THE FIX IS IN FOR RAIL IN HONOLULU
.
MUFI'S CAMPAIGN FOR GOVERNOR NEEDS RAIL-BUILDERS' DOUGH, THAT'S WHY
EH, BRAH, HANNEMANN SELLING US OUT FOR ONE SHORT-TERM LEASE ON WASHINGTON PLACE:
NEXT STOP: CONGRESS! ALL ABOARD DA MUFI EXPRESS TO WASHINGTON DC?
Steel-On-Steel Is The Biggest Boondoggle In Hawaii History: VOTE NO
When all the Powers That Be come out for something, you know it's A.) a really bad idea and B.) a back-room deal involving kabillions of dollars. "Leftist" former UH professor Democratic Congressman Neil Abercrombie, rarely seen outside of Washington DC these days, suddenly resurfaced to support this unworkable and mind-bogglingly expensive project. He wants to be able to cite the big chunk of Federal cash he claims he can bring to the table now, when the Uncle Dans die and he gets his turn at being Senatorial. -Even though there is NO money there as of now.
Thuggish former Mainland Republican Party apparatchik and current racist Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann has threatened and bullied the entire state to shove through this extremely limited, single-line "traffic solution" that will solve nothing, and take decades and trillions of dollars to build, tieing up traffic instead. The builders are all major contributors to his campaign for governor, for which he will have to resign the mayor's job NEXT year for which he is running for THIS year. Unacceptable.
The gigantic project, like all projects by the City, County and State, will end up taking many more years and many more dollars than deliberately underestimated today. It will uproot homes and businesses, destroy neighborhoods and devalue properties. It will do to Honolulu what the freeways did to the South Bronx: Dissect it, choke it, ghettoize it, ruin it. It will enrich a few and impoverish many. It is too limited to be of any real use, as it does not go to the major growth areas today and tomorrow here on Oahu.
The Leeward Side, Ewa Beach, Mililani, Wahiawa, the North Shore, the Windward Side, East Honolulu, Waikiki and the UH Manoa will not be served at all. Ever. Consequently, this project will not relieve traffic in the slightest. It will cause endless construction delays to traffic, year in and year out. So why are we doing this?
Number One: To get Mufi the Governor's job, by enriching his contributors, the rail-builders & speculators.
Number Two: To provide a link from government offices downtown to government offices in Kapolei: It's a civil-service shuttle, not a commuter rail line. Only Mufi and his cronies will ride it, and only for show.
Ironically, former Governor Ben Cayetano, who opposes this rail plan, once offered to move all or most State offices out to Kapolei, thus eliminating the need for government workers and citizens with government business to schlep all the way into the center of the city. Public union thug Gary Rodrigues refused to even consider it, saying, "That's a matter for negotiation." A show of hands by his union members would have negotiated it real quick: 20-30 minutes to and from work every day, or 2-3 hours every day? Mr Rodrigues is now in prison for ripping off the union.
Want to solve the traffic problem in Honolulu? It's simple, just do a liitle research: Get on the freeway at rush hour on a Monday holiday when the schools and the government offices are closed. Traffic is relatively light: You can drive from Kapolei to Downtown in 30-40 minutes, barring an accident or construction. The answer: Government has created the traffic problem itself through poor planning, bad site locations, and knee-jerk scheduling.
Fix government and the problem is solved. Move schools, jobs and government offices out Ewa. Build more affordable housing in town, close to jobs & schools, with all that money, or through new zoning & tax breaks to encourage private investment. Period. Problem solved. Next question! Instead, government wants to create a gigantic new problem that will only compound the old problem. The project itself will snarl traffic for decades, and destroy whole neigborhoods. With your tax dollars.
This train goes nowhere. Nobody is going to ride on it. Parking, shopping, bathrooms and other infrastructure will not be provided at every stop. The average projected speed of the train is half the posted speed limit on the freeway. There is nothing here that will get harried soccer-Mom taxi's and autophiliac suburban commuters out of their precious metal appendages. Nothing. Some carless wretches may abandon Da Bus for Da Train, but that will only hurt the bus. And it will cause construction delays until most of us are old & grey. Eh, maybe no more cars by then, yeah?
The only reason to do this is for local speculators' and Mainland companies' corporate profits, and for local politicians over-weaning ambitions for higher office no matter what the cost. Enough.
STOP RAIL NOW!
I'm sorry to have to say this. My grandfather worked on the railroad, and I love trains. If you've ever been to Europe or Japan, you've no doubt been amazed by their train systems. As a lapsed New Yorker, I miss the NYC subways as I never thought possible when subjected to them. But Manhattan is built around the subway system. And it is a system: It goes everywhere. There are multiple lines, running 24/7/52, for over a century now. It's cheap, it's fast, it's efficient.
