City hopes painting stripes will slow cars on Hele Street

Traffic never stops, and neither do the questions about it. I’ll even throw in one on rail.

Question: Why did the city paint stripes on the side of Hele Street? It has added stripes on the roadway not only in the middle, but also on the side, essentially greatly reducing the width of the lane of travel. Why bother to do that?

Answer: The city didn’t reduce the lane of travel, but just wants to make drivers think that the street is narrower.

Parking spots on the sides of the street were always there, they’re just not delineated with white stripes. And double yellow stripes were added in the middle to clearly mark the lanes of travel.

This was in response to numerous complaints that Hele Street, a downhill road in Kailua with some straight stretches, was conducive to speeding.

"So it gives the visual effect of narrowing the street," says Wayne Yoshioka, city transportation services director. "It’s usually successful in lowering the speed on the roadway, about a 5 mph drop as an effect."

Yoshioka admits that the city didn’t do a great job in communicating the change to residents along Hele Street. City Councilman Ikaika Anderson is arranging a meeting with city transportation officials to discuss the changes.

"I guess some people weren’t aware of this and are alarmed by plans," he says.

Q: Will the rail allow space for bikes, surfboards and skateboards?

A: The city has said that its rail project will be part of a multimodal transit system.

Since the city bus allows for surfboards and bikes, the city wants something similar for the rail cars as well.

Ansaldo Honolulu was selected to design, build, operate and maintain the rail car system. Each train is made up of two cars. Each car will have two multipurpose areas to fit either a wheelchair, a bicycle or two surfboards.

That means up to eight surfboards, four bicycles or four wheelchairs per train ride will fit in those areas.

Q: When will the new Kapolei interchange open?

A: Work for the first phase of the project was supposed to be completed last month, but further engineering revealed utilities the state did not expect.

The state now expects to complete the project by late October or early November, hopefully before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering, which will halt all construction on Oahu.

The project’s design changes have bumped the project’s cost up to about $18 million, from $16.6 million.

Reach Gene Park at gpark@staradvertiser.com, or Twitter as @GenePark.