Letter to the Advertiser: UH-Manoa Should be on initial rail route

 

Today, the Honolulu-Advertiser published a letter I submitted on rail. The letter ran alongside two other letters to the editor which repeated some of the same points made in my own letter. 

A letter from Don Buote from Hawaii Kai points out, "it must go past...college campuses...It must also go past Pearl Harbor--don't people realize how many people work there?" Mark Shibata from Waipahu pointed out the disconnect if the airport is not connected to Waikiki:  "Tourists who 'might' take rail will still have to get off at Ala Moana and get transportation to Waikiki." 

Here's the letter they ran:

UH-MANOA SHOULD BE ON INITIAL RAIL ROUTE

Now that rail has been approved, there's been a lot of talk about changing the route from Salt Lake to Pearl Harbor and the airport.

While it seems like Salt Lake greatly needs rail — there always seems to be a bottleneck right at Salt Lake regardless of the time of day — I think it's a no-brainer that Pearl Harbor takes priority over Salt Lake based on the huge population that commutes to Pearl Harbor every day.

The airport's all very nice and good, but if it's not connected to Waikiki, I'm not sure how useful it will be to visitors.

All this talk of Salt Lake and the airport misses the most glaring omission in our rail route, however. If there is one stop that should have been on the initial rail line, it's the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

As we all know, traffic on O'ahu ebbs and flows according to the UH-Manoa calendar. UH-Manoa is currently on the map as part of "planned future extensions," but if the initial rail route is not well used then this spur will never be built and we will never know the full extent to which rail might be have been used by the community.

Jacquelyn Chappel 

Honolulu