State to speed up road-safety efforts at Olomana curve

By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer

WAIMANALO — Bending to the wishes of the community, the state Department of Transportation has promised to speed up the process of installing additional protective measures on Kalaniana'ole Highway by Olomana Golf Links.

Residents at a Waimanalo Neighborhood Board meeting last night pressed transportation officials to install additional barriers, reflectors, street lights and traffic signs, and further reduce the speed limit to help prevent accidents near the golf course.

Rod Haraga, Department of Transportation director, said the state must conduct studies to decide on appropriate solutions but will try to speed up the process that was to take about a year. Haraga declined an offer by neighborhood board member Andrew Jamila Jr. to have community volunteers install barriers sitting in a state maintenance yard, if the state couldn't afford to do the work.

"We'll place them at the appropriate time, and correctly so we don't have any more accidents," Haraga told about 75 people attending the board meeting.

The state installed 600 feet of barriers at a cost of $25,000 above the site where Ramus Seabury, 62, of Waimanalo was killed in February when an alleged drunken driver crossed the center line and struck his truck.

Seabury's wife, Harriet, said several community residents failed to persuade transportation officials last week that barriers or straightening the road were the best solutions.

Seabury said she heard differently at the meeting.

"Before they always said, 'Cannot, cannot,' " she said. "Now it's at least, 'We'll try.' "

Residents want the barriers, which now end above the entrance to the golf course, to be extended beyond the entrance to the turn in the road, leaving a space to turn into the golf course or the Town & Country stable.

People agreed that while the new barriers will do some good, they would not have prevented the deaths of Seabury or Lorrie-Ann Wiley, 32, of Waimanalo, who died near the same site after her car was struck head on by a drunken driver.

The call for barriers escalated after Seabury's death.

At the time of Wiley's death on Jan. 2, 2001, the community asked for and received a swath of raised bumps on the highway that warns drivers that they are moving out of their lane. This time residents will not be happy with the minimum effort, Jamila said.

Jamila said the state didn't like the idea of extending the barriers because the ends would be exposed and a driver hitting them could be hurt. Still, he said, the barriers would stop drunken drivers from hurting innocent people.

"We don't care if somebody hits it," Jamila said. "At least that somebody is not going to hit somebody in the other lane."

Reach Eloise Aguiar at 234-5266 or at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.