I find myself thinking about: “What time should I leave my house to be on time? Will traffic congestion only get worst, like it has over the last few years? When will things get any better?” It seems that we are leaving home and work earlier and earlier (or later and later) to “beat the traffic” here on Kauai.
To digress a bit, driving cars on roads is about 100 years old and is one of the highest levels of agreement we have achieved as people living on planet Earth. I believe it is a privilege rather than a right for any one individual to operate a motor vehicle. As a privilege we are compelled, if not required, to look and listen for others as we fly along in our 5,000-pound machines at 50 mph directly towards each other seemingly with little thought to the obvious danger.
Rarely, if ever, when sitting in traffic do we see ourselves as a part of the traffic problem, and although automobiles are an “invasive species” we do not treat them as such.
What exactly is a “traffic problem”? Too many vehicles on the road in the same vicinity at the same time. Or maybe: Not enough road space to accommodate the number of vehicles that need to use it at the same time.
To create a solution, we should begin scientifically: We cannot measure what we do not count so, let’s count the number of vehicles on this island so we can measure the size of our problem.
First goal: Count the number of vehicles on Kauai.
Second goal: Count the number of miles of roads on Kauai.
Third goal: Divide the number of miles by the number of vehicles, giving us the number of vehicles per mile of road.
That number (vehicles per mile of existing road) becomes a baseline that can be guide line for us to create laws and decisions we make about the limitation that our island can provide. An example might be: Kauai has 40,000 vehicles and 4,000 miles of roads. So our baseline becomes 10 vehicles per mile.
If that baseline could stay constant over the years, we could solve our traffic problems by coordinating movements of our traffic (i.e., school and business start and finish times, traffic circles, bypass roads). Additionally, if we citizens could agree on a guiding principal eventually being made into a law: “One car comes on our island — One car is decommissioned or goes off our island.” After all, we are an island, which defines limitation.
For every car that is brought here and sold here, an existing registered car must be taken out of commission and shipped away or recycled. A straight-up, new law, including government, military, car dealers and rental car companies abiding. The current cycle of simply adding new cars and increasing the burden on our road systems backfires on a regular basis, causing traffic jams.
We could set a trend of sustainability as an example for all the Hawaiian Islands to follow.
I hope we all vote for folks who are thinking and talking about this problem.
•••
Mark Jeffers is a resident of Hanapepe.
Great idea Mark! Here’s even a better one! For every new car arriving remove two from the Island. Of course the only realistic cars to remove belong to rental car companies. By the time rental cars get to zero, our bus system and Uber should be thriving!!
Mark Jeffers, et al, may find interesting how another island, Singapore, controls its vehicle population (Google Certificate of Entitlement). But to offset the extremely high cost of private vehicle ownership, Singapore also has an outstanding and inexpensive public transportation system.
Dick Andersen
Spoken like a true colonizer… Cars? Why don’t you just remove one person every time someone moves here problems solved
for every person that arrives, remove 2 californians and a ice head moke.
Dumb. Cars are not an invasive species in Hawaii … PEOPLE are the invasive species. If you really want to solve the traffic problems on Kauai, everybody should just move back to where they or their ancestors came from. How about THIS rule. For every idiot that is born or moves here, another idiot must die or move back home. Real solutions to traffic issues will be the result of foresight and good planning; not moratoriums and simplistic arbitrary rules. Oh by the way, if you DO leave, you might find the traffic is even worse where you came from than it is here.
Mark, what you need to accomplish this is a dictatorship and has no place in a supposedly free country. Your proposal is something we would expect from a Neo-Stalinist…
RG DeSoto
Great, I vote your car is the first we get rid of.
The problem is not the amount of cars on Kauai. It is the amount of RENTAL CARS on Kauai. They are easily spotted. They are the new mustang convertibles and shiny jeep wranglers. Using your flawed logic of scraping one car for every new car brought on the island to “solve” this problem would deprive both newly licensed local drivers and new residents the ability to readily purchase a car.
And one final question for you, Mark. Do you own a car? If so, you could consider setting an example by selling your own car to someone in need of one. After all, if you are not part of the solution, are you not part of the “problem”?
good idea Mark…does that mean the locals with six vehicles in driveway too? Or do we just toss them over the cliffs to rot and bring in another new one? I have never seen such trash and discarded appliances, etc tossed into a beautiful land in the first world…and I doubt the tourists are doing it, rather they are bringing in money and resources that keep this little island afloat.
Aloha Kakou, Aloha Mark,
Do you really think in your equation that we should count all the residential and back roads, etc…that would give us a false sense of congestion, after all it is really only Kuhio Hwy on the eastside and the other spots wherever.
