Where else but Hawaii?
The July 14 WHT proudly showcased on the front page: “Stoplight Ahead” with an accompanying photo of traffic jam and workers laying asphalt with a caption of “workers pave the southbound lane of the Queen Kaahumanu Highway on Thursday”… all seven workers. I got a chuckle about that. Seriously. … A total of seven workers paving a 4-mile stretch of road at a cost of $128.1 million after more than five years (including the delays from appealing the award of the contract … twice).
Where in America or anywhere else in the world does it take three to five-plus years to build a 4-mile stretch of road? I guess if you only have one paving machine in your $128 million budget, it apparently will take three to five years to build 4 miles of roadway.
The nation’s first “highway,” the Historic Columbia River Highway was built in just nine years and was 75 miles long and went through granite mountains (amazing tunnels), went along the side of cliffs with steep grades, they built ornate bridges. … But then again, it was about creating jobs back then, and hundreds of people worked on the project …with pick axes and mules.
Of the four additional pictures displayed on page 5A as a continuation of the article, two of the pictures show lines of backed up traffic, pylons, but not a single worker in the photos? Albeit the fourth picture shows people working, it’s the same seven workers from the front page running the same single paving machine, lol. Where are the other employees, it’s a weekday? Paving machines? No wonder why it’s taken so many years to build a paltry 4 miles of road.
Only in Hawaii … Seriously, $128 million! No disrespect but … Get-er-done fellas.
Mark Chesler
Kailua-Kona
Opinion page should focus on local issues
Janice Glennie has been making her political proclivities abundantly clear in this newspaper over the last 20 years at least. We get you!
What is less clear, is why this newspaper continues to provide her with so much “opinion” space. How many times do we have to be subjected to her squint-eyed extreme viewpoints? … It grows really tiresome.
She lives in an alternate universe; one of her own making.
Surely, the editors could find some write-in comment that is more appropriate to our local issues and less poisonously divisive.
Dave Hurst
Holualoa
Women should have the freedom to choose
I read about the appointment of Brett Kavanugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and wondered where our county was headed. Shouldn’t women be the one to decide about bringing a child into this world, not some outside entity. After all, it’s the women that will have to nurture and protect the child for the rest of its life. If she chooses not to have a child, that too should be her decision.
Personally, I wouldn’t want some outsider telling me what I can and cannot do. It would then be like a police state. Women have too long lived under the power of men making all the decisions as they do in many Third World countries. Let’s hope America doesn’t end up being like those places. We should have the freedom to choose.
Colleen Miyose-Wallis
Kailua-Kona