UPDATED 4/21/2011 5:45 p.m.
If the city expects to spend less on rail than previously projected, why is the city’s operating subsidy for transportation growing by more than half a billion dollars? TheHandi-Van.
Perhaps the most surprising number in the updated version of the city’s rail financial plan released Wednesday is that projected 20-year operating and maintenance costs for the City and County of Honolulu’s transportation alternative for handicapped and disabled residents jumped from $679 million in the August 2009 rail financial plan to $1.15 billion, a hike of $468 million.
The new plan projects that just $60 million will be collected in fares over two decades, leaving the balance to be subsidized by city taxpayers. In 2010, 880,000 trips cost $36.47 per rider, the plan says. Riders are charged $2 per trip.
The increase in projected Handi-Van costs are ostensibly due to a rise in the elderly population.
“Ridership is assumed to grow at the same rate as the rate of growth in the resident population in Honolulu above 65 years old as forecasted by the (Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism) in its 2035 outlook dated July 2009,” the plane states. An appendix includes this data:
| Year | Honolulu Population 65+ |
|---|---|
| 19801 | 56,282 |
| 19901 | 91,788 |
| 20001 | 118,306 |
| 20051 | 127,692 |
| 2010 | 145,148 |
| 2015 | 165,988 |
| 2020 | 189,347 |
| 2025 | 213,784 |
| 2030 | 234,502 |
| 2035 | 248,215 |
Source: 2009 State of Hawaii Data Book Table A-13
Civil Beat has previously revealed that the state’s population is graying, though we note that the 2009 American Community Survey estimated there were 135,537 elderly Honolulu residents, noticeably less than the 145,148 projection for 2010 in the state’s data book.
Toru Hamayasu, the city’s rail chief, said Handi-Van costs are projected to increase because operating it is more labor-intensive. He said it’s for just that reason that the city is moving forward with the higher-capacity train system.
Still, it’s unclear what has changed in the past 21 months that would lead to a 69 percent jump in projected costs.
UPDATE: Approached outside the Honolulu City Council meeting Wednesday night2, city Transportation Services Director Wayne Yoshioka made the following remarks regarding TheHandi-Van:
I think it’s kind of a misnomer to say Handi-Van costs are going up. What looked different was that if you looked at the previous financial plan and you looked at the current revised one, the draft that’s going out, the costs are higher. The projected costs are higher in the current financial plan than in the previous one. But again, this is a projected cost.
So you can’t say, “Why are they higher?” The project is a more conservative projection. It’s projecting a higher rate of growth in operating costs for TheHandi-Van than the previous financial plan. In a way, that’s a good thing because the plan is more conservative.
It has to do with what you assume to be the growth rate and the point is that before there was a lower growth-rate presumed. Now, I think to be more conservative, we’re using a higher growth rate.
