• People won’t be giving up cars People won’t be giving up cars There is no doubt that immediate action must be taken with this General Plan update to stop the multitude of problems that confront Kauai. But as with
• People won’t be giving up cars
People won’t be giving up cars
There is no doubt that immediate action must be taken with this General Plan update to stop the multitude of problems that confront Kauai.
But as with past General Plans, we fail to listen to experienced people like Anne Walton who is a professional planner and along with dedicated members from the public has put together pages of plans that we need. We find that our Planning Department already has their own plans made up and that any other suggestions are but an exercise in futility.
Even by making the huge mistake of not at least listening to Ms. Walton and the people involved, why is it that those making the decisions cannot learn from past plans and eliminate the issues that do not work and activate the plans that do?
The many problems on our island do not take a genius to see them — each person in a position of power can see the same problems that their constituents are complaining about. But instead of pointing the finger back and forth (an administration problem or a council problem) why not try getting together and acting as one body that gets them solved?
It took a policeman to figure out a way to keep traffic flowing on Kuhio Highway at the Hanamaulu intersection — no signal stoppage in the northbound lane — not even his job, but we listened to him and it made driving a lot easier for everyone.
Elected officials know as well as Forum writers Larry Arruda, Gabriela Taylor and others who have written and said that our island is past the population tipping point for the infrastructure that we have.
Why are we following Smart Streets plans by adding more bike lanes along all roads when these seldom-used lanes only narrow our roads and exacerbate our traffic problems? Even our General Plan done by the county shows that by 2035 over 80 percent of our people will still be using their vehicles.
No one in the foreseeable future is going to abandon their vehicle, so why push for more bikes, buses, shuttles and walking — a huge waste of money and time that should be spent on wider and more alternate roads to move around our island. Contra-flow and the Kapaa Bypass have proven to work so expand them (our cane haul roads) and live in the real world.
Other good ideas that have been suggested by the people are putting a higher tax on rental vehicles and getting HTA and KVB to give the county more money to defray the usage given to our roads and recreation areas.
Yes, we need tourism, but first we have to put our infrastructure in place to handle them or we will kill the goose that lays the golden egg with traffic jams and overused recreational areas.
Kauai has a lot of intelligent constituents, please listen to them.
Glenn Mickens, Kapaa