Can we use the word CARAVANS, CONTROLLING TRAFFIC IN 100 Car Caravans. How many cars pass ABC Store in Kapa’a and how many cross ,over the Wailua Bridge, in say just a southerly direction.
Other studies of shorter distances…like Hanalei Town to Princeville.
Moving traffic in 100 Car Caravans May be a quick fix and a semi long therm solution, requiring only a few “Traffic Monitors” at strategic locations. Umbrellas not included.
“JOIN A 100 CAR CARAVAN” in your next traffic jam.
Mahalo,
Charles
So, maybe you get to choose who has to give up a car each time?
Maybe just have a police squad select them at will.
We’ll let you tell the people who work at Kuhio and King and Servco that you outlawed their business until the police impound enough cars for them to continue.
Then, we can all get to work maintaining the cars that remain (only in the hands of the people who already have them, of course – nobody else gets to have a car unless the police can impound one or there’s a volunteer). That won’t affect the price of existing cars and maintenance at all, will it? Watch for the Craigslist ad: “1994 Piece of Junk Car with valid county permit: barely runs; upholstery in shreds; roof leaks; chickens living in trunk. Asking $45,000 OBO. Will accept more. Cash only.”
Eventually, we can make this island look exactly like Cuba.
hawaii has already turned into puerto rico, so thumbs up on that
OK, Let’s start with taking away you car(s) first!
Sounds good to me!
Or we could improve the bus system and throw in carpooling incentives to minimize people needing to drive.
I used to think it was the tourists and rental cars that was really contributing to the increase in traffic. While tourists do account for some of the traffic, look around in the morning on your commute. Many tourists aren’t even on the road yet. By and large, the morning traffic, and much of the evening traffic is residents of Kauai. Artificially restricting the number of cars will only drive up the prices and local residents will suffer as it will be the rich, out of state part time residents who will be able to afford the skyrocketing prices. Two lane roads just don’t cut it much of anywhere. Solutions are more complex than simply removing a car for every car. Fact is, the local population is growing and that’s an issue that is not easily addressed on a small island.
How about the county government takes some steps to cure traffic congestion in Kapaa? Shocking concept I know
Maybe,
Manually controlled traffic lights in Kapaa that will assure maximum traffic flow? Could be done by 1-2 people.
So much for Lucky you live Kauai!!! What a joke!
The sad part is in five years when we look back at our current traffic situation we may be referring to it as ‘the good old days of traffic ease’. Government is not offering solutions, neither are many of you. Easier to criticize i guess. At least Mr. Jeffers is offering a personal suggestion.
I’m not sure about the rest of these suggestions, but it would be really, really helpful to learn not only the number of cars registered in the county (which could easily be found from public records), but also how many are rental cars, and how many are residents’. This way, we can see if the commonly mentioned fix of limiting rental would actually help, or if we as a community need to take more or different steps
The problem is our petroleum based lifestyle. Ocean full of plastic, air full of greenhouse gas emissions, roads full of cars. more stronger hurricanes, huge wildfires. It’s all the same problem and it’s everywhere. We can try to manage it but it’s not going away. We can’t stop ourselves. How about no cars?
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 and plastic stuff. If we made more public transportation and encouraged visitors to use it, less rental cars would be on the highway. Places like Princeville could have more walking paths and resorts that picked up tourists. Resorts could pick up their visitors and it should be very easy to get a bus at the airport for anyone not wanting to rent a car. Electric buses that circulated between Princeville, Hanalei, Kilauea and Haena could make it easier to visit Kauai without renting a car. The buses should be free to all and we could have 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 dollars a year could fund these buses, the drivers and also road maintenance. New Zealand just passed a bill to collect a fee at the airport to support infrastructure because of tourist impact on local facilities. Bermuda has a law that each household can only have one vehicle however that would never fly here on Kauai where pick-up trucks are deemed a ‘ necessity’ and a right. So get more public transport, more walking space and free buses that were more frequent and allowed everyone to easily travel around without a car. Also why not another bridge over Wailua river so that the bypass road would not turn back towards the marketplace in one was headed towards Lihue? A road could go along the base of Sleeping Giant that connects to a bypass over the road before Opaekaa falls to a bridge over Wailua river. The bridge would connect to a road that would allow traffic to flow back in towards Lihue near the correctional facility. Also the Kapaa bypass needs to be two land all the way on both ends. Another bridge over Wailua river and also opening the tunnel road between Koloa and Lihue making another highway would relieve stress on the south side. Open these cane roads and use the tunnel!