Posted on: Monday, May 2, 2005

Letters to the Editor

Give express buses exclusive highway

I am sick and tired of reading so many letters opposing rail transit. Every morning and afternoon during rush hour, there are at least eight express buses going between 'Ewa and downtown Honolulu and numerous buses going from Kapolei and other parts of Leeward O'ahu. And these buses are almost completely full.

With so many people riding the express buses to town, why shouldn't they want to transfer to a more rapid mode of transportation?

So they say we should improve our bus system before investing in rail transit. How about building a super elevated freeway to be used only by buses and vehicles of public transportation?

Let car lovers stay stuck on our old roads. Or maybe traffic will then move quicker because the buses will no longer have to be on H-1 or H-2 for they will have their own highway for their exclusive use.

Letting teens drive buses is a lousy idea

I think the idea of lowering the bus driving age from 21 to 18 ranks with such a foolish idea as selling alcohol at youth athletic events.

The proposed law includes a provision that would prohibit drivers under 21 from transporting children or hazardous materials — for safety reasons.

I'm sorry, but if it is not safe enough for an 18-year-old to transport children or hazardous materials, I don't want him or her transporting me either.

Chinatown waterfall should be preserved

Robbie Dingeman's April 22 article "Chinatown waterfall likely to turn green" is a sad commentary on Laverne Higa's department.

"City Facility Maintenance Director Laverne Higa said the pumps that power the water feature in the park alongside the historic Hawai'i Theatre Center broke at the beginning of this month, and the city hasn't been able to fix them or get an estimate for repairs."

Let's be real. How difficult is it to replace an electric pump? Does Higa mean that her department tried and hasn't been able to get a repair proposal, or just hasn't bothered to do anything about the problem?

There is a similar water feature at Punahou Cliffs on Wilder Avenue that the condominium association maintains with a tiny fraction of the staff and budget Higa has at her disposal. Fountains in Rome built 2,000 years ago are still in operation today. Are we to believe Laverne Higa's Facilities Maintenance Department is technologically 2,000 years behind the Italians, or does she just want to see if we care?

After this, maybe we could pave the pond around the Capitol, turn off Honolulu Hale's waterworks and plant flowers in the Dillingham Fountain in Kapi'olani Park. Davies Pacific Center, Bishop Square and First Hawaiian Bank all seem able to maintain their water features, which add immensely to making downtown Honolulu a delightful place in which to live and work.

Instead of filling in our fountains with dirt, the city needs to fill the potholes in our streets with asphalt and keep the water features flowing for the people to enjoy.

There's a better filibuster analogy

I was listening to Sen. Harry Reid lay out his analogy for the Senate Republicans' intended rule change to prohibit filibusters on executive branch nominees to facilitate up or down votes on judicial nominations. Sen. Reid claimed that the rules for baseball haven't been changed for the last 34 years and analogized the Republicans' intended action to changing the distance between the bases or the number of balls or strikes in the game.

As I understand it, no executive branch nominee had ever previously been filibustered before the present Congress. That conjured up a different baseball analogy:

It occurred to me that the Senate Democrats who inserted filibustering of judicial nominees into this Congress are more like the baseball players who started taking steroids to get an advantage over the other players in the game. What happened? The rules got changed to prohibit use of steroids.

U.S. should stop being the world's policeman

This is regarding your April 10 article "Marines may leave Okinawa in major military realignment." Since the people of Japan want their land back from our U.S. military forces, just as the people of the Philippines who forced us to close our naval and Air Force bases wanted, we should do so.

We should also move all our troops out of South Korea and other European nations and redeploy them to the border states, such as Washington, Montana, Idaho, South California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Our government's actions in trying to be the world's policeman are causing increasing anti-American feelings by people in other countries.

Because the European Common Market nations are getting larger and more powerful, we should remove ourselves as members of NATO. Because France, Germany and Spain are anti-American, why should we come to the defense if they are attacked by certain Middle Eastern nations in the future?

Besides, the U.N. Security Council, whose objective is to maintain peace and friendship among nations in the international arena, should fulfill its responsibilities — otherwise, we should remove ourselves as members.

Thanks for the cleanup

Mahalo to the group who cleared out the mangroves in the Kapalama Canal (above Dillingham Boulevard)! It's beautiful!

'Graffiti jams' could work in Hawai'i

I agree with David Lindo's April 20 letter regarding graffiti. Graffiti is about expression, along with many other art forms, and just needs a positive place to be expressed.

