Kokua Line

By June Watanabe

Thursday, February 26, 1998

The bottom line is your
car was illegally parked

I got a parking citation, which I feel is unreasonable. I parked between two driveways to Computer City on Kamakee Street, in an unpainted space between two red-painted curbs. There was no "no parking" sign. I'd parked there before and never gotten a ticket. I am contesting the ticket, but in the meantime, I tried to contact the agency responsible for posting a sign. I called police and was referred to the Traffic Violations Bureau, which referred me to the city Traffic Division. There, I was told it's not a city road. They gave me the state highway hot line, but no one called back. Who's responsible? It shouldn't be this difficult to get information!

It's the city's jurisdiction.

"We only take care of Kamakee when it crosses with Ala Moana," an employee of the state Department of Transportation said.

The bottom line is that you were not legally parked, said Cheryl Soon, director of the city Department of Transportation Services.

The space between the two driveways in question measures 20 feet. When you deduct four feet from either end -- you're not supposed to be parked within four feet of a driveway -- only 12 feet is left, "an insufficient area in which to legally park a car," Soon said. The city standard for a marked parking space is 18-22 feet.

Also, according to city ordinance, if a street block is marked with a parking stall, like Kamakee is, it is illegal to park in an unmarked area, she said.

Soon also said the red curbs there were not painted by the city. "Curbs are painted red only at passenger loading zones and at official bus stops, due to the city's budgetary constraints and lack of personnel," she said. "Red curbs without the proper regulatory signs have no meaning."

City workers have been directed to remove the red paint from the curbs AND, to lessen confusion, install meters at existing marked stalls before and after the driveways.

I've lived across Kuakini Medical Center for 20 years.

When officials planned the widening of North Kuakini Street, they promised residents that street parking lost to the project would be replaced by free parking on hospital grounds. The project is completed, the street parking is long gone and we have not heard anything about our free parking. What's happening?

You should have received a letter from Kuakini early this month, telling you how to get a sticker to park in one of 22 spaces the hospital is making available free to residents within a 200-foot radius of Kuakini Street, said spokeswoman Donda Spiker.

Twenty people showed up to register last Saturday, she said.

Some background: Kuakini built a new physicians' tower along Kuakini Street, plus a makai parking structure in back. The city, as a condition of its approval, required Kuakini to give up three feet of its property to widen Kuakini Street for left-turn lanes, she said.

That eliminated street parking fronting the hospital. Because of that, the city then required Kuakini to provide 22 parking stalls.

Twenty yellow-painted stalls are now available in the Stillman Lane parking lot and two on hospital property along Kaluhikai Lane.

The stalls are up for grabs among residents between 4 p.m. and 7:30 a.m., seven days a week.

The only ones who qualify are residents living within 200 feet of Kuakini Street, who register in person, showing proof of residency, car registration, drivers license and automobile insurance.

If you missed the Saturday registration, you can sign up the first Monday of each month with Kuakini's Security Office between 10 and 11 a.m.

Cars parked between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. will be towed away.