But the Honolulu trains will not go everywhere. There will be only one line, and it will not run 24/7/52. It will not even be a subway: It will be built on hideous above-ground elevated tracks, twenty or thirty feet in the air, and run on deafening steel-on-steel wheels & track, not nice quiet rubber tires like the London Underground and the Paris Metro. Like parts of the ancient NYC MTA, it will go screeching through residential neighborhoods like Waipahu and Salt Lake, Aiea and Pearl City, Kalihi and Kakaako, disturbing everyone's quiet enjoyment, and uglifying whole districts forever. Think "South Bronx." Slum.
I know. I used to live right at track-level on an elevated NYC subway line. The noise and filth were unbelievable. I had to move. We don't need this in Paradise. The tourists will hate it, and so will the locals.
Based on previous government construction projects like the H3, the Aloha Stadium, the Kalanianaole, the Convention Center, the UH baseball stadium, etc, etc, etc, this boondoggle will take 30-40 years to complete. It will cost ten times what was promised. It will be rife with flaws in design and construction. It will not perform as planned. It will not alleviate traffic. It will tie up traffic in construction. It will hurt our aina and our ohana, our communities and our way of life. The costs will go up and up forever, and we will be paying excise (sales) tax of five cents, ten cents, fifty cents on every ten dollars we spend everywhere just to subsidize it, until it finally collapses.
Most everything the local political and business establishment are saying about this is a lie. Go with your gut. Does this make sense to you? Are YOU going to ride it everywhere, every day? Do you know ANYBODY who will? Anywhere? Ever? Do you want to PAY for it forever? Then Just Say No!
VOTE NO ON RAIL!!!
.
.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM YOUR BLOGGERS:
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: BRING THEM ALL HOME ALIVE, NOW!
MUFI'S CAMPAIGN FOR GOVERNOR NEEDS RAIL-BUILDERS' DOUGH, THAT'S WHY
EH, BRAH, HANNEMANN SELLING US OUT FOR ONE SHORT-TERM LEASE ON WASHINGTON PLACE:
NEXT STOP: CONGRESS! ALL ABOARD DA MUFI EXPRESS TO WASHINGTON DC?
Steel-On-Steel Is The Biggest Boondoggle In Hawaii History: VOTE NO
When all the Powers That Be come out for something, you know it's A.) a really bad idea and B.) a back-room deal involving kabillions of dollars. "Leftist" former UH professor Democratic Congressman Neil Abercrombie, rarely seen outside of Washington DC these days, suddenly resurfaced to support this unworkable and mind-bogglingly expensive project. He wants to be able to cite the big chunk of Federal cash he claims he can bring to the table now, when the Uncle Dans die and he gets his turn at being Senatorial. -Even though there is NO money there as of now.
Thuggish former Mainland Republican Party apparatchik and current racist Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann has threatened and bullied the entire state to shove through this extremely limited, single-line "traffic solution" that will solve nothing, and take decades and trillions of dollars to build, tieing up traffic instead. The builders are all major contributors to his campaign for governor, for which he will have to resign the mayor's job NEXT year for which he is running for THIS year. Unacceptable.
The gigantic project, like all projects by the City, County and State, will end up taking many more years and many more dollars than deliberately underestimated today. It will uproot homes and businesses, destroy neighborhoods and devalue properties. It will do to Honolulu what the freeways did to the South Bronx: Dissect it, choke it, ghettoize it, ruin it. It will enrich a few and impoverish many. It is too limited to be of any real use, as it does not go to the major growth areas today and tomorrow here on Oahu.
The Leeward Side, Ewa Beach, Mililani, Wahiawa, the North Shore, the Windward Side, East Honolulu, Waikiki and the UH Manoa will not be served at all. Ever. Consequently, this project will not relieve traffic in the slightest. It will cause endless construction delays to traffic, year in and year out. So why are we doing this?
Number One: To get Mufi the Governor's job, by enriching his contributors, the rail-builders & speculators.
Number Two: To provide a link from government offices downtown to government offices in Kapolei: It's a civil-service shuttle, not a commuter rail line. Only Mufi and his cronies will ride it, and only for show.
Ironically, former Governor Ben Cayetano, who opposes this rail plan, once offered to move all or most State offices out to Kapolei, thus eliminating the need for government workers and citizens with government business to schlep all the way into the center of the city. Public union thug Gary Rodrigues refused to even consider it, saying, "That's a matter for negotiation." A show of hands by his union members would have negotiated it real quick: 20-30 minutes to and from work every day, or 2-3 hours every day? Mr Rodrigues is now in prison for ripping off the union.
