Question: My current Hawaii license plates are dirty and bent. Is there a procedure to replace them with the same number? These are not vanity plates.
Answer: “No. Standard issued license plates cannot be reproduced. A dirty, bent, or faded license plate should be taken to a satellite city hall and exchanged for a new standard issued license plate. The cost is $5.50, which covers the fee for a new plate and emblem. If the vehicle registration is within 45 days of its expiration date, the annual registration renewal fee will be applied to the transaction,” Harold Nedd, spokesperson for Honolulu’s Department of Customer Services, said in an email.
No appointment is needed for this Express Window service, according to the city’s website.
Meanwhile, on the topic of license plates, after we reported Dec. 29 (808ne.ws/1229KL Opens in a new tab) that the government plans to retire Hawaii’s distinctive rainbow license plate when the current sequence of letters and numbers runs out, numerous readers asked why the government couldn’t keep the rainbow base plate and change the letter-number configuration instead. Nearly 13 years ago, the then-administrator of Honolulu’s Motor Vehicle and Licensing Division had said that would be possible, as quoted in Kokua Line on Feb. 20, 2010, in a column we forwarded to the city last week.
Last week and again Wednesday, we asked the city whether there were ways to extend the lifespan of the rainbow plate, which was first issued in 1991, asking about the feasibility of readers’ suggestions on potential new sequences and past comments from the then-DMV administrator. We asked whether potential extensions the administrator had described, such as flipping the letter-number pattern to number-letter, were still valid today, and about reader suggestions, such as changing the configuration to four letters and two numbers, from three and three, for example. We did not receive a response to those questions by deadline Wednesday. Nedd said he hoped to provide more information soon.
The state Department of Transportation had earlier referred questions on this topic to the Honolulu municipal government, which manages the contract for license plate issuance.
Q: How many red-light cameras are giving tickets, not warnings?
A: Two, although a third is expected to be activated Friday, according to the state Department of Transportation’s website. Cameras at the intersections of Vineyard Boulevard and Palama Street, and Vineyard and Liliha Street, have been generating citations since last month, and the camera system at Vineyard and Nuuanu Avenue is expected to switch from warnings to citations Friday, it said.
Mahalo
On Monday my family, which includes three children 8-years-old or younger, and I traveled on Southwest Airlines from Hilo to Honolulu around 3:30 p.m. We hadn’t heard the boarding announcement while waiting in the downstairs airport lobby, so we were among the last to board the plane. As we have three young children, it would have been ideal for us to sit together, but there were only single seats available throughout the plane. Mahalo plenty to the kind fellow passengers who moved over so we could sit closer together. One was a woman named Stacey, another was a young gentleman and finally one was a woman who I believe not only gave up her seat for me, but then later gave up her second seat to switch with my husband and infant daughter (lap child) since there were too many lap children in that one row. Moreover, when we landed, she helped my husband get our bag in the overhead compartment, which was no longer in my husband’s reach since he had to move up a couple rows. Thank you for the kindness of strangers at such busy holiday times. — C.T.
Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-500, Honolulu, HI 96813; call 808-529-4773; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
