Better routes
needed
Recently, my car needed repairs, and I had to get downtown for a 5:30 p.m. class. I do not use a wheelchair. The Hele-On bus stop is a brisk 10-minute walk from my house to the Life Care Center of Hilo.
When I told friends I planned to take the Intra Hilo Waiakea Uka Bus, they reacted with shock and horror: “Those buses never come! Be careful!”
The good news is the bus arrived on time. It was clean. The operator was courteous. No one bothered me. It took me where I needed to be.
The bad news is there was no evening return bus, and I had to get a ride home. The return bus, when it runs, takes a different route that only lists two mauka stops, Haihai/Ainaola and the Waiakea Uka Gym, which are miles apart. I assume passengers can request stops in between, but that is not noted on the bus schedule
For a while, I have wondered why there is no bus service to certain key locations in Hilo — the police station, the Aging and Disability Resource Center, etc.
Would the new mass transit administrator consider implementing a regularly scheduled circular shuttle route, downtown and wheelchair accessible, to drop off and pick up passengers at those key points and others: the library, Hilo Medical Center, Urgent Care, county housing office, supermarkets, drug stores, the Lyman Museum, etc?
Better routes, conveniently timed, which provide access to key locations could improve the public perception of Hele-On and increase its ridership.
T. Spinola-Campbell
Hilo
It was about water
The recent article on Puna shortage of cops contained several contradictions.
Since the populations of Puna and Hilo are essentially the same, while the distances cops must drive to answer calls in Puna is several multiples of Hilo, it should follow (according to the police chief’s description of standards based on how spread out we are) that Puna would have far more cops assigned than Hilo.
A little history: I, along with others, filed federal civil rights complaints in 2000 to help the police overcome the political history of always short-changing Puna while using the taxes from Puna to make Hilo a great place to live. At that time, the police were privately grateful for us supporting them. I suggest that is the history the chief refers to.
History regarding the tax base lost in Puna: During and after the lava flows that covered Kalapana area in the early ’90s, I was working on the Puna Community Development Plan with other Puna residents. We worked with FEMA officers to try to prevent the FEMA reimbursement for water systems lost in Kalapana from being applied, against FEMA guidelines, for water lines to Kapoho. We wanted the water lines to go into Ainaloa or Hawaiian Paradise Park where the lava flow risk was much lower. I went against Harry Kim and lost.
There was a certain large landowner in Keaau, with development plans, that did not want to see schools or water in HPP. They had done a study of real estate values in the mid-1980s which indicated that keeping HPP without those services was key to getting higher prices for their future developments in Keaau. A few years later, new school sites were, sure enough, located in Keaau instead of HPP.
It was all about the water. That whole process was not about improving the tax base, because water and schools in HPP, which is in the same lava flow risk zone as Hilo, would quickly improve the tax base more than any other investment, then and now.
Bonnie Goodell
Volcano
