2015-6 MTSC report-minutes 27Jan15

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Communication No. 2015 -6 PCDP Mass Transit Subcommittee minutes, January 27, 2015 In attendance: June Conant, Stephanie Bath, Jon Olson, and Hannah Hedrick. June stopped by the MTA office today and asked about airport transportation. Tiffany had announced at the November Transportation Commission meeting that it might start in March, 2015. The office said they did not have any tentative information or schedule yet. In June, 2014, a PCDP letter was written to the Mayor regarding this service with no response to date. June, as well as Steph, had spoken to Greggor Ilagan and Danny Paleka, Council Members for Puna, about mass transit issues. Greggor and Danny had met with Tiffany. Neither had any positive information to share and when asked if they discussed "hub and spoke ", they said yes but because of the lava situation, MTA is not willing to commit to any change at this time. Steph made a statement to the committee that she feels it is unacceptable that the lava flow is stopping all forward movement. Upper Puna and Pahala have needs that should be addressed now as well as establishing "hub and spoke" in that area. The subcommittee is frustrated with the lack of response from MTA as well as other County agencies that the PCDP has written to in order to request assistance in improvements that follow the plans of the PCDP. The subcommittee agreed to send a letter to MTA to request how many buses are operational on the island and which areas they serve because we always get the answer that there are not enough buses to improve the service in Puna. The letter is also to request a status on our previous request to develop a Hawai'i Island Mass Transit Plan and an open invitation for anyone from MTA to attend the subcommittee meetings. Hannah strongly feels that the PCDP should send a letter to all the agencies as to what they have done since the PCDP was formed. She suggested that we compile all the communications sent to the various agencies for requests and their responses, if received. Then we would send a portfolio of these communications to the appropriate agencies to ask for the status of projects. Steph said we need to get the approval of the PCDP AC and produce a timeline to accomplish the task. The Transportation Commission meets in the West Hawaii Center, Bldg G on February 12 at 10 am. Jon is currently on the commission and June has submitted an application. Both plan to attend that meeting. The next committee meeting will be Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 3:30 pm. Respectfully submitted, June Conant