TMT - Contested Case Hearing Status - Hilo

[TomK]

More like 10 million, but it would certainly fund HART very quickly and then the remaining money could be used to build all the new hotels and airports that would be needed. Oh, and the odd helicopter landing pad on Mauna Kea.

[leilanidude]

2 million cars a year? That is 5479 cars per day, every day!
Are there even that many rental cars on the island?

[TomK]

A quick calculation has 200 tour vans driving up and down Mauna Kea every day if everyone used them instead of cars given one million visitors a year (where the hell would they all stay?). The fifteen or so that currently visit each day creates enough chaos up there at sunset.

But it doesn't matter. Although it's a fun mathematical exercise, the number of extra tourists the TMT might bring is being pulled out of a hat, and they do not have plans to build helicopter landing pads, as Gypsy knows very well. Unless he's forgotten once again.

When the largest optical telescopes on the planet were built on MK in the 1990s (Keck, Gemini and Subaru), how many more tourists did they attract to the summit? Having worked up there during that time, I can tell you. Hardly any.

[Guest]

The Haleakala summit also has a few of the planets largest telescopes. Since these large telescopes have been built, Haleakala summit now brings Over 2 million visitors a year.

http://www.bikemaui.com/haleakala-observatory/

China also has been building large telescopes that now carry tourism problems.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/the-w...t-problem/

Before we build a telescope as large as the TMT on Mauna Kea maybe a few studies should be done to see what the additional tourism impacts could do to the mountains fragile environment. The TMT's EIS report fails to mention or weigh any possible additional tourism impacts that may happen to the summit, environment or Hawaiian practitioners. jmo's

[leilanidude]

Actually, gypsy, they go to Haleakala for the SUNRISE... and the park service keeps counts... 2016 was 1,263,558 for the total number of all park visitors, which includes more than the summit.

https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/Reports/Park/HALE

You can see all kinds of stats/reports, including number of vehicles, which tends to show that the summit entrance averages right at 23,000 vehicles per month. This number includes visitors and park staff and telescope staff. That is about 760 vehicles per day. I cannot give you the average number of people because they do not break down the visitors to the summit against all other areas of the park.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Haleakala summit now brings Over 2 million visitors a year.

Crater Road is a wide two lane paved road with paved shoulders the entire drive to the summit of Haleakala.
Haleakala is also a National Park, so many people visit for reasons other than the telescopes. Haleakala National Park would be better compared with Volcanoes National Park, rather than Mauna Kea. In fact, almost no one visits the Haleakala telescopes as they are on a separate access road off limits to the general public:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/.../128614673

Haleakala summit is also much lower and easier to reach than Mauna Kea as it is only 10,000 feet in elevation not over 13,000 feet high. Most people drive up Haleakala to see the sunrise, the sunset, take a bike tour down the mountain, or to see the silverswords and nene at Haleakala National Park.

There is no way to make an apples to apples (or pineapples to pineapples) comparison between the number of visitors at Haleakala summit with Mauna Kea Summit.

The Donner Party really wasn't that great of a party, was it?

[kalakoa]

China also has been building large telescopes that now carry tourism problems.

Perhaps you should take the geothermal settlement so you can move to China and tell them how they're doing it wrong? I'm sure they would appreciate the expertise.

[punaticbychoice]

TomK @ 02:28:33-
I agree with you.
The State of Hawaii gets about 9 million tourists a year, majority on Oahu.
As much as $16 billion a year industry.
HVNP has about 1.9 million visitors a year.
Haleakala NP has about 1.4 million, much of it for the sunrises, the crater or bicycling, not much for the Observatories.
It is much more easily accessed than Mauna Kea, paved roads and parking near the summit, (10000 feet vs. 13800 feet) etc.,,,,,
As for the Chinese radio telescope- different kind of telescope from optical, a small number of people in close proximity can cause problems for that instrument.

[TomK]

All - gypsy is doing his usual thing, bringing up questions and points that have already been thoroughly answered and debunked. His memory is very short; it's the only polite reason for this continual recycling of his thoughts.

http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=22438&whichpage=59

[PaulW]

Meanwhile glindakine is trolling the donation thread to push his obviously superior political views.