Wai'alae Iki may 'calm' traffic near parks
By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser East Honolulu Bureau
Wai'alae Iki — Cars speed so fast up and down Laukahi Street in this ridge-top community that some residents feel they have to run to get across the street safely.
Kyle Sackowski • The Honolulu Advertiser
Fred Pump and other residents say Wai'alae Iki is riddled with speeding cars and blind curves.
Residents say that vehicles like this one speed so fast along Laukahi Street in Wai'alae Iki that people don't feel they can cross the street safely. People want to know if the city can do anything about it.
On Tuesday night, more than 50 residents gathered to hear from city traffic engineers and a private consultant about ways to slow traffic in their neighborhood of about 1,000 homes.
The residents agreed that any traffic calming measures need to be built near and around the three parks in the community.
"I've lived here for 31 years," said Pump. "I walk these streets all the time. I have to run across the street. It's deadly up here."
On Wai'alae Iki, many drivers don't obey the posted speed limit of 25 mph, despite community pleas, community policing activities and radar traps.
One resident was clocked at 52 mph in the 25- mph zone.
Dan Burden, director of the High Springs, Fla., nonprofit Walkable Communities Inc., has been working with the city to help residents across O'ahu come up with solutions to their speeding woes.
Burden's solution is to narrow Laukahi Street so that motorists will be forced to slow down.
To do that he proposed landscaped median strips, land striping, bike lanes with different colored asphalt, curb extensions and speed tables to be interspersed along the mountainside community.
Each of these improvements will cost the city about $250,000 to $400,000, Burden said. A plan will go to the city for approval and financing.
"As people speed, they're taking away some of the livability, the quality in the community," Burden said. "This is something that holds true everywhere.
"I have found that the neighborhood always knows the problem best and has a pretty good clue on what needs to change."
Two months ago the community met to identify some of the places along Laukahi that were unsafe.
Burden and city officials met and came up with ideas to slow traffic along those problem spots.
Wai'alae Iki isn't isolated in its desire for slower-moving traffic.
Areas around the state and the country are trying to improve safety in their neighborhood streets.
The problem is the old way of designing communities was with wide streets. Wider streets lead to speeding, Burden said.
The new thinking is to change the perception of the road by adding things to the roadway, in essence putting in visual stops, but not stop signs, he said.
On Laukahi Street, the roadway is 40 feet wide.
It was designed wide because 30 years ago when the community was built the thinking was a wider street was needed to empty the community in case of a disaster.
Today, communities are realizing that roads need to be designed for day-to-day livability, not the once-in-a-lifetime disaster, Burden said.
"The point is to create properly designed improvements so that the car ride won't be comfortable if you're speeding," he said. "But these have to be at logical locations."
