Airport officials like
idea on bus schedules

Question: While picking up some friends at Honolulu Airport, I noticed that visitors kept asking Homeland Security personnel and other people on how to catch a bus to Waikiki and other town destinations. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and city bus company could provide a stand with the various route brochures where visitors leave the airport? When people are asked how to get to a certain destination by bus, they would direct them to the free brochures. That would be the aloha spirit!

Answer: Your suggestion is being taken to heart.

Bus schedules for Route 19 (Waikiki-Hickam) and Route 20 (Waikiki-Pearlridge), with stops at the airport in both directions, already can be obtained at visitor information booths at Honolulu Airport.

Your suggestion "is a wonderful idea and the visitor information program is considering placing bus route schedules in the other locations for the free and independent traveler," said Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.

The size of the bus schedule brochures now does not fit well into brochure racks at various locations at the airport, and there are no schedules available at the airport bus stop.

The visitor information program will look into providing and replenishing bus schedules at those locations, Ishikawa said.

"Mahalo to your reader for the suggestion," he added.

Q: Could you please answer why the city and its hired contractors left Moheau Street and 6th Avenue to Harding Avenue a tragic mess? For the past year, they've conducted work on a relatively good-conditioned road and left it in a horrid mess. The patching, if you can call it that, is sinking and the pavement is Third World at best.

A: If it's any consolation, the work to install a water pipe has not been completed, so the affected roads will be repaved at project's end.

Okada Trucking Co. is the contractor installing a total of 10,900 feet of an 8-inch pipe on Part II of the Board of Water Supply's Kapahulu Water System Improvements project.

Paliuli Street, 4th Avenue, Harding Avenue and 6th Avenue border the project area.

Because some of the side streets are currently being paved, this may have led to the mistaken impression that work has stopped, said Keith Matsumoto, the Board of Water Supply's capital projects executive.

But, he said, the current paving work has to be completed before paving of the major roadways can begin.

According to the terms of the contract, all the affected roadways will be paved curb-to-curb, except for 6th Avenue, in which only the lane that was trenched is to be repaved, Matsumoto said.

Meanwhile, Okada Trucking still has to connect the new lines to the existing system at various points along 6th Avenue, then complete testing and disinfection procedures, he said.

Construction work on the project is scheduled to be completed in early November.

A subcontractor will then repave the work area. Depending on the weather, the paving should be completed by Dec. 1, according to the Board of Water Supply.

|