 Hawaii Forward is a program dedicated to looking at transportation and traffic issues on Oahu and around the state. I'm your host Tim Apachella. Today we're going to take a look at the opposite direction, East Honolulu. Traffic from Ewa to downtown usually gets most of the attention. However, the east end of the island suffers from gridlock as well. Not only is there bumper to bumper traffic during the commute hours, but also on the weekends. It's not discussed very often either, so we're going to talk about the shopping centers, actually, and the parking lots in the Hawaii Kai area. So many cars, so little space. Frankly, it's getting in and out of the shopping center that makes me the most nervous when I drive, which we're going to talk about a little bit later in the show. With me today to talk about the east side headaches is my guest, Rune Garvin, who's the chairperson for the Transportation and Safety Committee of Oahu, the Hawaii Kai neighborhood board. Got a little tongue-tied there. Rune, thank you very much for coming on the show and being willing to discuss some of the issues that we suffer on the east side of the island, not just always on the west side. So thank you for coming. You're welcome. Yeah. Let's talk about the east side. Let's talk about Hawaii Kai and basically the highway that keeps us from downtown. Let's talk about generally the condition of where we're at and the traffic that we experience. So you have any, a lot of your constituents ever come up and talk to you about it and say, you know, we need help here or help there? Well, our focus is mostly within Hawaii Kai itself. So those parking lots are one of the issues. In terms of the highway, I've had a few issues come up. And I think one of the things you have to be aware of is that whether it's the city street or it's the state that's responsible. For example, Kalana Anioli Highway is state, but the signals are city. Right. So those kind of things complicate it too. But complaints about backups in the morning, Ina Koa Street, when we had the, what do you call it? The water main break. The water main break that just bamboozled traffic when they finally stopped the left turns at Ina Koa Street, traffic picked up. That is a choke point every morning and every evening. People coming off the freeway are trying to get on. Is it because there's so many people just trying to make that left hand churn lane there? Or is it, is this weird that that one particular traffic light is causing all that backup? Well, I think all the people that live in Wailupi make that turn there and also if they want to go to Kahala Mall. Because the other exit that goes to Kahala Mall, Wailai Avenue, off-ramp always backs up because it's a very narrow short lane and the traffic stacks up and extends on to the freeway and that's another dangerous area. And so a lot of people don't want to get caught in that. So it seems to me whether it be in the AM commute or in the PM commute, it is that one particular traffic light that's backing it up all the way, you know, a lot of times all the way past the high school and then in the other direction too. Well, it does, that light does. I don't think it's totally responsible for all of it, but it certainly compounds things. And then my son who teaches at Kalani says that in the mornings there's one lane only into the high school and they cone that and then the traffic waiting to get there backs up the right-hand lane. When you say they cone it, is it the crew that puts out the cones for the... No. No. Who cones that? I think the high school does. I think the high school does. Yeah, it's just coning the drive, that little turn-off, but then the traffic extends way back. I wonder if the city and county is aware of that. I would think so. Oh, I wouldn't assume so. I wouldn't assume that. That's interesting because you're right, that does back things up quite a bit. And you know, I know, I've had some folks here on the show that have that horrible commute from Ewa to town and they said, you know, if we're not on the road by six in the morning, we're ready for a two-and-a-half hour commute one way. So Hawaii Kai is not that bad, but if you're not on the road by, say, seven o'clock, seven-fifteen in the morning, you're in for a solid hour, a bumper-to-bumper. Actually, it's earlier than that. What do you think it is? I think you have to be on the road by six-thirty to have a straight commute straight into town. Otherwise, if you leave later than that, you may be okay on Kalana, Onioli. But when you get on the freeway, it's going to bog down either at Kahala Mall or at UH. UH, yeah. That's true. And one of my observations about all that is when they built these on-ramps and off-ramps, they did them backwards. Most places, the exit happens before the entrance. That's true. And here's the other way around. So yeah, okay. So people are trying to get off and people are trying to get on. And they're interweaving. And it jams up like that. And especially at UH, you see that. Yeah. Were you here before the highway was expanded to the number of lanes it has now? Which highway? Kalani, Onioli. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What was that like? That was a nightmare. I've only been here ten years. So tell me, let's do a memory lane here if we could in a little history. What was that like? Because it was just a two-way in each direction? