Road guardrail issue galvanizes Hanalei
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau
HANALEI, Kaua'i — The look of the world changes when you cross the rattling wooden deck of the 1912 Hanalei Bridge, its rusting steel trusses framing a scene of green cliffs, waterfalls and taro fields.
Author Dan Marriott, who wrote the book, "Saving Historic Roads," will give a talk at a meeting of the Hanalei Roads Committee from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Hanalei Family Center. The session is free and open to the public. Marriott is meeting with state highways officials and will review efforts to preserve the historic appearance of Kaua'i's North Shore roadways.
Greenery intrudes at every turn of the winding road that leads on to Ha'ena, much as it does on Maui's Hana Highway, engulfing the view and then drawing back to reveal breathtaking glimpses of blue ocean or plunging terrain.
Author to speak
It is a historic road, its alignment dating nearly a century to when the territory was working hard to build belt roads around the Islands where it was physically possible. The Hanalei road ends at Ke'e Beach. The cliffs of Na Pali, which rise immediately beyond the sand, made further progress impossible.
Hanalei residents are battling an effort by the state Department of Transportation to outfit their road with galvanized steel guardrails that many residents consider inappropriate and unsightly.
The state, concerned about liability on its narrow roadway, is opting for the least expensive solution that meets federal safety guidelines, the "W-beam metal guardrail," said Steve Kyono, the state's highways engineer for Kaua'i.
"The issue for us here is liability," but the state is also concerned about the cost to install and maintain systems that are less durable than galvanized steel, he said.
Residents agree with the safety concern but say they don't want to give up the historic feel of their region.
Carol Wilcox, who helped fight battles a generation ago to block the replacement of Hanalei Bridge with a two-lane concrete structure, said the Department of Transportation has lost the emphasis on "scenic, rural, cultural, historic values" in its efforts to create a modern highway on the section of Kuhio Highway that is known as Hanalei Road.
"We are concerned about safety, but we want to retain the rural character of the North Shore," said Barbara Robeson, a member of the Hanalei Roads Committee. "We should keep the look the way that it is now. It is an amenity for both people who live here and those who visit."
A national historic sites expert says it should be possible to meet both the safety and performance criteria, and he is in Hawai'i this week to meet with state officials and residents.
"The road in Hanalei and the Hana road are the two best examples of belt roads developed in Hawai'i in the early 1900s," said Dan Marriott, director of rural heritage and historic roads for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit organization.
There are several alternatives to silver metal rails, including wood beams that are backed by steel for strength, and concrete that might be faced with volcanic rock. A middle-ground alternative is a steel beam with a baked-on enamel finish in earth tones. Marriott said none is as cheap as galvanized steel.
"All the alternatives are more expensive, but it comes back to societal and cultural value. The road is a resource. It's not like any other road in the state.
Robeson said existing guardrails are made of wood or stone, and new ones should be of the same materials to fit in.
"The more you change to reflect 'Anywhere, U.S.A.,' the more you lose some of the magic" of a place, Marriott said.
Kyono said that after community meetings at which residents complained about the scope of the proposed changes, the Department of Transportation cut its plan from 17,000 feet of guard rails along the 10-mile stretch of highway to 7,200 feet.
But the state still wants to use steel. For one thing, Kyono said, state consultants have not been able to find other systems that have acceptable breakaway, crash-tested end sections. And the state is trying to avoid concrete ends to guardrails, because the risk of injury from a head-on crash is higher, he said.
Robeson said she has recently e-mailed state officials information on federally approved end sections for guardrails that are not the galvanized steel designs.
Marriott, who in 1998 published the book, "Saving Historic Roads," said state officials may be engineering roadway improvements for speeds far higher than those used on these lanes.
"We tend to default to wide, safe, high-speed roads, but wider and straighter is not always safer. The typical galvanized guardrails proposed are made for roads driven at 50 to 60 to 70 miles an hour. Nobody's driving these roads at those speeds.
"The real fundamental issue is finding an appropriate engineering solution. I've been asked to come out and give information on options and alternatives. There are a lot of options available to solve this issue."
