Rail a good idea
Expanding on Tomas Belsky’s recent letter (Your Views, Aug. 23), I would love to see a rail project start with a short line from Hilo harbor to downtown Hilo, possibly ending at the bus station by the bandstand.
This would be a fun experience for visitors arriving on the cruise ships and bring them into downtown Hilo with a station at Banyan Drive for hotel guests.
Then, perhaps, a longer line could run up the original right-of-way on Railroad Avenue all the way to Pahoa. This could serve as a commuter route in the mornings and afternoons as well as taking tourists out to Pahoa.
There could be a station at the Railroad/Makaala intersection for easy access to the shopping centers. Stations in Hawaiian Paradise Park and Hawaiian Beaches could serve commuters with park-and-ride facilities.
I have heard that the vintage engines and passenger cars of the Lahaina-Kaanapali railroad are still available for sale on Maui. Could this equipment find a new life serving East Hawaii?
I can dream!
Bob Alder
Hilo
‘Corpflation’
What is being called inflation is what Robert Reich calls “corpflation,” the gratuitous overcharging by corporations to enrich their share holders and CEOs, because they can get away with it and blame inflation.
The federal reserve will raise interest rates like they always do whenever the specter of a recession is on the horizon, which will cause inflation.
What’s funny is corporations need us much more than we need them, but they’d rather we not know that.
What did we do before corporations got so big that they started telling us what we need? After all, they are out to sell overproduced products that make them lots of money from things they want us to believe we need. But do we?
The ones we must watch out for are the mega-corporations that engulf everything in their path — the monopolists that eliminate competition and charge all that the traffic will bear. C’esspool la vie!
Dave Kisor
Pahoa