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was exactly like it is now. Except for the four years they took to do seven miles. Right. That was a nightmare. Yeah. That was an absolute nightmare. But what happened is they said, well, there's too many cars. And so we're going to expand it. And they expanded it. And they took people's front yards to do that. And then they built more houses and condos in Huay Kai. And we're right back. Back to where we started. That's the basis of traffic planning is you can't build your way out of traffic. Because the more you expand roads or highways, not only do you create additional maintenance now in the future in perpetuity, because you've built these things and they have to be maintained, but you also have, you're just going to fill it up eventually. Well, it wasn't supposed to be like that because the East Honolulu Sustainable Communities Plan says Huay Kai isn't going to have more development. And then all of a sudden, and all this stuff came in. Right. And so we're right back to square one. So the traffic on the highway was pretty much like it is now. When that was first completed, how much did it improve as far as time to get into town? Was it much or it had to be much? I mean, it had to be an improvement. You went from basically two to four lanes. You doubled the capacity. Didn't seem like it? It doesn't stand out in my mind. Is it right? So it wasn't dramatic, I don't think. Well, what studies show is that when a highway is expanded, those people that normally said, no, I'm not going to go on the road, okay? Because I'll just make my trip later or I'll do something else or somehow I'll rearrange my life or my schedule or my job and to avoid that highway gridlock. So once a highway has been expanded, they go, oh, I guess I can use it now. Things are much better. So those people that weren't using it now decide they're going to use it and you're almost at a neutral delta. It could be. But I think most people have schedules and that's when they drive. I think the factor that maybe hasn't been considered is the tourists. Right. So everybody wants to go to Hanama Bay or they want to drive around the coast or they want to. And so we have tour buses and we have tourists and rental cars and they don't know what they're doing. I think you'll see a lot of that where they seem to gather at Cooklehead Marina and we'll talk about this now. It's a good time to talk about it is the entrance to get into that marina and how unsafe it is. It's really very scary and you're right. Especially when the tourists are on mopeds and the sky is the limit and they don't know all the traffic laws of Hawaii. They probably know a lot of them but they don't know all of them. And it's scary. I watch these folks come in and out of the ingress and the egress of the Cooklehead Marina Shopping Center and it's surprising there's not more injuries. It is kind of scary. Well as I told you, Gene Ward and I did meet with the head of the traffic of the Highway Division at State Department of Transportation several years ago wanting to do something about that like a left turn lane to set aside a left turn lane. He was up for it in the sense that he was saying you could add another lane where the gully is. Far right side. And then make a left turn lane for stacking and he would have liked he said he would really like to see two lanes turn into Lunlila Home Road but there's no money. And Cookle Marina then our other suggestion was to close that entrance and Cookle Marina doesn't want to do that because of course that's business. It is a major way of getting in there. And the other entrance is a short stacked left turn lane too. Well I suppose technically you could put a light there but we already have 20 What do we have? 20 lights from Lunlila to the beginning of H1 either 19 or 20 lights and I've counted them. I've counted them and you know it's great if they're synchronized and a lot of times they are. I will give credit to the city county or is it the state? I give credit to the city and county for finally getting those things more or less synchronized they're just way off. I don't know what causes that. Some of it is what are they synchronized to? If they're synchronized to the speed limit which one would hope they are a lot of people are going to get stopped because they're not driving the speed limit which is another problem that we have is the speeding. When there's any flexibility commute is actually safer sometimes than driving on the road other times because you're forced to be slow but there's a lot of speeding and weaving in and out the speed limit is 35. If you go 35 you can get run over we're rented for sure. I also noticed that because there's so many traffic lights you do see a tendency from motorists to run the red and it's almost scary to stop for the red because somebody will get you and it's assuming I'm going to run the red and it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way. I have been re-rented for stopping when they didn't think I was supposed to. That does happen and also people do get so frustrated with hitting every light red that then they come to one more and that's it and they run it. I think I've noticed that there's a difference of almost 15 minutes or more if the traffic gods are with you and they're all green versus just hitting every red every time and there's at least a 15 minute to 20 minute differential just if those 19 or 20 lights are with you or not with you that morning or in the evening. It's very strange that way. If there's not going to be a traffic light at the ingress or egress it's just too close to the other traffic light. So our plan which is still would be lovely is to have a left turn lane and have two lanes going straight. Right. But expand the shoulder. So you could still have two lanes coming out. Was that a high-cost ticket item? A high-cost ticket item? Did they have to do that? Would they have to move the railing out? Would they have to do a whole other lane? Okay, so that is going to... the lights are not cheap. Right. So that wasn't in the budget and now he has retired so I don't know. That's one of my frustrations. I've been trying to get things done for so long and I'm on my third