KC3 Final Draft
Over the past years in Hawaii we were ranked the worst in the nation for traffic. Proposing rail, some would think will help decrease traffic but, the rail wont help our traffic problems at all. The rail production would waste billions of dollars, ruin ancient Hawaiian burials along the proposed route, the maintenance would be horrible, and it wouldn’t benefit us.
The rail wouldn’t benefit Hawaii in anyway. It would only decrease traffic by 1.3 percent. What about the other 98 percent? That’s majority of the cars on the road so building rail is a waste of time and energy. Also the rail is just going to ruin Hawaii’s landscape and make us not unique. Why would a beautiful tropical island getaway want a big oversized rail system that would take away the natural beauty? We wouldn’t be unique because the mainland has these rail systems and they want to come here for vacation because Hawaii is different. They do not want to come here for something that looks like where they came from. Also we wouldn’t even know how much people would even ride the rail. If we don’t even have a good estimate on people that would ride it then we are practically building the rail for nothing. Even if people ride the rail they wouldn’t have the freedom to go anywhere because the rail only goes to certain locations. So if people want there freedom to drive anywhere they want and not ruin our beautiful island the rail wouldn’t benefit Hawaii in anyway. Besides this we haven’t even mentioned how much money the rail would cost!
The rail would waste billions of dollars. We could be spending the money for teachers and schools to provide an education instead of focusing so much on transportation. It is also just going to waste 5.2 billion dollars and will increase our taxes. Even for the people that are not going to ride it, they still have to pay for it. Paying for the rail would also almost run Hawaii bankrupt. They say that it only is going to cost 5.2 billion dollars as an estimate but it would really cost about 7 billion dollars as a final pay. Add that cost to the $5 billion the city has to spend for the sewer upgrades, and the hundreds of millions to bring our water system up to speed, and we may either go bankrupt or raise taxes. Plus we would have to maintain the rail. What makes you think that we would keep up with the maintenance problems. We can’t even maintain the potholes on out roads. We couldn’t even survey the land correctly to start building the rail.
Along the 20 mile route a ancient Hawaiian burial hotspot would be ruined. The Hawaii Supreme Court had to stop the construction because city didn’t complete the archeological survey. This is absurd because they were not even aware of what was in their way of their construction site. The rail would just be ruining a ancient Hawaiian burial. The hawaiians we here first so they should get their land back and we should not ruin it. Being lazy the city decided to conduct the archeological inventory in four phases, rather than surveying the entire 20-mile route before starting the project. We can’t just mess around with the land like that and just decide to dig anywhere. If we are going to build rail we need to be serious about it a complete legal matters.
Hawaii is a beautiful tropical getaway for many. But if we invest al we have in rail it wouldn't benefit us at all. It would take away the natural beauty and the site seeings that Hawaii has to offer, ruin ancient Hawaiian burials, and would just waste 5.2 billion dollars. This isn't the way Hawaii should be, this is not pono (the right way of living).
