Group brainstorming an eco-friendly Kalihi

Government and private sector representatives put their heads together over cafeteria tables on Wednesday to talk about ways to make Iwilei and Kapalama safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

The three-day workshop at King David Kalakaua Middle School will end Friday with a public meeting in which participants will make recommendations for ways to change the infrastructure of Kalani Street, Kapalama Channel and North Nimitz Highway. One design presented Wednesday would narrow Kalani Street by roughly 3 feet to make room for a bike lane and a bike buffer zone, or trees to shade sidewalks and absorb rainwater.

“This is about making the neighborhood actually work better. It’s not just trees and plants to make it pretty. It’s about using nature to do some of our work cheaper and better for the environment,” said Harrison Rue, community building and transit-oriented development administrator for the City and County of Honolulu.

Rue said that some of the ideas presented by the groups could be used in the city’s draft of the Iwilei-­Kapalama infrastructure master plan.

The city is developing an infrastructure master plan to improve development in the Iwilei and Kapalama rail station areas to make housing, shopping and services within walking distance.

“There is still a lot of work to do and a lot of standards to address,” Rue said.

Representatives from Kamehameha Schools, the city Board of Water Supply and the state Department of Accounting and General Services were some of the participants.

“The degree of collaboration across agencies is key,” Rue said. “There are people who want to solve this on the public and private side.”

The workshop is a part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greening America’s Communities program.

The EPA paid for a team of designers to help the city research sustainable strategies, which include improving bike lanes and adding landscaping to public areas. The EPA selected Honolulu to participate in the program in June 2016.

Josh Stanbro, executive director of the city’s new Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency, said it is helpful to learn from other cities’ success.

“This is exactly the kind of integrated planning process that we hope to facilitate more and more,” Stanbro said. “Every time we rebuild we should be looking at the long-term durability of (the infrastructure), given that climate change scenarios are increasingly worsening.”

The final presentation of ideas discussed over the three days will be Friday from 2 to 4 p.m. in King David Kalakaua Middle School’s cafeteria.