2015-18 MTSC report-minutes 24Mar15

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Communication No. 2015 -18 PCDP Mass Transit Subcommittee minutes, March 24, 2015 In attendance: June Conant, Rusty Jones, Jon Olson, Sharon Daun, and Hannah Hedrick. Hannah is spearheading a Citizens' Action Committee to Improve East Hawaii Transportation and the subcommittee discussed how it can appropriately support this effort. On August 20, 2015, there will be an East Hawaii Disability Legislative Forum and this group is planning to make a presentation and have a booth at the event. The mission of this committee is to "improve East Hawaii Transportation services by increasing community participation and feed back in the Mass Transit decision making and service delivery process by facilitating communication, collaboration, and coordination among EH transportation stakeholders ". The five strategic action groups are: Public Transportation /Mass Transit, Accessibility compliance for ADA, Subdivision Connectivity, Community Emergency Planning, and MTA /DOT Accountability. Since there is such close correlation with PUNA CDP goals in this context, Hannah has requested that June, as a member of the Mass Transit Subcommittee, and Patti Pinto, as a member of the Connectivity and Emergency Response Subcommittee, be included as members of the CAC committee. They will not represent the views of the PCDP, but act as individuals. Patti was available near the end of the meeting and she will put this on the April PCDP agenda to make sure that it is politically correct for her and June to be listed as CAC East Hawaii Transportation members. Hannah has been working on presentations with Neighborhood Watch and other relevant groups in Puna. She will be manning a booth at the Puna Ohana Day, March 29 at Shipman Park. June stated that Danny Paleka now has the CIP submitted last year for the Mass Transit study and he is pursuing that issue. She sent Tiffany Kai an email regarding some issues the subcommittee had in regards to the airport transportation. Tiffany's reply stated that MTA was waiting on the Airport Division regarding the possibility of having the bus travel the post office frontage road to allow passengers to get on and off there. As for the possibility of riders having to pay twice to get to Hilo town from the airport because the Keaukaha route considers Richardson's the end of the route, Tiffany said that as long as they stay on the bus, no extra fare. When asked about realistic time schedules, she said they will be adjusting the schedules and the bus route will be continuous during the day instead of having a lunch break as it does now. So far, there is no definite start date for airport service. Hannah said that University of Hawaii students have created an app to access the bus schedules. She saw information about this at Cooper Center. She will try to get a copy. The next committee meeting will be Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 3:30 pm. Respectfully submitted, June Conant