Want to solve the traffic problem in Honolulu? It's simple, just do a liitle research: Get on the freeway at rush hour on a Monday holiday when the schools and the government offices are closed. Traffic is relatively light: You can drive from Kapolei to Downtown in 30-40 minutes, barring an accident or construction. The answer: Government has created the traffic problem itself through poor planning, bad site locations, and knee-jerk scheduling.
Fix government and the problem is solved. Move schools, jobs and government offices out Ewa. Build more affordable housing in town, close to jobs & schools, with all that money, or through new zoning & tax breaks to encourage private investment. Period. Problem solved. Next question! Instead, government wants to create a gigantic new problem that will only compound the old problem. The project itself will snarl traffic for decades, and destroy whole neigborhoods. With your tax dollars.
This train goes nowhere. Nobody is going to ride on it. Parking, shopping, bathrooms and other infrastructure will not be provided at every stop. The average projected speed of the train is half the posted speed limit on the freeway. There is nothing here that will get harried soccer-Mom taxi's and autophiliac suburban commuters out of their precious metal appendages. Nothing. Some carless wretches may abandon Da Bus for Da Train, but that will only hurt the bus. And it will cause construction delays until most of us are old & grey. Eh, maybe no more cars by then, yeah?
The only reason to do this is for local speculators' and Mainland companies' corporate profits, and for local politicians over-weaning ambitions for higher office no matter what the cost. Enough.
STOP RAIL NOW!
I'm sorry to have to say this. My grandfather worked on the railroad, and I love trains. If you've ever been to Europe or Japan, you've no doubt been amazed by their train systems. As a lapsed New Yorker, I miss the NYC subways as I never thought possible when subjected to them. But Manhattan is built around the subway system. And it is a system: It goes everywhere. There are multiple lines, running 24/7/52, for over a century now. It's cheap, it's fast, it's efficient.
But the Honolulu trains will not go everywhere. There will be only one line, and it will not run 24/7/52. It will not even be a subway: It will be built on hideous above-ground elevated tracks, twenty or thirty feet in the air, and run on deafening steel-on-steel wheels & track, not nice quiet rubber tires like the London Underground and the Paris Metro. Like parts of the ancient NYC MTA, it will go screeching through residential neighborhoods like Waipahu and Salt Lake, Aiea and Pearl City, Kalihi and Kakaako, disturbing everyone's quiet enjoyment, and uglifying whole districts forever. Think "South Bronx." Slum.
I know. I used to live right at track-level on an elevated NYC subway line. The noise and filth were unbelievable. I had to move. We don't need this in Paradise. The tourists will hate it, and so will the locals.
Based on previous government construction projects like the H3, the Aloha Stadium, the Kalanianaole, the Convention Center, the UH baseball stadium, etc, etc, etc, this boondoggle will take 30-40 years to complete. It will cost ten times what was promised. It will be rife with flaws in design and construction. It will not perform as planned. It will not alleviate traffic. It will tie up traffic in construction. It will hurt our aina and our ohana, our communities and our way of life. The costs will go up and up forever, and we will be paying excise (sales) tax of five cents, ten cents, fifty cents on every ten dollars we spend everywhere just to subsidize it, until it finally collapses.
Most everything the local political and business establishment are saying about this is a lie. Go with your gut. Does this make sense to you? Are YOU going to ride it everywhere, every day? Do you know ANYBODY who will? Anywhere? Ever? Do you want to PAY for it forever? Then Just Say No!
VOTE NO ON RAIL!!!
.
.
Labels: cost, elevated, hawaii, Honolulu, mass transit, metro, no ridership, no traffic solution, noise, Oahu, stop rail, subways, traffic, trains, underground, unworkable, useless, vote no
TO POST A COMMENT: CLICK ON "COMMENTS," "Post a Comment" or "# of COMMENTS" just below the SOCIAL BOOKMARKING LINKS (Digg, Delicious, etc), about three inches down from here. Please do comment. Thank you.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM YOUR BLOGGERS:
Suggestion Box & Tip Jar We would like to make over this blog to make it easier to access, to read and to comment on. We would also like to serve our readers better by providing more of what you need and want to see. All serious suggestions will be considered. We hope to move to our own domain in the near future, and we would like to ask for your financial assistance in doing that, and in upgrading our hardware & software. Small one-time donations and larger long-term subscriptions are welcome. Exclusive advertising is also available. If you think we are wasting our time in doing all this, please let us know. If you wish to help us, now is the time. As always, negative bullsh*t from right-wing trolls will be sh*tcanned. Thank you to everyone else. Please send feedback & PayPal contributions to cosanostradamusATexciteDOTcom. Thanks.
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: BRING THEM ALL HOME ALIVE, NOW!
posted by Cosa Nostradamus @ 11/02/2008 12:04:00 AM
0 comments
View blog reactions
