CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM A police officer warned protesters to stay off the road as construction began yesterday on a traffic roundabout at Ala Oli Street and Haloa Drive in Foster Village. Okada Trucking Co. workers cut into the pavement as two dozen residents stood by, waving signs and arguing over the project.

---

Neighbors clash
over roundabout

The Foster Village safety project
draws protests pro and con

The start of construction of a roundabout at a busy Foster Village intersection yesterday drew residents both for and against the city project.

As workers from contractor Okada Trucking Co. cut into the pavement at Ala Oli Street and Haloa Drive, about 25 residents stood on the sidewalk next to the workers holding signs and shouting protests. Across the street, other residents standing in front of their driveways applauded the construction.

The city is putting the roundabout at the intersection to discourage speeding and make it safer for pedestrians.

Janice Pechauer said the project will not slow speeders and will make crossing the intersection more dangerous for pedestrians. She said children will dart across the roundabout on their way to and from Makalapa Elementary and Radford High schools nearby, because two of the three crosswalks will be moved farther from the intersection and one will be eliminated.

Pechauer believes the residents who support the project are misinformed.

"They have pushed for this for so long that they're kind of blinded by the problems that this is going to cause," she said.

Steven Smith, whose home is at the Diamond Head-makai corner of the intersection, believes the protesters are the ones who are misinformed.

"How many of them can say they had a car in their yard?" he said.

In the 36 years he has lived on Haloa Drive, Smith said speeders have crashed through his hedge and into his yard three times, crashed into the stop sign at the corner of his property at least two other times, crashed into the utility pole fronting his property twice, knocking it down one of those times, and crashed into the palm trees in the median on Ala Oli Street.

Smith's neighbor Letty Aragon said a speeder recently crashed into her daughter's car parked in her driveway.

"They (the protesters) don't understand because they don't live here," Aragon said.

Smith and Aragon are residents of the Foster Village Community Association, which gave the city the land needed for the roundabout.

"This association that thinks that they have the right, we didn't elect them to do this, to make all these decisions," said Pechauer, who lives about a half mile from the intersection and is a member of the East Foster Village Community Association.

During a radio call-in show May 11, Pechauer said Mayor Mufi Hannemann had promised to halt the project if the Aliamanu/Salt Lake/Foster Village Neighborhood Board voted against it. The following day, the board voted to ask the city to suspend the project for a year to test the intersection as a three-way stop.

Only motorists entering Haloa Drive from Ala Oli are now required to stop.

Hannemann did not promise to abide by the wishes of the neighborhood board, but to consider its vote, said city spokesman Bill Brennan. He said the mayor had decided to go ahead with the project based on the support of Councilman Romy Cachola, past support of former area Councilwoman Donna Kim, the support of others in the community and the advice of traffic engineers.