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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, November 3, 2002

EDITORIAL
State, county must get on the same page

It's no secret that there's been an unfortunate lack of communication between the state and city transportation departments over the years. Each agency does its own thing — even competing for federal dollars — and so what we often end up with is the poor planning and coordination of major roadwork.

That said, it's encouraging to hear that a task force of state and city agencies as well as private businesses is close to coming up with more than 20 "intelligent" transportation initiatives that they could cooperate on.

We can think of scores of ways that state and city transportation officials should be sharing information and working together on transportation problems from emergency and road safety services to repair and maintenance schedules.

And of course, Hawai'i could take the further step of consolidating the state and city's highway and road services.

But we don't see either side relinquishing control of their share of gasoline tax money any time soon.

In recent years, the Legislature has withdrawn at least $99 million from the Highway Special Fund to help balance the state's general treasury budget. You can't blame the counties for getting frustrated.

You might recall back in 1997 when Mayor Jeremy Harris asked state lawmakers to let the four counties take over all road repairs and park maintenance and consolidate duplicated state and county functions.

For example, he said, the city is responsible for Beretania Street while the state is responsible for nearby Vineyard Boulevard, which means a city crew might be repairing potholes on Beretania while a state crew repairs potholes on Vineyard.

If Hawai'i must retain separate state and city highway and road services, then such Dilbertesque scenarios will probably continue.

At the very minimum, we hope the joint state and city task force will pave the way for a thoroughly coordinated system of planning and executing roadwork projects.