Graffiti art is a worldwide art form, and while other states and countries allow opportunities for legal painting, the state that is supposedly recognized for acknowledging and accepting hundreds of different cultures and talents refuses to give it a chance.

Many places offer annual "graffiti jams" that allow talents to be showcased and that attract hundreds of different writers, their families and media from around the world; why not have one in paradise?

Wouldn't this give Hawai'i a slight tourist boost without having to spend any money?

Graffiti artists, for the most part, aren't bad people. You might have even tipped one at a restaurant or shook hands with one after you left the car dealership.

I apologize for the furor over Sen. Hee fund-raiser

No fund-raising tickets should have been mailed to UH regent nominees John Kai and Ramon de la Pena. It was wrong. I did it, and I apologize.

For more than three decades, I have supported persons and organizations that work for civil rights and educational opportunities. Many who know me (including family friend Dr. de la Pena) have received numerous requests to donate to university and community projects, and candidates who care passionately about these issues.

Sen. Clayton Hee is meticulous about separating work at the Capitol from fund-raising. Any inference that purchase of the fund-raiser tickets had a bearing on the confirmation process for any nominee is totally false, irresponsible and unfair. I personally distributed the tickets on my own time and to private addresses, just as I do with fund-raisers for other causes.

Sen. Hee demonstrated his honor by accepting responsibility for the actions of his staff, especially since he had no idea I sent fund-raiser tickets to any regent nominee. I did this on my own initiative. It was unthinking and inappropriate. I believe the 25-0 vote in support of emeritus professor de la Pena occurred because of his qualifications, not because he purchased fund-raising tickets.

I did not call any regent about the fund-raiser. After the fund-raiser, I did leave a voice message to alert a current member of the Board of Regents about concerns of members of the higher education committee, including the Republican member, over responses by Mr. Kai and Dr. de la Pena at the confirmation hearing.

University personnel frequently provide their expertise to government offices as volunteers, paid consultants and loaned professionals. My work during the session is similar to UH law professor Randy Roth's full-time assignment to work for over a year with Gov. Lingle.

I will continue to support Sen. Hee because of his values and aloha for a greater Hawai'i. However, because my lapse of judgment raised questions about Sen. Hee, I resigned immediately from his staff and returned to my full-time university position and community work supporting access, equity and diversity.

Rail system won't bring relief

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie's fear-mongering that if we don't get on board rail now, we will be in gridlock by 2030 denies reality.

Unfortunately, the facts of already constructed rail systems is that traffic congestion was never reduced and has continued to grow each year after the rail system went into service.

The current figures at construction cost of a single line of such a system on O'ahu are about $2.6 billion before cost overruns and the eventual spurs to outlying areas and a $30 million per year subsidy to cover operation and maintenance.

With the tremendous costs to construct and then to forever subsidize this rail system, what if we could achieve the same traffic reduction envisioned by its proponents and have something to show for it other than a big hole in the ground and continuing subsidies?

No one who has observed traffic on O'ahu's Leeward Coast can argue that there are many events that even if just one of them occurs would spontaneously reduce traffic, namely, UH is not in session, a state holiday, a federal holiday, public/private schools are not in session. Since little control can be or has been made of trying to schedule these events just for reducing traffic, the next best possibility would be to create these activities on the Leeward Coast so that the direction of all traffic is more evenly distributed east and west rather than east in the morning and west in the afternoon, as presently occurs.

Instead of the $2.6 billion being spent on rail, what if the same amount of money was used to build the infrastructure that attracts the traffic?

• A West O'ahu UH campus costing around $600 million would forever remove a lot of traffic from the most congested areas of H-1 through downtown going to Manoa.

• The new judiciary building could be expanded in triplicate with more than $200 million of new buildings to move even more traffic to the west.

• We could spend more than $400 million to build a new stadium of world-class proportions that would attract traffic away from the H-1/H-3/Moanalua freeway traffic snarl.

• Build a village with $150 million worth of new state/city buildings other than the two now in Kapolei that would bring thousands of vehicles west to do their government jobs and also bring the thousands of people serviced by those departments away from downtown.

• Five new public schools with state-of-the-art computer systems could be built for $250 million from Kapolei to Makaha acting as school magnets from downtown schools that currently add to traffic congestion.

All this for $1.6 billion, $1 billion less than the rail system people mover that has been proven over and over again to not reduce traffic congestion. The byproduct also would be that instead of a huge lump-sum drain on the economy, estimated at $900 per family per year and then a continuing drain thereafter, there would be a net gain to the economy and to our Island society in the form of better services and education.