Beach barrier good for now but not in long-term

Nobody should consider the barriers rimming the highway near Laniakea Beach a permanent solution to the clash of public activities — driving and beachgoing — that has tied up North Shore traffic.

However, it deserves a trial as a potential stop-gap measure while state transportation officials accelerate plans for the only real answer to the conundrum. At this point, that appears to be realignment of the highway inland, which coastal erosion and sea-level changes make necessary, anyway.

The state Department of Transportation this week installed a set of barriers along Kamehameha Highway that is meant to prevent people from parking and crossing over to the shore. Laniakea is a favorite surf beach and a spot where people like to go to watch the turtles.

It all seems like good-natured fun, until drivers are confronted with folks darting across the highway, raising the danger of pedestrian injuries and slowing traffic to a crawl.

For now, the department has chosen the least bad among its options by trying to wall off the parking and road crossings along a busy, two-lane highway.

One of the problems is that the obvious solution — have people park on the ocean side — is impossible, because at this particular spot Kamehameha runs right up against the shoreline. Nevertheless, the fact that ocean erosion threatens to undercut the highway in this area will make it crucial to shift the highway alignment inland for safety reasons.

And if the state needs to do so anyway, moving up the timetable for the road realignment seems the most sensible way to solve the beach-access problem as well.

Some in the community are threatening legal action to have the barriers removed. Save Laniakea Coalition plans to argue in a suit to be filed next week that a shoreline permit should have been secured.

Unfortunately, this court action seems likely to spell only more unproductive delay, although the frustration of coalition members, including prominent surf-ers and others, isn’t without good cause. State officials have said that if they prove to be effective in deterring the road crossings, the "temporary" barriers could remain for years.

Lawmakers should see that bureaucratic inertia is kept at bay by swift action to make the needed highway improvement. A previously funded study for the realignment should be pursued with new energy.

Other suggestions have included a pedestrian overpass, but investing public funds in that project seems unwise, if the highway ultimately is going to be moved. A stoplight and crosswalk would be much cheaper, but liability concerns between the state and city have complicated the move. It’s not even clear that a light would stop the illicit crossings.

The bottom line is that an estimated 600,000 people visit Laniakea each year. That makes it an attraction that should be served with a permanent, long-term accommodation.

In the meantime, state DOT officials simply must focus on the agency’s primary objective: transportation. Even with the annual lure of high winter waves, it should be possible for drivers to do better than inch along Kamehameha Highway without putting pedestrians at risk.