2013-56 Mass Transit Report for September 10, 2013

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MASS TRANSIT Communication No. 2013 -56 Subcommittee of the PCDP Date: 9.10.13 Members: steph b., dan t., russell j.,, jon o., june c., sharon d., terry d., marty m., ferry r., mark h., hannah h. Marty Mimmack, MTS Chair. Madam chair, Mr. Brown and members of the action committee, on behalf of the MT subcommittee of the PCDP, I'm here to transmit the meeting Notes for our meeting held on August 27th, 2013 at the Kea` au Com. Cent. From now on we will not refer to them as MINUTES instead we will call them "meeting notes" to more accurately reflect their content, intent and the fact that they were not generated under formal rules, such as Roberts rules of order. Also, from now on, I will be using, and I'll encourage my subcommittee members to use, the following standard editing nomenclature: 1. parenthesis ( ) for suggested deletions and 2. underscore for additions. This is an effort to increase communication, transparency and tracking of changes. We also now have our Members Roster and each meeting's attendance noted for your reference. For this meeting the Notes were recorded by Hannah Hedrick and edited be me. They are on the back of this pa for your reference. Because of attendance difficulties, the committee is looking for a volunteer that can to lvt� Meeting Notes when Hannah is away. There were a few highlights that are relevant. 1. The subcommittee decided to go back to MTA Administrator Tiffany Kai with a letter requesting more information regarding the decision making criteria MTA uses for establishing infrastructure, bus stops and new routes.) The communication will also ask for related policies, route -level ridership data and statistics, and other current proposals pertinent to implementation of the PCDP Mass transit priorities. 2. Additionally, we discussed Hawaii County Council Bill 108, that at the time was at the committee level concerning the issuance of ANNUAL PASSES and other discounted bus rider passes for students, seniors and disabled. I personally testified "in favor" of the bill since it contained some long desired improvements to bus fare structures. One of our members is an experienced bus driver and is working on this issue and Oreggor Ilagan, who initially voted NO along with Mr. Yoshimoto has stepped up to make amendments that would eliminate the ANNUAL PASSES, because of concerns over theft and fraud, and further reduce monthly costs for students, seniors and disabled from 45 to 30 dollars a month. This Bill has advanced to Council as of August 20th. The subcommittee plans on testifying about the bill as a group. 3. We are continuing to gather information on the current federal funding initiative for mass transit named MAP -21 on the FTA website. Rusty Jones, one of our subcommittee members is working on behalf of Mark Hinshaw's groups to develop a set of reference materials that the County of Hawaii might tap to help expand our hele -on bus service. Through discussion with elected representatives, Jon Olson, discovered that there is a sever lack of any personnel on the State Level that cold answer the phone on federal grant matters concerning the Millions of dollars we should be applying for. Of course that is only a phone call that won't be made because there is no one at the county level to make the call. 4. The Subcommittee is following up on our request to have Councilmember Kern attend one of our meeting so we can discuss his plans to have a Kea "ua bus terminal on the Shipman Park side of Highway 11.