KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
The state Department of Transportation has put new driver speed displays on Pali Highway just above Waokanaka Street to improve safety. DOT spokesman Scott Ishikawa, left, and DOT Director Rod Haraga talked yesterday as a driver was clocked at 60 mph, 25 mph above the limit.
State targets
Pali speedersThe DOT has asked police
to redouble efforts to ensure
the safety of pedestrians
Speeders beware.
Honolulu police will soon be cracking down on motorists who ignore the state's new rumble strips and radar speed signs and drive too fast in the residential areas of the Pali Highway.
"Look out now, we're going to start enforcing," said state Department of Transportation director Rod Haraga at a news conference on the side of the highway yesterday near the rumble strips installed near Waokanaka Street.
In addition to the rumble strips, the state unveiled permanent radar speed signs yesterday that let drivers know how fast they are going as they enter the 35-mph residential zone between Waokanaka Street and the Philippine Consulate in Nuuanu.
If drivers ignore the rumble strips and the speed signs, they will be ticketed, said Haraga, who has asked the Honolulu Police Department to increase its presence on the Pali.
Just after yesterday's news conference, a car was clocked by the Waokanaka Street sign going 71 mph after passing over the rumble strips.
The rumble strips and speed signs are meant to alert drivers to slow down, state officials said.
But after a warning, Haraga said, comes enforcement. The DOT director said he has already talked to Honolulu police about stepping up enforcement of the speed limits.
The state has spent $397,925 trying to make the highway safer for pedestrians since a car hit and killed 90-year-old Anna Hara as she crossed Pali Highway near Niolopa Place in 1999.
Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa said that if the signs are a success on the Pali, they may be installed in school zones around the island.
The radar signs cost $17,650 each and are different from the portable radar signs previously used on the Pali Highway. Solar panels power the radar gun and lights in the sign. They can measure the speed of vehicles in all three lanes of traffic, flashing the fastest speed first and the others in decreasing order. The signs are beside townbound lanes just after the rumble strips near Waokanaka Street and beside Kailua-bound lanes at Wyllie Street near the Philippine Consulate.
Commuter Haaheo Scanlan said she didn't even notice the state had turned on the new speed signs. "They look like school crossing signs," she said. "The way the sun shines on the signs, it makes it hard to see your speed."
Nuuanu residents near Ahi Place yesterday said they were pleased the state is doing something to slow drivers down, but skeptical if the signs would work.
Jason Nichols said he would rather drive than walk his two daughters across the Pali Highway because of the speeding cars. Nichols said he thinks the signs might slow drivers because "it makes you feel like people are watching you."
However, he noted that people should already know how fast they are going. "They got speedometers in their cars, too," he said.
In response to complaints earlier this month, the state lowered the height of the rumble strips from 1/2-inch to 1/4-inch.
Haraga said the state has received another complaint about the rumble strips -- this time from a nearby resident who said the noise from the cars passing over is too loud.
The state placed a noise-monitoring device near the house and found the level to be under the federal limit of 68 decibels, Haraga said. In contrast, he said, a bus passing near the house registers about 75 decibels.
Star-Bulletin reporter Craig Gima contributed to this report.
