In a city where it’s become impossible to get anywhere, that straight shot down King Street used to be the easiest way to get across town. Not just back in the good old days or 10 years ago, but recently. Like before the bike lanes came in.

Now it’s a crazy pinball game with bikes whizzing past every intersection and parking lot entrance, cars parked on the left lane and people shuffling like zombies or darting like deer across the roadway — crosswalk, no crosswalk, doesn’t matter. They’re crossing. The ducks in a shooting gallery are more orderly and probably safer.

If you’re the driver, you feel like the silver ball haplessly about to hit everything in its path, ricochet and then hit it all again.

There is a faulty assumption that more is better, especially on an island with limited space and unlimited growth. But when fast and heavy vehicles are next to slow-walking kupuna, surprising cyclists and frustrated people trying to snag a parking space, more is not smarter. More is ridiculous.

What King Street needs is less. Something has to go: Either bikes or pedestrians or cars or a parking lane. Three out of four is more sane. Two out of four would be better, but there’s no way that’s ever going to happen. Things in Hawaii don’t ever get smaller and simpler.

Bike riders always have the moral high ground. They’re doing healthy things for themselves, and they aren’t harming the environment like the rest of us gasoline-powered slobs. But self-righteousness perched atop two skinny wheels is still so vulnerable. A driver doesn’t have to be careless or distracted to be a threat to them — not on King Street, where there are countless things a motorist has to look out for. Humans have their limitations. Automobile sensors have their limitations. A top-gun fighter pilot with the best instrumentation would be challenged to navigate that section of roadway.

We live on an island. We can’t have it all. We keep trying to have it all by cramming it all in, but we’re not Seattle or Portland or some darling European seaside town where you can ride your cute bike to market and bring back fresh baguettes in your cute bike basket while you wave to smiling organic-farm families in their cruelty-free horse-drawn wagons. Honolulu is a busy, disorganized city, and King Street is a busy, disorganized thoroughfare for weary office workers heading home, seniors making their daily trip to Longs and harried parents trying to get their kids to and from school, lessons and sports. God bless the bicyclists. They have their rights, but they need more than green and white paint to keep them safe.

Someday a future mayor of Honolulu will undo the multiuse madness of King Street and make it safer for everyone, and we will shake our heads and wonder why it took so long for common sense to win out over trendiness.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.