Nearly a quarter-mile of Ulune Street has become the city’s first so-called Complete Streets demonstration project — part of a larger effort to eventually make roadways across Oahu more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists, not just drivers.
Aiea community members and local transportation officials gathered Friday outside Aiea High School to unveil the revamped 1,200-foot roadway, running along the high school between Kaamilo Street and Aiea Heights Drive. It’s been re-striped with narrower lanes aimed at slowing cars, crosswalks designed to be easier for pedestrians, and other features.
"I think it’ll be great to cross the street and not worry about getting hit," Jordan Mattheu, a 17-year-old member of the Aiea High track and field team, said Friday during a news conference led by Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell to promote the project. They were joined by local neighborhood board members, AARP Hawaii state Director Barbara Kim Stanton, City Councilman Breene Harimoto and other students.
The Aiea revamp is the first of three Complete Streets demonstration projects slated to be completed on Oahu this year at a total cost of just under $200,000, according to city Transportation Services Director Mike Formby. The other two are slated for Kailua Road and the intersection of King and Isenberg streets, to be installed sometime later this year.
They come after city leaders in 2012 passed an ordinance that requires city planners to consider walking, bicycling and other nonvehicular modes of transportation in the planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of transportation projects — including streets, sidewalks, traffic control devices, signage and public transit facilities.
Community members pushed for years for such a policy, with studies finding Hawaii to have some of the most dangerous roads in the nation, especially when it comes to senior pedestrian fatalities. From 2007 to 2011 Hawaii led the U.S. with the highest rate of fatalities involving pedestrians 65 or older, at 5 deaths a year per every 100,000 seniors, a National Highway Traffic Safety study found.
The Aiea demonstration also features Oahu’s first back-in angle parking stalls. Those 22 stalls are designed for drivers to switch on their right-turn signal, then stop and pull into the slanted parking area in reverse.
City officials said that mainland drivers found the stalls difficult to get used to at first, but that they make good sense from a safety standpoint. Drivers and passengers will exit with vehicle doors blocking them from the roadway, and as they leave drivers can more easily pull out onto the road, Caldwell said.
Nonetheless, DTS intends to gather feedback from the public on the new design and make adjustments where necessary, Formby said.
