Disappeared News

I'm glad to hear that volunteers from Maui Tomorrow have taken over the task of counting vehicles arriving/departing the Superferry. Here are the numbers for yesterday:

I'm not sure if they will be counting passengers also.

This is an important public service that could enable our legislators to deal with future issues arising from their passage of a law during last year's second special session designed to allow Large Capacity Passenger Ferries (of which the Superferry is an example) to run despite a court ruling to the contrary.

For example, legislators may want to know about the carbon footprint per passenger of the ferry compared with air travel. You don't think so? Well, then, they might want to calculate passengers carried per whale collision, should that unfortunate circumstance arise. In other words, how many passenger trips is one whale life worth.

Lawmakers may also be concerned that expensive harbor improvements which benefit ferry operators among others and destroy surf breaks may be superfluous if passengers continue to shun the service.

Some of us who blog on the Internet are interested in publicizing the numbers, anyway, simply because the mainstream press has not undertaken to do this. Should any Large Capacity Passenger Ferry slink away in the night for another assignment, it would be helpful to understand why.