Rail is solid solution to traffic congestion

I completely agree with the Sunday commentary, "Rail is Oahu’s future" (Star-Advertiser, Insight, Aug. 28).

Some seem to forget that rail was supposed to be built back in the early 1990s. It wasn’t, and since then, traffic has just gotten worse, despite adding more highway lanes and buses. The problem is too many cars and the solution is rail.

I know many who support rail and can’t wait for it to be completed. I wish more people would speak up over those vocal opponents who seem to want to go back to Square One and reconsider our past decisions.

Doing nothing is unacceptable and not a solution to traffic or our future quality of life.

Joey Dillinger
Kailua

Bravo for running article by rail critics

How refreshing and remarkable to see the piece on Honolulu’s ridiculous rail project by Walter Heen, Ben Cayetano, Cliff Slater and Randy Roth ("How the City Misled the Public," Star-Advertiser, Insight, Aug. 21).

Refreshing to see the hard, cold and unvarnished truth about rail expressed in clear and concise prose; and remarkable that it appeared in your publication, which had long been a complicit instrument in the massive and misleading propaganda onslaught wrought by the mayor’s office, both present and past.

But then, that was the old Advertiser. Perhaps the new Star-Advertiser is more like the old Bulletin, which was not afraid to pursue the journalistic integrity and pluck in presenting another superb treatise co-authored by Roth and Heen, "Broken Trust."

Let’s hope this one has the same effect.

Jon Rasmussen
Honolulu

HSTA finds itself in unusual position

The Hawaii State Teachers Association claims that the state’s contract negotiating team unfairly used threats of layoffs or higher pay cuts to intimidate the union, and it wants the private documents and witnesses to support its claim. It claims the state is not bargaining "in good faith" ("State played tough guy in talks, HSTA says," Star-Advertiser, Aug. 26).

Wait a minute. While negotiating the last collective bargaining agreement, didn’t the HSTA agree "in good faith" to drug testing and then refuse to do it after the agreement was signed? Did its attorney, Herb Takahashi, only discover the unconstitutionality of it afterward? Can the state and taxpayers have the private HSTA documents on that fast one?

The HSTA now faces a tough state negotiating team that won’t roll over, and the HSTA is having a hard time negotiating with the tables turned. Somebody is going to come out of this debacle with pie on his face and, at the moment, it doesn’t look to be the state.

Orson Moon
Aiea

Entire North Shore needs traffic study

Your editorial ("North Shore’s future at stake," Star-Advertiser, Aug. 24) said that "the proposed visions for the Turtle Bay Resort and the Laie expansion are distinct and separate ventures."

I disagree.

The two proposed projects are a mere four miles away from each other within Koolauloa. And the two projects are not all that distinct from each other. Given their geographic proximity to each other, they are in fact systemically related — one feeds on the other in terms of its impacts.

If both projects were to be built as proposed, the traffic consequences would be enormous and the rural character of this region would be destroyed. Millions of taxpayer dollars would have to spent on road widening.

Before either of these plans is moved ahead, what we need is what Professor Panos Prevedouros suggests: a detailed regional traffic-impact study of the area from Kaneohe to Haleiwa.

Jim Anthony
Kaaawa