Self-driving cars will eliminate the need for a high-occupancy mass transit system like our rail project. Within 10 years, (just as the rail is completed?) fully developed ride-sharing companies with driverless vehicles will be offering doorstep-to-doorstep passenger commuting for everyone.

Sounds expensive? Labor is the most expensive component of a taxi service and the vehicle is driverless. And a commute that picks up and drops off multiple passengers along the way makes it economical. Sounds like gridlock? Autonomous vehicles will communicate with each other and traffic will flow quickly even when bumper to bumper.

Even if you live within a reasonable distance from a rail station, you will be making three transfers to get to work. I would always choose convenience of a driverless taxi service at even twice the cost of using rail.

So while the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation is counting me and thousands of others as customers, it shouldn’t be.

Stanley Yanke

Aiea

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Move campus to West Oahu

Move the Manoa campus out to West Oahu?

There would be no need to consider extending rail to the current Manoa campus.

The campus could be gradually sold/leased/developed. Even after the complete new campus buildup (think of the jobs created!), the university system could have meaningful spare cash and/or greatly enhanced revenue streams.

The heavy maintenance backlog at the University of Hawaii-Manoa would disappear.

On the east side of the West Oahu campus, a new stadium could be built, thereby resolving the problems of maintaining the current Aloha Stadium.

The current rail structure could be made affordable by converting to express bus/HOV lanes, perhaps moving to ground level from Middle Street through downtown to Waikiki.

The current high-value Manoa campus land also could generate sufficient funds to ameliorate the affordable housing and homeless issues and allow us to properly care for our roads, parks and infrastructure.

Perhaps we can begin a meaningful discussion.

Richard Morris

Hawaii Kai

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Rail costs as much as aircraft carrier

An article in the Sunday paper said it cost $12.9 billion to build a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, that will send a “100,000-ton message to the world” (“Trump commissions new $12.9B ‘message to world’,” Star-Advertiser, July 23).

It will take that much to build a technologically out-of-date 20-mile train in Hawaii. What kind of message does that send? America may be second to none, but Hawaii? Not so much.

It simply boggles the mind.

Ann Ruby

Downtown Honolulu

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Investors drive up cost of housing

Our local government must actively press the issue of the creation of affordable housing in all spheres of activity. It is very disturbing to learn that perhaps half of residential apartment owners are absentee owners, according to Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Coucil of Associations of Apartment Owners: “You know what it’s like trying to get owners to agree, especially in a building like Marco Polo or Yacht Harbor Tower where half of them live in Japan, Korea and China.”

It is no surprise that the high cost and lack of housing is caused by investor-type owners. Government must serve its people first.

Milton Kam

Hawaii Kai

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Test rebar in burnt building

The intensity and duration of the fire in the Marco Polo building not only extensively damaged many units but it may have also dangerously weakened the building’s structure.

The steel rods (reinforced bars, commonly called rebar) inside the concrete supporting columns that form the structural core of the building may have been significantly weakened.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “All building materials except timber are likely to show significant loss of strength when heated above 250 ºC, strength that may not recover after cooling.”

Core samples through columns exposed to the most heat should be taken to ensure the structural integrity of the building before any repairs are made to individual units.

Mark Slovak

Manoa

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Millions wasted chasing homeless

My city is insane. Four million bucks is being spent to clear — meaning chase to another part of the island — 80 houseless people on H-1 and Nimitz (“New plan for sweeps,” Star-Advertiser, July 21).

If they just gave the $4 million to those 80 people, they would each be able to pay $2,083 a month rent for two years, which would get a tidy one-bedroom in a very nice neighborhood.

Now, that would keep them from coming back to the site.

Richard Rath

Waikiki