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Lol! And trouble makers, criminals, low lives don't drive cars? Some of the most sophisticated cities in the world have excellent public transportation. NYC, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City, London. Time for people to grow up and get over their selfish class insecurity.
Did you even bother reading the thread? Yes, rail is great - we get it. But each and every household on this island is paying$35,000 to just build it, never mind maintain it.
Let's pretend you live here (because clearly you don't)... and let's further pretend that you made the MEDIAN salary for the area, would you chip in $35,000 of your hard earned NET income to pay for rail?
If we assume you possess a level of intelligence that exceeds that of a toaster, your answer most definitely would be a resounding "hell no" followed with an array of expletives that I can't post here.
The people I know like yourself blabbering about these comments as being class related are among the most arrogant and selfish people I know.
Everyone living here knows this is nothing but a money grab, a land and development scheme and the biggest transition of wealth from the working class citizens of Oahu to the fat cats that have always ran the show here.
Actually there is an easy way to cut commute time and traffic gridlock -- Build an undersea tunnel across the mouth of Middle Loch of Pearl Harbor.
That is the shortest route to town from Leeward side.
The problem is that the Navy will definitely object.
Well - I'm sure a large part of the business case for rail was taking cars off the road.
An undersea tunnel wouldn't work - it would be cost prohibitive and it would be less costly and faster to build a bridge. With that said, then you still need a highway feeder system to/from the bridge and that wouldn't be inexpensive either.
if one didn't care about the number of cars on the road, one could simply make Nimitz Highway a real highway - and also widen H1 and H201
If the purpose of building rail is principally to take cars off the road during rush hour, then I would say the following measures are more effective:
(1) Increase car registration fee to an absurd level to force most households to give up cars or keep one car at most;
(2) Toll every section of H-1 freeway from town to Kapolei (at least during rush hours);
(3) Increase gas tax to five or six times its current level;
(4) Increase parking meter fee in downtown to an absurd level (the current increase of $1.5/hr to $3/hr is not deterring enough), then the private parking lot in downtown will follow suit;
(5) Changing zoning requirement, i.e. in most new condominium high rise, not every unit sold is allocated a parking space;
(6) More extreme measure: when anyone buys a car, he has to show proof that he has owned or rented a parking space at his residence or close to his residence;
(7) More strict State Safety inspection after 5th year so that most cars cannot pass the checkup;
(8) Levy sale tax on used car transaction like new car is even if the transaction is between two individuals.
In order to force residents of Oahu, at least those from the Leeward side, to ride the rail so that it can be financially feasible is to make car driving prohibitively expensive.
The above measures have been adopted by many cities which own similar mass transit projects.
IMO ridership will be a perplexing long term problem for the rail.
Most of the ridership will occur during 5-8 a.m. from Kapolei to town and from 3:30-6:30 p.m. from town to Kapolei. One way and on weekdays only.
But here is the problem. Who is going to ride the rail at the other hours? Who is going to ride it on weekend? And when school is off which makes traffic easy, who is going to ride the rail?
Does it mean during all these other days and other hours, the rail is not operational?
When the plan changed and a station is set up next to the airport, it makes sense. But the problem is that the newly arrived tourists find the rail unavailable to them since it cannot get them to where they want to go -- the hotels in Waikiki.
The rail will only work if ridership can be increased both ways and on non-rush hour and on non-school days, i.e. the entire summer.
But the problem is who will want to go to Kapolei? What can the town attract you to go? And if you go, why do you choose to ride the rail instead of driving your own car?
Ian - I have a huge appreciation for your responses even though I don't agree. The appreciation comes from you are trying to problem solve rather than point out obvious problems.
Massively taxing road users has huge problems. Mainly we are a tourist and military economy both of which rail won't help since it won't stop in Waikiki (nor as importantly UH). All those Waikiki workers likely won't use rail and massively taxing mostly service workers won't benefit anyone.
I'm not advocating it, but increasing costs and making something burdensome is an effective way to change people's behavior. Toll roads and increasing gas, registration prices, etc etc. will cause people to carpool, start utilizing mass transit more (city can invest in more buses), etc. At the far end of the spectrum, you could do as Tokyo does - you can only own a vehicle if you have a parking stall for it. So if you own a single family house, you have 2 cars max, condos probably have 1 car max.
If you increase the tolls during peak traffic hours, you can get people to shift their driving time away from peak times. Say you have a retiree that doesn't need to run errands at 8:00AM. If he has to pay a toll to drive at that time versus no toll driving at 10:00AM, he'll drive at 10:00AM, and there will be one less car on the road. Higher overall costs + tolls increases the chances that only the people that actually need to be on the road during rush hour will be on the road. For those that need to commute, but cannot afford the high cost, they will utilize mass transit.
For those that need to commute, but cannot afford the high cost, they will utilize mass transit.
How do you address the literally the massive number of people who commute to Waikiki and UH with no mass transit option? (Unless you considers the literally hours it would take to their destination each way )
there is the bus. With more ridership, less cars on the road, and more funds (through taxes), the bus schedules can be expanded and more buses run, not to mention the rail system expanded to waikiki.
granted it wouldnt happen overnight, just as any rail extension wouldn't happen overnight. But over time, the shift to higher utilization of mass transit could be realized. Now if the question is whether I trust our lawmakers to put this type of plan into motion, and not waste the funding directly and indirectly on other pet projects.... I think the current rail issues would answer that question.
Last edited by rya96797; 06-22-2017 at 03:54 AM..
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