Posted on: Tuesday, July 1, 2003

Farrington due for $8 million upgrade in road safety

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

The state plans to begin work on $8 million in safety improvements on Farrington Highway later this year, but that's just a first step in reducing fatalities in the dangerous 17-mile Leeward O'ahu corridor, community leaders said yesterday.

"We've been too long neglected. We are overgrown ... (More tragedies) are predictable," said Albert H. Silva, chairman of the Neighborhood Board in Wai'anae, where the latest accident Friday night killed a father and his 7-year-old son who were hit by a van as they crossed the highway.

The work beginning in October includes construction of a new median barrier in a one-mile stretch of the roadway from Ma'ili to Nanakuli, restriping crosswalks and lanes, and improving sidewalks in a longer area, said Scott Ishikawa, Department of Transportation spokes-man.

No one suggested yesterday that the planned improvements might have been enough to save 46-year-old Paul Brzezowski and his son Matthew, who were headed to a nearby store to buy a birthday cake when they were struck.

The median barrier is on a stretch of road where head-on crashes, rather than pedestrian accidents, have been the biggest problem in recent years. It is several miles from the site of Friday's accident.

"You can't have the same solution for all parts of Farrington Highway," said Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha). "The road conditions are different in different segments, so there's no one answer."

Instead, community leaders suggested a variety of approaches, citing the need for everything from more police enforcement to the construction of a second highway to reduce accidents on Farrington Highway in Leeward O'ahu, where there have been more than 80 traffic deaths since 1990, making it one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the state.

Friday night's accident occurred around dusk in a stretch of the road with many traffic signals and crosswalks. The two victims were in a crosswalk when a 56-year-old 'Aiea man in a 1986 van hit them. Police said alcohol was not a factor and the speed of the van was unknown.

The best way to avoid similar accidents in the future would be to install better lighting in crosswalk areas, said Mark Suiso, a Wai'anae resident whose nephew was killed in a Farrington Highway accident several years ago.

"We've talked about the need for better lit crosswalks for years," Suiso said. "When you're driving, you really don't know they're out there until you are right up on one. You can't see the kids when they are in the dark."

Generally, people in the community said they feel that state and city projects for traffic safety are not proceeding fast enough, said Cynthia Rezentes, a member of the Wai'anae Neighborhood Board.

"We understand it takes time, but there's still a lot of frustration," she said.

In recent years, the population of the community has grown rapidly without any corresponding increase in the number and quality of roads, she said.

"We went from two lanes of dirt road in the 1950s to a four-lane highway today, but it's not enough. The traffic increases the drivers' frustration and that makes them more aggressive, which certainly doesn't help in the long run," she said.

Suiso said the mixture of local and through traffic on Farrington Highway is a "formula for disaster," but police enforcement is lacking.

"They don't enforce pedestrian safety rules," he said. "You're supposed to stop if someone is in the crosswalk, but nobody does that."

Suiso and others suggested that crosswalks like the ones the Brzezowskis were in at the time of the accident might hurt pedestrians more than help by giving them a false sense of security.

"Unless every crosswalk has a traffic light or we change the law, I don't know what else can be done," Rezentes said.

Leaders said the community's biggest focus remains getting a second road into the area, a project that city officials have been working on.

While the primary purpose of building the new route is to provide a secondary access when an emergency closes Farrington Highway, another benefit would be to reduce local traffic on the highway.

Plans call for the city to connect a network of local streets mauka of the highway to provide the secondary access, although not all parts of it would be open all the time.

"Actually the solution to all this is another highway for the Wai'anae coast," Silva said. "It's been long, long overdue. Farrington Highway is where we live. It's not going to get better. It's only going to get worse. We're overusing it."