administration now and every time there's a new administration a new learning curve? There's a new head of the department and so you have to start all over again. I would find that frustrating and very frustrating. So I just sit here and make noise and eventually somebody listens to me. Well, one of the things you said that I thought was rather amazing is there's no formal process of statistic gathering on the number of accidents or incidents at that particular choke point. What we learned and that was true for other accidents, other trouble spots in Hawaii that we were trying to get something done about. The police came back and actually the Department of Transportation came back and said there's no records of that many accidents and so it doesn't meet the requirements for change and we questioned that because many of us have personally witnessed these accidents. Plus the evidence of picking up the pieces that are left in the middle of the intersection and so in pursuing that we learned that the statistics that they give you are not from police accident reports. They come from Department of Health and those are only accidents where there was injury or over a certain money value. Let's hold this topic for one moment or give back to it after this commercial break but I want to address that because that's significant because if you can't gather the statistics it's a big problem. So we'll be right back. I'm Tim Apachella. This is Moving Hawaii Forward. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii 30 talk shows by 30 dedicated hosts every week helping us explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii Hawaii's leading digital media platform for civic engagement raising public awareness on tech, energy, diversification and journalism. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. This guy looks familiar. He calls himself the Ultra Fan but that doesn't explain all this. Why? Why? He planned this party, planned the snacks, even planned to coordinate colored shirts but he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house so don't do it in your team's house. Know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. Moving Hawaii forward, I'm here with Rene and we're talking about interesting issues on the Hawaii Kai area and our gridlock problems that we have going into the town. Before the commercial, Rene you were mentioning about statistics and the gathering of statistics and the lack thereof and I find that really amazing. Again, how does one stop a problem or correct a problem if we don't really know to what extent the problem is? And I just find that really head-scratching of moment for me. Well, I think there must be a way. I just don't know what it is. I think HPD probably has better numbers but they just don't deal with that. It depends on their database and how they key it in and how they can query it. And the Department of Transportation gets them from the Department of Health. So, that's the problem. I am aware that there's a commercial site that says it records accidents. I had one of my committee members send that to me and it has way more how accurate it is. I don't know. But apparently So in your conversations with either the state or the city county have they addressed the fact that they don't have significant data? No, and they don't see that as as an issue. As a concern. Because it has to meet any change you want to make has to meet certain requirements which they call warrants. So, for example, I wanted to put in a stop sign Well, you can't just put in a stop sign. Right? No. There are warrants, requirements that have to be met and they will come back to you and say statistics don't warrant a stop sign there. And that's how we found out well, what are the statistics? Right, that's how you found out. So how do you stake your case? You just say here's the cleanup crew that comes every other week or every other day? There's a whole process you go through. They have the traffic cameras and that camera is a traffic what do you call them? Traffic trailers that give you the speed that you're going. Right. Oh, sure. They don't do anything. There's no consequence to that. It just shows you how fast you're going. And then we have increased patrols and then they do those traffic counts sometimes. But that works better for speeding than it does for actual accidents. Yeah, I would agree. I haven't found a satisfactory solution to that. I mean because on that particular turn into coca marina we do have this weaving in and out people trying to get around, get in you have people who haven't calculated it correctly and so there's a rear end you have the combination of tourists who kind of are just thrown into this mix trying to get into the marina and it's really something else. Well let's assume that once we've turned off the highway we're now inside the Cocoa Head marina parking lot. I find that really amazing place because there are cars coming which way. There's pedestrians walking right behind you as you're backing up or right in front of you as you're moving forward and you know when I first moved here I thought, why is everyone just moving at a snail's pace? Now I understand because there's a real good chance of hitting somebody or a car or a new pedestrian in that particular in that area. Well it's not limited to that one. Actually I think Cocoa Marina fares better than the shopping center where Longs is. Oh sure. I've seen pedestrians hit in that lot. So that one is trouble and we did have success in getting a left turn lane into that one, a light. When was that done? I don't know. It's been several years now but it took a long time to get that to happen. Because there's so much traffic until everybody wants to go to Longs, right? And the parking lot's too small and now with more people it's really too small