Pali Highway
group wants action

A team presents safety ideas following
multiple road deaths and injuries

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

Residents along Pali Highway are fed up with state action they say is far too slow to reduce deaths and injuries on the major roadway, and they presented their own solutions to transportation officials today.

The proposals, developed by a Community Visioning Team from Nuuanu, Alewa, Pacific Heights, Pauoa and Papokolea, presented 12 ideas. They included roadside displays of radar speed recordings, creative signs for crosswalks and residential areas, elimination of some bus stops, and pedestrian-activated flashing lights. About 15 residents at the meeting today also suggested overhead flashing lights and dummy police cars to intimidate speeders.

The team said on average one person a year is killed and more than 46 injured along the 1.3-mile strip of the Pali Highway between Waokanaka and Wyllie streets. The area includes 10 crosswalks, nine bus stops, 50 private driveways, and numerous schools, preschools and churches.

"These are our seniors, our children and parents crossing the streets," said Paula Kurashige, chair of Neighborhood Board 12 for Nuuanu and Punchbowl.

Kurashige said community efforts in the past two years to get help have received little response. "We want something now."

An 80-year-old pedestrian was injured when he was struck by a car last week at the Jack Lane and Pali Highway intersection, and a 90-year-old woman was killed in a crosswalk last June at Niolopa Place, a block away.

By January 2001 the state plans to finish a traffic signal for pedestrians and cars at the intersection of Jack Lane/Akamu Place. By that time they will also remove the crosswalk at Niolopa Place.

At the meeting, state Department of Transportation Director Kazu Hayashida also said he was working with the Legislature to make necessary changes to the law at the beginning of the next session so that at least one camera/radar system can be placed in the area to take pictures of traffic violators and automatically ticket them.

Transportation officials said the projects are already on the "fast track" and they can do little more to speed them up.

They said, however, that they would consider more traffic warnings and other suggestions raised by the residents.