Recent changes to Leahi Avenue pose a hazard for children, neighbors say

When classes begin Aug. 3, students and teachers returning to Waikiki Elementary School on Leahi Avenue will face changes made over the summer that many residents complain have made traffic conditions more dangerous, especially for the children who walk to school along the narrow, privately owned street, which lacks a continuous sidewalk on either side.

Leahi Avenue runs between Monsarrat Avenue and Noela Place near Diamond Head. In June the street’s owner, Safe Leahi LLC, banned parking along the mauka shoulder, adding white poles to demarcate it for pedestrians. The company also added 30 paid parking stalls along Leahi’s makai side, where the public had previously parked for free.

Mary Jones, Safe Leahi founder and a parent of two Waikiki School students, said in an email her intent is to deter speeding by forcing vehicles traveling on the makai side to yield to oncoming traffic, as directed by “yield” signs she has added, and to connect a continuous pedestrian walkway along the makai shoulder in a gap she created between the new, marked parking stalls and the edges of roadside properties.

Partial, raised sidewalks with curbs exist alongside the park near Paki Hale and fronting Waikiki School.

“It’s more dangerous than before because now people are almost getting in head-ons because there are cars parked in the middle of the road,” said Arleen Velasco, a resident of Pualei Circle, which intersects Leahi Avenue, “and people are playing chicken by speeding up instead of yielding.”

“There’s not enough room,” said her neighbor Bill Kenosky, “and there’s parking stalls right across from the entrance to the school, where parents drop off the kids.”

Waikiki School Principal Ryan Kusuda expressed concern that the changes could affect safety by increasing traffic congestion at the entrance to the school, near the corner of Monsarrat Avenue, which parents approach from several directions to drop off their children.

“With the school year starting, and the way parking is carved out now on Leahi, it’s going to cause unneeded stress, and we need to be proactive to come up with measures to reduce traffic congestion,” he said.

Kusuda said he’s organizing a “walkable school bus” alternative in which parents would have the option of dropping off their children into teachers’ custody at a safe area in the surrounding neighborhood, and then the teachers and adult volunteers would walk the children to school.

“This way, the adults teach kids good pedestrian habits in a fun, safe way that promotes wellness,” he said, noting studies show walking to school benefits children’s health.

Jones said she had suggested another alternative: “We have asked Waikiki School to move their front parking lot entrance onto Monsarrat to spread the volume of vehicles entering the school onto several streets rather than just Leahi Avenue.”

ON A recent Friday morning, the paid stalls across from Waikiki School, alongside Kapiolani Park, were empty except for a large, closed food truck.

Along the makai side of Leahi Avenue, parking/tow-away zone signs were posted, displaying QR codes for payment and a phone number to call to pay by phone. Here and there the white paint marking the stalls had been scraped off, and black spray paint obscured parts of the parking and yield signs.

Velasco said people were avoiding the parking stalls because of the expense, and “there’s a tow truck going up and down the street all day long, and cars are getting towed.”

That included cars belonging to seniors working in their Leahi Avenue community garden plots, said Anne Alvarez, who was composting in the gardens July 16.

Lifeguards’ vehicles also had been towed in front of Ocean Safety headquarters, said Ocean Safety Chief John Titchen, adding a misunderstanding had been cleared up and the division and Jones were on good terms.

“I commend Mary Jones for thinking of the schoolchildren walking to school, but I’m very against her taking away all our free parking and putting paid parking in the middle of the street,” Alvarez said. “And she’s saying we can’t put out our trash cans, which the city empties.”

Many residents of Pualei Circle relied on the free parking, as did workers and patrons at businesses along Monsarrat Avenue, Velasco said. Kusuda said some of his part-time staff also parked on Leahi’s makai side.

On June 10 the Diamond Head-Kapahulu Neighborhood Board passed a resolution protesting the changes and demanding the city acquire Leahi Avenue, which, it said, had been continuously used as a public roadway for at least 20 years, until Safe Leahi LLC received it in a quitclaim deed for $10 from the former owner, King Lunalilo Trust, in October.

Jones said she had stopped walking her children to school due to traffic risks and had been advocating that the city take ownership and install sidewalks for years, with no success, before deciding to take action on her own.

She had recently met with city officials, she added, “hoping with the renewed public interest, they may reconsider a city acquisition, (but) unfortunately, they are not interested at this time.”

City spokesman Tim Sakahara said in an email that Safe Leahi LLC “has undertaken roadway improvements which reduce speed limits and restrict the use of roadways and sidewalks for parking, improvements designed to provide additional protections to children in the community.”

Sakahara added the city’s impression is that “the company is not presently seeking to transfer ownership to the City.”

Some residents contend Leahi Avenue qualifies as a road under disputed ownership and should, according to state law, be surrendered to the county. But a Honolulu Department of Transportation Services spokesman said in this case there is no dispute over ownership and jurisdiction.

Velasco said the city was dodging responsibility.

“No one’s walking on this now,” she said, pointing to the cracked, uneven asphalt walkway on the avenue’s mauka side, where cones marked holes in the ground. “This is why the city doesn’t want it: They’ll have to fix it.”

“I think the city should take it over,” said Honolulu City Council Chairman Tommy Waters, saying he had asked then-owner Lunalilo Trust to build a sidewalk, “and they said, ‘We don’t have the money, we’ll give you the road.’”

Waters said he then asked DTS to accept the trust’s offer but was told the city would have to bring the road up to code with curbs and drainage, and didn’t have the money.

Jones said she was asking the city to contribute to traffic safety improvements and maintenance as she worked to establish a continuous walkway along the makai side of Leahi Avenue.

In the meantime “no one knows what’s going on,” Kenosky said with a grin, throwing up his hands.