Students driving and walking to school this year now need to cross at the traffic light at Salt Lake Boulevard or further down the road at the Likini Street roundabout.
“The Moanalua School Community Council had been advocating to eliminate the crosswalk at (that) intersection for the safety of our students,” SCC Chair Byron Nagasako said.
Nagasako said the city studied the traffic patterns for two years before the Honolulu Police Department’s Traffic Division, the Salt Lake Neighborhood Board, and the city’s Department of Transportation Services agreed that the crosswalk was a hazard to both drivers and pedestrians.
“We hope it will provide improved safety for the students now that they have to use crosswalks where the traffic is forced to go slower,” Moanalua High School Principal Robin Martin said.
Martin said it might also help with traffic flow in the student parking lot, especially after school, when many students exit at the same time.
“Personally, I’m kind of upset about it because I live on the street that the crosswalk was on,” junior Vivian Hui said. “So for it to be removed it’s kind of a big pain. . .since I have to take a couple extra minutes to walk down to the roundabout to cross the street or go to the other side.”
Senior Renee Yano said the removal of the crosswalk will likely “make it more complicated for [her] to ride her bike home from school” because she used the old crosswalk to get into the correct bicycle lane. With cars driving fast down the hill, and through the roundabout, the crosswalk “served as a buffer around the intersection,” she said.
Senior Brandon Mendoza expressed concern about safety, especially for those who have used the crosswalk for years.
“The outlines of the crosswalk are still somewhat visible, so some inattentive students might still cross the same way out of pure habit,” he said.
But, Mendoza added, “Even if students became wary of the situation, there will undoubtedly be impatient pedestrians who will illegally jaywalk anyways because to them, it might be an inconvenience to walk up the hill and take the above crosswalk then walk back down.”
Nagasako, who is also a parent of a Moanalua High student, and said that when he drove along Ala Napunani Street in the morning to drop off his son at school, he saw how busy and dangerous it was with traffic backing up to Salt Lake Boulevard. Students exiting cars that pull over outside the apartment building across from the fire station also add to the complex morning commute.
The school submitted an initial request to study traffic-calming solutions in September 2017, Dennis Arakaki, Community Liaison for Councilman Joey Manahan, who represents the Salt Lake District. School staff and Honolulu Police were not viable options.
Work increased in earnest December 2018, and after several meetings with the public and various city departments, the city Department of Transportation Services said it would remove the crosswalk in June.
Martin said there was some discussion at the city level about placing some kind of barrier on the median as an added reminder that the crosswalk is no longer there, but said she had not heard anything recently.