LETTER: Concerned About DOT’s Deferment of Hwy Projects

I’m deeply concerned about the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation’s decision to focus entirely on system preservation and defer new highway projects for the next 20 years.

This decision will have a negative impact on traffic congestion, and the health of Hawai‘i’s construction industry.

There are several highway improvement projects on both sides of the Big Island—Waimea mini-bypass, Saddle Road Extension, Highway 130 widening, etc.—
that are slated for deferral as a result of this decision.

These proposed projects will help improve traffic flow, and employ a significant amount construction workers over the life these projects.

The decision to focus solely on system preservation projects will likely employ less construction workers, and won’t help mitigate traffic congestion This is an extremely shortsighted decision, as a balance between system preservation and adding capacity needs to be found.

HDOT asserts they need more funding to do their mission. They need to sell this to the public at large.

For example, they have to come up with a 20% of the cost of new highway to qualify for the 80% FHWA match, which has put system preservation on the back burner.

I also propose HDOT do away with the weight tax, and replace it with a vehicle registration tax, which would be based upon how old the vehicle is.

In addition, they need to increase the gasoline tax, and find a way to assess a fee on hybrid/electric vehicles that use less gasoline. These vehicles are not paying their fair share to use our highways.

HDOT’s decision to arbitrarily reallocate more money to the system preservation over more capacity is extremely unwise. The population of our state will continue to increase over the next 20 years, so new highways will have to be constructed improve our transportation infrastructure.