EDITORIAL
Waikiki improvements better for pedestrians

As Honolulu's champion of urban beautification, Mayor Jeremy Harris has diligently pursued the realization of George Kanahele's "Hawaiian sense of place" in Waikiki.

And from a pedestrian standpoint, it's hard to argue with the results in the tourist mecca's three major traffic corridors.

Kalakaua Avenue has been the recipient of $50 million worth of improvements, including wider sidewalks, vintage-style street lights adorned with hanging flower baskets, trees and attractions such as hula performances, torch lighting and Sunset on the Beach.

A couple of blocks mauka, Ala Wai Boulevard has been narrowed to three lanes of traffic with the canal side doubling as a parking and a bike lane (not the safest combo), and 50 parking spaces have been removed.

Now, the city is winding up Harris' last major capital improvement project — a $19 million sidewalk-widening and beautification project on Kuhio Avenue, which used to be gray and dingy.

Here, we now have landscaped median strips with palm and shade trees as well as the street lights with hanging flower baskets.

Of course, these changes come at the expense of reducing the number and size of lanes on Kuhio. At the very least, we hope that motorists are discouraged from using the median islands to make U-turns, a practice we observed during a recent drive.

As for the new bike lane on the Ala Wai, cyclists can get whacked by an opening car door on one side, or hit by fast-moving traffic on the other side. That's not a safe ride.

Overall though, we applaud the greening of Waikiki's thoroughfares. We'd just like to see more thought put into creating safe and efficient bike and traffic routes. No matter how much we want to improve the Waikiki experience for visitors and pedestrians in general, the reality is, cars and bicycles still have to use this part of town.