Fee needed to fund public transit

We do live on an island and bringing too many cars, plastic bottles or Styrofoam coolers just makes no sense as the more stuff we bring over, the more crowding of roads and landfills. We only have a finite amount of space.

So we do need some kind of limitations on cars but I would rather it not affect the local population. If we made more public transportation and encouraged visitors to use it, less rental cars would be on the highway and locals could also take advantage.

Places like Princeville could have more walking paths and resorts could pick up their visitors at the airport. It should be very easy and convenient to get a bus at the airport for anyone not wanting to rent a car. Electric buses could circulate all over the island to give people clean, convenient public transport.

It makes sense in a community like the North Shore to have free shuttle buses that circulate between Princeville, Hanalei, Kilauea and Haena. We could build surfboard lockers at the Hanalei North Shore beaches so that surfers could keep their boards right at the beach. This would allow them the option to ride the bus to the beach and not have to bring a car or find parking. I noticed that Waikiki has surfboard lockers for locals who do not have to transport their boards to the beach every time they want to go surfing.

We need to make it easier to visit Kauai without renting a car. Because of the flood in Haena and new park rules that limit the numbers at Ke‘e Beach, it is imperative that a shuttle system be developed so that people can see the entire North Shore without renting a car.

The buses should be free to all and, to fund it, the county could pass an airport tax of $50 per visitor that could fund buses all over the island. With a million people a year coming to Kauai, $50 million a year could fund these buses, the drivers and also road maintenance.

Local people who live on the island would not have to pay extra taxes or fees because the tourist industry would be funding it.

New Zealand just passed a bill to collect a fee at the airports to support their infrastructure because of tourist impacts on local facilities. Bermuda has a law that each household can only have one vehicle, however, that would never fly here on Kauai where pickup trucks and second vehicles are deemed a “necessity” and “a right.”

So let’s get more public transport, more walking space in our communities and free and frequent buses allowing anyone to travel around Kauai without a car.

Kapaa traffic congestion is causing stress among locals. Let’s build another bridge over Wailua River so that the bypass road would completely bypass Wailua. A road could go along the base of Sleeping Giant that connects to an overpass that could be built over the road before Opaekaa Falls and would lead to the new bridge over the Wailua River.

The bridge could connect to a road that would be mauka of the highway for a mile or so and then traffic could reenter the main highway going toward Lihue just after the correctional facility. We also need to make the Kapaa bypass two lanes all the way rather than one way on the north end of town.

A bridge over Wailua River to get traffic out of Kapaa and also opening the tunnel that connects between Koloa and Lihue could relieve traffic congestion on the highway between Lihue and the Poipu-Koloa area.

Build a new bridge over Wailua River, open those cane roads to bypass traffic and use the tunnel!

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Michaelle Edwards is a resident of Princeville.