Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Another Voggy Day



But not too bad for paddle practice ....

7 comments:

blournalist said...

Mr. Information please,

Those houses on the hill... they don't go north of Waahila Ridge, yet they are quite packed together south of it. What's the story there?

Kay said...

It's a whole lot more voggy looking on my end of the island. Surprisingly, my mom was OK. I was sure she'd be affected. Me, on the other hand... was not feeling great.

RONW said...

blournalist- The adjacent uninhibited section is more a valley with rounded sides on both flanks, and I believe this makes the topography angled too much side-to-side, in addition to the up and down direction. Where the houses are, they're on a generally flat facet of land tilted downhill.

Kay- somehow, looking to the ocean makes it seem voggier. I was in an irritable mood all day and dunno why except for the possibility of breathing in too much sulfur dioxide.

Hattie said...

It's not too bad this a.m. I don't feel like going out and running a marathon, though.

RONW said...

Hattie- da vog in combination with the holidays after effects is potent.

blournalist said...

Thanks for that.

While I'm at it, what are your thoughts on the elevated train?

RONW said...

blournalist- as a card carrying union member I don't have the luxury of commenting on controversial cost efficiency aspects of Honolulu's Mass Transit (Light Rail), or they're break my arms and legs.

What I can say though is that the purpose of mass transit here is ass backways. When completed mass transit would alleviate the traffic jams to and from a part of the island that was originally touted from 20 years ago as Honolulu's second city, to and from greater Honolulu. The traffic that exists today is becuz while subdivisions sprung up like mushrooms at Second City, there were nowhere close to the necessary jobs created at Second City so people still drive to Honolulu for employment.

In that sense, Light Rail primarily serves the failed Second City and incidental beneficiaries along the physical route. Light Rail doesn't run around the entire island or is any where as expansive as BART in the bay area. It doesn't even spur off to Waikiki. Or to the University of Hawaii main campus in Honolulu from the Honolulu terminus. The driving force behind funding mass transit was that neighborhoods and business would gradually develop along the transit's route reducing living densities in the inner city and increasing tax revenues, but here the areas that Light Rail serve are already fully or almost fully developed. Thus no benefit there.

If city planners can't get social engineering right with the Second City idea, what's the prospects of the same experts getting the promised benefits of Light Rail right by the same token. I think nil. To begin with it's a humongous pipe dream to expect that commuters would give up their cars to jump on a sardine can mass transit in addition to having to hike a ½-mile to their workplace from the nearest train stop in the morning and repeat it again after a day's work. Do city bus drivers ride the bus. No, they perfer to drive their cars even with free bus passes as a company benefit. By the same token, even if Light Rail fares were free during the morning and afternoon rush hour periods, I doubt it'll encourage sufficient ridership to reduce traffic congestion in any meaningful numbers.

About the only thing Light Rail has going for itself, is at least all the money that has been so far raised from the ½-percent tacked on to sales tax to fund Light Rail will go to where it was intended. The project will need more money naturally but the portion that's been collected, that is. Otherwise, that money will disappear into ether. Hypothethically speaking, Light Rail might make feasible license plate rotation M-F to cut down on traffic in the future.