposition M.

Santa Fe - A Sales Tax to extend Rail Runner into the city from Albuquerque.

Oakland/Berkeley - AC Transit is looking to raise the parcel tax $48 annually to pay for operations. This measure is called VV. KK is also on the ballot and would allow AC Transit to build BRT on Berkeley streets.

Los Angeles - This would be a half cent sales tax for capital expansion. It's called Measure R.

Sonoma Marin - SMART will go back to the polls to ask for an 1/4th cent sales tax to build a commuter rail line. It is called Measure Q.

Honolulu - Island residents are being asked whether they approve of a steel on steel transit system. (Crazy huh?)

Kansas City - A half cent sales tax is on the ballot to build a starter light rail line.

Seattle - Prop 1. I'm not going to be covering this as much except for some crucial updates. I'm sure the boys at STB got it covered.

High Speed Rail - $9.9 billion dollar bond for a statewide high speed rail line. This one is Prop 1a.

If I am missing something let me know. I'll be live blogging into the night until we get the Hawaii results. It's still a bit of time away. But I'll be reminding everyone every once in a while to keep your minds off the presidential election.

Park(ing) Day + Speak Like a Pirate Day

Check out Streetsblog for awesome photos of Park(ing) day. I would have taken some here in SF but I forgot my camera. Arrr. Which reminds me, it's also talk like a pirate day.

Radio Killed the Railroad Star

In Milwaukee the meme is beginning to form that conservative talk radio killed transit and should be tied to its failure to emerge. I've seen it a number times in the last few days in the JS. Our friend Jim Rowan gives us the history of how transit was killed in an article he wrote for the Journal Sentinel.

Examples of the meme recently:

Jim Rowen:

And "light rail" was and continues to be aimed as a partisan, fear-laden phrase against Milwaukee and its urban, Democratic majority on conservative talk radio and in some Republican-dominated suburbs.

Mayor Barrett:

"I think it's driven by conservative talk radio," Barrett said. "There are many people who are suffering because of ideological opposition to rail. ... If you listen to conservative talk radio, you'd think having some sort of rail in Milwaukee is the end of Western civilization as we know it."

Letter to the Editor:

Maybe the service cuts down the road will wake people up. The year 2010 promises a 30% cut in bus service and elimination of the freeway flyer service. The proposed 1% sales tax is the most feasible answer to saving our bus system. The Milwaukee County Transit System is the only system of its size that totally relies on property tax. A sales tax increase would be paid not only by county residents but anybody who visits Milwaukee County. We are not in the hell-hole talk radio talks about.

Lobby or Chalk

A recent article in St. Louis discusses the want to expand the highly successful Metrolink System. People want it, but the money for expansion has been scarce, especially from the Feds.

And that money, at least historically for big transit projects, comes from familiar coffers: the federal government, which supplied the bulk of funding for previous MetroLink expansions. Plesko said many blame Metro for not wanting to build in Madison County, when in reality it's the lack of federal support preventing it.
...
Plesko said the Bush administration has severely sliced funding for light rail projects in recent years, forcing cities hungry to expand systems to lobby heavily or chalk up the cash themselves. "If you want federal funds, then you must compete for them. The current administration makes it really hard to get light rail," Plesko said.

I often complain about the federal process and the new starts program because Todd Plesko is right, they are awful. But so are MPOs. They have enormous power to program more money for transit and less for roads than they let on, but people have been so lopsided in focus on automobiles that if you dare take away thier highway money you're the devil.

Yes the feds could help out a lot more than they are and they should (This means you congress, not just the FTA). They should be at the forefront of a national transit movement, especially now. And I honestly don't see how with a wonderful system like Metro in Washington people still can't see the benefits of capital transit investments. They must be rather blind. But we must get more money out of the MPO and somehow fix it so that regions stop spending on the periphery and start spending in the core.

Minneapolis Bridge Opens

The bridge is back up after a year. Imagine if we were allowed to replace infrastructure that was there before that fast, you know, like streetcars. One of the craziest things to me is going through a whole environmental process to put something back that was there before. Heck, the studies sometimes cost as much as construction. There's gotta be a way to go about it faster and cheaper.

Go PRT!

Bwahahaha!! Oh those PRT people. Hilarious.

The proposed system involves a 100 percent fare box cost recovery. Imagine: no subsidies for operation and maintenance costs.

The much-touted San Jose light (sic) rail recovers just 10 percent of its O & M costs. A.C. Transit recovers just 30 percent. BART recovers so little, it survives on a $250 million annual subsidy.The CyberTran System, already off the design boards and proven feasible in numerous computer simulations, is ultra-light and involves no grade crossings. Instead, the few intersections encountered are all safely grade-separated. Why? Speed and safety.

Because why build one to see if it works as advertised when we have computers!