Consider, if you will, our roads.
Yes, we have a Honolulu mayor who is forever standing in awe of what a job the city has done at repairing our streets.
And we have a state Transportation Department — whenever it is not apologizing for not notifying drivers about whatever calamity happened on H-1 — promising traffic improvements across the state.
Or instead, consider several new reports.
As Honolulu Star-Advertiser transportation reporter Marcel Honoré reported this week, “Hawaii’s state-run highways and roads have held firm as some of the worst in the nation.”
The report was the latest annual report prepared by Reason Foundation, a D.C.-based libertarian think tank.
The latest data is from 2013 so it is not fair to blame just the Ige administration, but, still, motorists are getting a lot more promises than pavement.
The Reason Foundation report rated Hawaii roads 48th out of 50 for the overall cost-effectiveness and performance.
Also INRIX, a global traffic-data company, reported that as of 2015, Honolulu has the 10th-worst traffic in the U.S.
And then consider that, according to USA Today, Hawaii has the third-highest gas taxes in the country.
If you think that spending more gets you better roads, you are going to be disappointed in Hawaii.
The national report says our urban roads are the worst in the country. A full 31 percent are in poor condition.
As the Star-Advertiser report noted: “The state spent nearly $78,000 per mile in administrative costs on its roads, while the national average for those costs was $10,051. Only Connecticut spent more per mile on administration than Hawaii.”
According to the state, administrative cost means debt service, or interest paid to borrow money to build the roads.
So obviously we are doing a whole lot of borrowing and not much building.
Not only do we not build a lot, we don’t even know how to do the job right.
Eight years ago, Hawaii received a federal report prepared by Larry Galehouse, director of the Michigan State University-based National Center for Pavement Preservation, on how to fix our roads.
Instead of action, the report generated cobwebs and was mostly ignored, even though the report “concluded that DOT staff lacked sufficient training, guidelines and tools needed to keep the roads in shape at least on par with roads in other U.S. regions.”
But the state has found a federal program it likes. Hawaii applied for and won a $4 million federal grant to learn how to raise taxes to fix roads.
This comes after Gov. David Ige asked the 2016 Legislature to raise state gas tax from 16 cents to 19 cents per gallon, and to increase the state’s vehicle registration fees and weight taxes, costing vehicle owners an extra $55 a year on average.
Because the Legislature rebuffed the Ige gas tax, we went back to the feds for a new way to slap on the taxes.
Try not to think of you paying federal taxes to figure out how the state can raise your taxes.
This Hawaii highway into the future needs only one thing: your wallet.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
