WHAT is it about Subdivisions - Q & A

[kalakoa]

Why yes, I would like to see just a little bit of road maintenance -- it doesn't have to be fully paved with reflective dots, but it's not even possible to walk safely or ride a bicycle on many of these "roads"; instead, we all pay gas tax for nothing, which is "nonsense" indeed.

[Rob Tucker]

A goal that I discussed with Brenda Ford was to have all roads brought up to a 25 mph standard for fire trucks and ambulances.

[kalakoa]

A laudable goal, that... but sometimes I wonder whether it would be cheaper to pave the roads, or staff fire/rescue helicopters. Roads are a very capital-intensive investement which is mostly predicated on the availability of fuel, and the requirements scale accordingly.

At today's $4/gallon, people can "afford" to drive several tons of SUV; road wear is the fourth power of weight, so that SUV (fire truck, ambulance) requires substantially more "road" than a small car. Will we still need that much road at $10-20/gallon? (These prices are relative to the overall economy; $5/gallon could easily be "too expensive" if there's no jobs or entitlement programs.)

The flipside, as always, is County's insistence that we drive to Hilo (or maybe, if lucky, just Pahoa) for everything -- if the corner store were withing walking/biking distance, less "road" would be necessary for daily errands.

Paving enough "road" so everyone can drive their SUV to Hilo just doesn't seem very "environmentally friendly".

[Rob Tucker]

Roads existed long before gasoline powered vehicles. Paving itself was not discussed... mostly I foresee grading and lots of gravel. The county owns something like eight gravel quarries.

[kalakoa]

I don't have the relevant section in front of me, but somewhere in the Code there is language which prohibits County from having anything to do with any road which does not meet the "requirements"; these include a 60-foot easement, which is simply not practical in some subdivisions.

Some irony here: apparently County can only do "roads" one way, there's no "lesser standard".

[Bullwinkle]

Yup seen it before - if the road bed can not be upgraded to federal standards (sight lines, banking, roadway width etc) the best the county would do for us was gravel... and recycled concrete from the current road work as a base.

On the mainland they have trouble getting rid of the ground up freeway concrete from the rehab work - rural areas are offered this stuff as a road base - then mixed with a polymer and covered in a fabric of some sort (to bind the hazardous cement dust) with gravel over ----- no pavement until we meet federal specs (liability) is the way it turned out. Took about 6 months for the fabric to emerge through the roadbed.... its gonna get sticky ie environment and cement dust... no shortage of windmills to tilt at - grin

[Wuzzerdad]

When 20 of the richest 100 people in the USA are Walmart heirs, and 80% + of their employees are recieving some form of public welfare/food security assistance something is wrong with the system. Maybe they need to raise taxes on them (heirs) or they need to pay their employees more, let's say a living wage minimum of what is 125% of the poverty level.

I pretty much know what would happen, tax revenues would go up where there would no longer be a defecit and unemployment would go down. Remember when Bill was president!

Land and Power in Hawaii,I bought the book on Ebay...[:p]


I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.
Mahalo
Rick

[EightFingers]

quote:

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Originally posted by Wuzzerdad

I pretty much know what would happen, tax revenues would go up where there would no longer be a defecit and unemployment would go down. Remember when Bill was president!

Rick

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You sure about that?

[Frank]

quote:

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Originally posted by Rob Tucker

Roads existed long before gasoline powered vehicles. Paving itself was not discussed... mostly I foresee grading and lots of gravel. The county owns something like eight gravel quarries.

any ideas as to what reasonable precautions the CoH will incorporate to address the "fugitive dust" likely to be generated by drivers going 25 mph on all those CoH gravel roads?

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[Frank]

correction...the question of what the CoH will do about likely fugitive dust was not in Robs quote..sorry bout that Rob..it my question though