Still time for city to adopt light rail

We have time to bring our concerns to the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to fine-tune the development of the rail line ("Property owners in path of train given runaround," Star-Advertiser, Sept. 28). 

Can we convert it to light rail before it destroys our Honolulu?

Can we imagine the ugliness, noise, crime, destruction of the historic views and buildings in Downtown Honolulu, once the concrete pillars and steel rails reach Bishop Street?

Our current chaos connected to road repairs will pale in comparison to the agony, pain and road rages we will be experiencing daily in the future once rail hits the Kakaako/Downtown area.

The time to stop and rethink is now.

Lila Gardner
Makiki

Where’s mayor’s alternate routes?

Candidate for mayor Kirk Caldwell said that if elected mayor of Honolulu, he would make changes to the route of the downtown portion of the rail guideway.

Now, after a year and a half as mayor, we the public are still waiting to hear his downtown rail proposals. 

Where are the designs he has solicited from licensed transit designers for the most efficient routing away from the harbor?

The old downtown rail route calls for it to be built over Nimitz Highway and have three huge, block-long downtown stations some 40 feet up in the sky. 

The mayor needs to show us his promised downtown re-routed rail designs.

Roger Picard
Makiki 

Rail maintenance will sap city funds 

Charles Ferrell wrote that the upcoming rail system will cost more in money, contracts and taxes ("Rail isn’t about reducing traffic," Star-Advertiser, Letters, Aug. 29).

I would like to know how the city intends to pay for the management, maintenance and daily operation of this rail system. 

Revenues from the rail ridership will not pay for the rail upkeep.  

A few years back, when the city budget was a lot lower, the bus and Handi-Van system already was being subsidized $125 million a year, 9 percent of the city’s budget. At that time, it was said that when finished, the combined bus, Handi-Van and rail systems would cost the city 19 percent of the budget. 

Where does the city intend to get the additional revenue to "subsidize" the rail system?

Maybe more thought about where the rail starts, goes and ends would help pay for the cost of this behemoth.  

Ted Kanemori
Kaneohe

Monsanto made poison for war  

Don’t take my word for it. 

Don’t believe the TV ads. 

People can find the facts about GMO themselves.

They can go to their computers and search the phrase "Monsanto" and "Agent Orange."

They will find that:

>> Monsanto is a company that supports GMO farming.

>> Monsanto is a company that produced Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

>> U.S .soldiers were told that Agent Orange was not harmful to humans.

Now, 40 years later, our brave men and women of the military who were exposed to Agent Orange are suffering very horrible endings to their lives.  

Let’s not take the chance of poisoning our aina for generations to come.

John Wong
Aiea

Workers don’t work equally 

I worked for more than 50 years and still work from time to time. 

I can say this: There is no such thing as equal work.

In almost any group of workers, there is always one who does more than required and almost always one who does less than all the others in the group.

Equal work for equal pay does not happen. 

The employer must have the option of paying more to the best workers. 

Otto Cleveland
Pearl City