and then it's in bad repair and that's what it takes. So now there's a McDonald's drive-through that used to be in Cocoa Marina. Okay, yeah. It's dangerous. I don't want to say this information's making me more and more depressed and I've noticed the car dings along the perimeter of my car are increasing exponentially. I don't know who comes up with the space measurements. I think the minimum from the state or the city county is really way too narrow. I mean, there must be an assumption that we're all just driving compact cars. Well, it depends. It depends on which one. On the center. And how recently they've updated and what the requirements were at the time. Because now people are going back into bigger cars, of course. Because it was smaller and they could fit more cars in but then there's also the requirements about the EV pump stations and some have it and some don't. There's just a whole lot of issues about parking. I was at Costco and this poor lady had pulled in and she literally couldn't get out. She was stuck halfway in and she started yelling, I can't get out. So I tried to help her. I couldn't wedge my body in between the two cars and they were well within their lane. They're striped marker and I just said, my gosh, this is something else. Costco now, they use a double line marker. So you have plenty of room to get your car to park there without getting a door ding or smashed in between it. You just need to get skinny. I've been told that. I'm working on that. I have often thought as I squeeze out of my car, it's a good thing I'm not big. Okay, that's my pet peeve for today. It's the parking space but there are more important things in East Honolulu that we need to kind of discuss and I would say that your biggest challenge is probably safety. Particularly trying to get into some of these shopping centers. Well, I have a concern about the speeding throughout Hawaii Kai. Especially on the major connector roads. And for example, Upper Lunalila Home Road is 25 miles an hour. That's the speed limit. It's all residential. There's no stores there. There are homes fronting the road with driveways that are trying to come out. There are children walking to school. There are people walking. There are joggers. And cars are coming down. We've had the traffic trailer. We know. They're coming 45 and 50 miles an hour. Is that right? From a 25? Yeah, in a 25. And then when they get to the bottom because there's nothing that stops them then they hit the flat and they want to make the light because the light has been changed to favor the traffic coming in so it's a long light. So they want to beat that. So then they pick up speed. So there are chronic accidents, fender benders at that intersection. Have there been any injuries? I'm sure there have. I don't know, but not there have been way more accidents than the state records. There are the city records. In fact, I saw a motorcycle policeman get hit there. Because the people coming down the hill turn left, most of them going to town. And they assume that everybody coming from this side is going to go right. But some people want to go straight. And they actually have the right of way. Turn right into them. Then that happens fairly frequently. So that's a concern. The kids are a concern. They're walking to school. Children don't watch. They play. They push each other. Dogs run out. Cats run out. Older people may fall. There are so many things that can happen. There are a lot of variables here. That's what got me involved in this in the first place. Has the neighborhood board taken a position on some of your attempts to rectify these problems? Have they said, we endorse this and is there a lobbying effort by any chance that the neighborhood board can implement and try to make a difference and help you out? Because you've just said it yourself, I've got the three administrations and I have to start all over again. I know that's a process within City Hall. The way the neighborhood board works, the committee makes proposals that they bring to the board and then the board supports them or doesn't. That's how that works. Have you been successful to get the board to your position? Some of them. We got a sign warning about pedestrians at the intersection of Hawaika Drive in Keahole because pedestrians are invisible. The new cars have that post. If you're turning left and somebody's walking in this crosswalk you won't see them unless you make an effort to look. The same argument they've talked about the bike lane on King Street. The post obscure that bicycle has come across. We've seen so many near misses including a blind woman with her cane and her dog who almost got hit and so we kept agitating for something like a left turn light. Well, we're not going to get a light. They said they would put a sign but then you go on the chain of whenever that's going to happen you get hit. I remember this. I was able to send the picture of the ambulance and the whole thing and we got the sign. I find that disheartening. To mildly put that I'll put that as disheartening if that's what it takes to get a change here on something like this. The whole government bureaucracy is like that. Well, you just said it right there, I wanted to have time to talk about rail but guess what? The bureaucracy of the rail. We're not going to have time today to talk about that. I don't want to talk about the rail. It's not going to do anything for me anyway. Well, a lot of these Honolulu's saying the same thing. Where is it for me? Maybe that's a topic for another show. I hope you'll come back and join us. I appreciate you spending the time to talk about your efforts and what you've been up against about the good fight. Congratulations. This is Tim Apachella and this is Moving Hawaii Forward and I'll see you in two weeks. Tuesday, noon, aloha.