TELLING US WHERE TO GO

TELLING US WHERE TO GO: Take a gander at this bizarrely ill-informed rant some editorial writer for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser decided to pen about Kaua`i today under a pay-walled "Off the News" banner....


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Wider highway should ease nerves on Kauai


Anyone who’s been to the Garden Island lately must have been nodding knowingly at the headline, “Kauai is Hawaii’s fastest growing county, census finds.” And for those who’ve experienced the traffic slog between Kapaa and Lihue, those nods turned to shakes of the head.


Kauai’s population rose 1.6 percent between July 2012 and July 2013. While the actual number seems small — 1,117 more people — that growth trend, alas, has created congestion that at times seems worse than Oahu’s rush hour. It’s not just the increase in cars, but also Kauai’s humble byways — one lane only in each direction, for example — that clogs things.


Some relief is occurring: A state project to widen Kaumualii Highway to ease Lihue traffic is now in its second phase. The little town is getting citified.


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Who writes this stuff? Somebody must of "offed" the news because this blurb doesn't have any basis in real live news.


As we on Kaua`i know the "super-highway" will go through the currently traffic-free path that leads to the South and West Sides and not through the East Side where the traffic is in Kapa`a-Wailua. It isn't even really "in" Lihu'e town proper and primarily runs through miles of rural agricultural land.


"Not For You Highway" as it's called here is a four-lane state-planned and federally and state-funded boondoggle which is intended to bring future visitors from the airport- bypassing Lihu`e town- to the tens of thousands of hotel rooms and hundreds of thousands of tourists we are "expecting," according to the state's (not the county's) plans for uncontrolled, rampant development of Po`ipu, over the next 50 years.


It's certainly not for we poor schnooks stuck in East Side traffic except maybe to commute for an hour from someplace we can afford to live so we can clean toilet bowls for a nickel over minimum wage.


As a matter of fact, while the tourists will have a straight four-lane shot to the resorts in Po`ipu, those commuting from Kapa`a to work there will, after battling the East Side traffic, have to sit in Lihu`e traffic too because there's no bypass of Lihu`e planned by the state.


Can you say "Revenge of the PLDC?


The lack of research notwithstanding, not having anyone actually on Kaua`i the S-A didn't even know to delve into what this waste of highway funds is really about... possibly because they didn't even know where it is.


But how would they know? Apparently, as the lack of Kaua`i datelines shows, Neighbor Island reporter Rosemary Bernardo "covers" Kaua`i from her desk in the paper's city room. Who do they think that harebrained scheme to drain the water from the Alakai Swamp was for? We prisoners of the East Side traffic?


Try a hundred thousand new tourists a day who tax our sewers, police, fire and water while the legislature "scoops" the Transient Accommodation Tax (TAT) that was intended to offset the county's' costs each year.


Apparently the editorial's scribe is among those who just couldn't understand what we had against the "H-4" aka The SuperFerry. Or the PLDC.


And it seems, never will.