More Reasons to End HART Rail at Middle Street

City Leaders: Plans For Rail Work Along Dillingham ‘Not Acceptable’

My take is as follows. There are three choices.

Plan A.  Proceed as planned with terrible inconvenience for Kalihi, much more congestion for daily commuters, and financial ruin of many Kalihi stores. Also going to Costco, Home Depot and Best Buy will be a challenge with huge congestion effects on Nimitz. Hwy.

Plan B.  Tiptoe around the neighborhood which will extend project delivery time and cost a lot more. This option is likely not feasible. Can't build a quarter billion of elevated infrastructure without closures and major disruptions. This will wind up being like choice A, but with a higher cost.

Plan C.  End rail at Middle Street. This is the only reasonable choice. The rail project is largely useless and it keeps generating pains and costs. Ending it at the city's Middle Street Inter-modal Center is workable.

Plan C is an imperative, in light of these two headlines.

1. Next mayor will have mountains of problems, but mere molehill of money to pay for them. Yet, somebody has to do it. Hopefully he or she will make the hole a little smaller. (Not likely, based on past history.) I'm not interested. I was in 2008 and 2010 when the rail and homelessness holes were treatable. Now they are ever expanding craters...
2. This article relates to the fleecing of the taxpayer for the Public Private Partnership to complete the 4 miles between Middle Street and Ala Moana Center: City leaders playing hide-the-pea in rail financing scheme. "Few believe the city will complete Oahu rail to Ala Moana Center for the $9.2 billion total it projects, and we hear much speculation about the real final construction tab. $10 billion? $12 billion? $15 billion?" [David Shapiro's Volcanic Ash commentary.]

Hawaii Remains 47th Worst in Assessment of State Highways

Quoted in front page article of the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

Panos Prevedouros, professor of transportation engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said that in general our rankings make sense. “Given our short distances and relatively slow speeds on highways, our fatality rate rank of 21st is above average (good) but it would be better with fewer DUIs and a motorcycle helmet law,” he wrote in an email. “As we know, pedestrian fatalities fluctuate a lot, but there has been a general increase for various reasons such as increased population age, increased tourism and traffic projects that provide a false sense of safety to vulnerable road users.”

Porsches in my Addresses

Four addresses were I spent 30 years of my life had.... Porsches in them!

State to Look at Building Parking for Laniakea Beach Park

UH Civil Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros said he and his student recently looked at the pedestrian and traffic patterns near Laniakea Beach. He said every hour, there’s an average of “1,000 vehicles, 300 pedestrians.” “No sidewalks, no signs, no nothing. That’s why this area has been a problem for safety and congestion for many, many years,” he said.“No sidewalks, no signs, no nothing. That’s why this area has been a problem for safety and congestion for many, many years.” Prevedouros said he supports any solutions — long-term or short. “I understand it takes a long time to install long time measures but it’s already been a long time and they’re mired in their paperwork," he said. We need to keep the heat on this subject!