Kahalu'u roundabout debated
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer
KAHALU'U — With the state poised to construct a temporary roundabout in Kahalu'u for $350,000, a neighborhood board member there is trying to build opposition to the project.
• What: Kahalu'u Neighborhood Board meeting • When: 7 p.m. tomorrow • Where: KEY Project 47-200 Waihe'e Road, Kahalu'u
Kahalu'u board member Kurt Mench said he hopes people will come to this week's board meeting to let the state know how they feel about the traffic circle that is supposed to improve traffic flow and safety at the intersection of Kamehameha and Kahekili highways.
Public meeting
"I'm hoping to derail it," Mench said. "If you see it and analyze it, you'll see it's not going to help."
The project has been in limbo since 2001 after the community asked the state to delay it until a Board of Water Supply project through the intersection was completed. When the new state administration took over, all projects were re-evaluated, and the board, which unanimously supported the roundabout in 2000, thought the project was dead.
Last year, the state Department of Transportation agreed to build a demonstration project instead of a permanent, $1.6 million project made of concrete and including landscaping, lights and bike and pedestrian paths, said Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa.
Work on the project is set to begin at the end of summer and take about three months to complete. The temporary roundabout will be tested for three to six months before a decision is made about a permanent structure.
Ishikawa said that if the board votes against the temporary roundabout, the state will not build it.
He will present two alternatives at the meeting. Both have turn lanes and one includes traffic lights, an option that the neighborhood board voted down more than six years ago.
"We hope the board can take a position on the roundabout, because we're going to advertise for bids in two months," he said.
Neighborhood board chairman Art Machado Jr. said he receives calls about the project daily and expects a lively debate tomorrow evening.
Machado said it's possible the project could be stopped, but there are people on both sides of the issue.
Speeding and illegal passing on the right make the intersection dangerous, and the community wants a solution, he said.
"If you're talking about safety, (the roundabout) would slow traffic, especially in that corridor," Machado said. "It's a hazardous road."
Left-turn lanes and merge lanes would solve the problem, said Mench and Andy Thomas, a Ka'a'awa resident.
Thomas predicts traffic backups and drivers cutting through the gas station at the intersection if the roundabout is built.
"I think it will get way more ugly than it is now," he said.
But two roundabouts have proven their worth in Makiki and Salt Lake, advocates say.
Joseph Zuiker, with the Makiki/Lower Punchbowl/Tantalus Neighborhood Board, said he loves the roundabout built by the city in 1999 at the intersection of Heulu and Ke'eaumoku streets.
Before the roundabout was built, Zuiker said he used to watch from his seventh-floor home on Ke'eaumoku as cars raced up and down the street, barely missing children and the elderly who were walking on the road.
The biggest change has been the reduction in speed, he said, declaring the city traffic-calming measure a success.
Mark Taylor, with the Aliamanu/Salt Lake/Foster Village Neighborhood Board, said people in Salt Lake both like and hate the roundabout there for the same reason: It slows traffic.
The city is building a permanent roundabout, a $635,000 project, after testing a temporary one at Likini and Ala Napunani streets since April.
Some people are dissatisfied with it, but more have expressed their approval, said Taylor, adding that there have been no accidents at the intersection since the roundabout was installed. In the past, there were about seven a year, he said.
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com or 234-5266.
