The Honolulu Department of Transportation Services will host two public workshop meetings this week regarding the planned design and construction of the $63.3 million Ala Wai Pedestrian Bridge.

DTS’ workshops over the proposed 18-story-tall bridge named Ala Pono will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday.

The second meeting will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Both workshops take place at Ala Wai Elementary School, 503 Kamoku St., adjacent to the proposed bridge site, which is aligned with University Avenue on the Moiliili side of the Ala Wai Canal and Kalaimoku Street on the Waikiki side.

During these meetings the public will be presented with a variety of bridge types, with the intent of soliciting feedback on the preferred form of the proposed bridge, DTS said.

Results from these workshops will be summarized for inclusion in the project’s design-build request for proposal, or RFP. The RFP is expected to be issued in 2025 and a contract awarded later that same year, DTS said.

Construction of the bridge project is expected to last three years, DTS said.

“The Ala Pono Pedestrian Bridge is a key component of the city’s Complete Streets network of bicycle and pedestrian paths,” DTS Director Roger Morton said in a statement. “This project has generated tremendous interest from the public regarding the final form of this new structure, and the city is committed to soliciting additional public input on the final form of the bridge.”

DTS leads the project in partnership with the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration.

“The project is programmed using 80% federal funds and 20% local funds for each phase,” DTS spokesperson Travis Ota previously told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Ala Pono is envisioned as a mauka-makai span that will cross the 1.3-mile-long Ala Wai Canal.

The canal and its embankment, bordering sidewalks, benches, paths and greenways are a recreational resource for neighboring communities, while the canal itself serves as the northern boundary of Waikiki, the city said.

On the Waikiki side, a ramp would be built between the proposed flood wall and the Ala Wai Boulevard sidewalk. The bridge will not interfere with the planned flood wall, the city said.

As designed, the span is meant only for “biking, walking or rolling,” the city said, and will not accommodate motorized vehicles, especially cars or trucks.

Ota said the purpose of the project is to provide safe access for people traveling by foot or bicycle across the Ala Wai Canal between Ala Wai Boulevard and Manoa/Palolo Stream.

Many, like Waikiki Neighborhood Board member Jeffrey Merz, support the bridge project.

“The community has been working on getting this bridge approved for over three years, and I’ve been a huge supporter of it,” Merz told the Star-Advertiser. “It will provide emergency exits for emergencies, besides the use of the car.”

He added it “will encourage people to ride their bikes, and enjoy the Ala Wai Canal, and the area and the views from a different angle.”

The bridge also will unite the two neighborhoods of Waikiki and Moiliili, he noted.

“And the whole concept is to get people out of their cars, and that’s what this bridge does,” said Merz, an urban planner by profession. “We also don’t just want to do a utilitarian bridge.”

“We want to do something that’s attractive, aesthetically pleasing, and help improve the aesthetics of the Ala Wai Canal; it needs improvement, and this is one way to start,” he said.

However, he noted some residents on the Moiliili side of the Ala Wai Canal do not favor this project.

“They’re adamant they don’t want the bridge at all, because they feel it blocks their views and encourages folks from Waikiki to come over, which it does,” Merz said. “But they’ve said throughout the years that they don’t want to make it easier to get from Waikiki to Moiliili.”

During a city-hosted public meeting on the pedestrian bridge in September 2023, a contingent of vocal residents opposed to the new Ala Wai span appeared.

At that meeting, Luciano Minerbi, a University of Hawaii professor of urban and regional planning, claimed the real reason the bridge was being overdesigned is for cars, to provide people another route to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.

“So please don’t lie to us,” he told city officials, adding there is no need for a pedestrian bridge.

Daniela Minerbi urged the public not to be shy about expressing their views.

“Aren’t we the voice of the people who might want it or might not? Already so much money has been invested. It’s better to stop it because it’s going to be way more than what is spent now,” she said.

Others were concerned that homeless people and criminals would use the bridge to cross into Moiliili from Waikiki.

Merz said such claims were false.

“I’ve just seen over the years people not being truthful and hijacking the dialogue and trying to muzzle other people,” he said, adding another reason to support this bridge was because “the federal government is paying for most of it.”

“I can’t believe we would forgo this project when it’s pretty much funded by the feds,” Merz said.

Meanwhile, DTS has announced that additional efforts will be taken to address specific concerns raised by the community through the environmental review process, including:

>> Federal funding to reconfigure the existing comfort station adjacent to the proposed pedestrian bridge, to include additional facilities.

>> Local funding of $1 million for construction of a new canoe halau adjacent to the bridge, the city said. The halau will be included in the design-build contract provided its construction does not affect the bridge’s schedule, the city said.

In 2019, as part of the environmental review process development, a so-called alternatives analysis looked at different bridge types and configurations and solicited public input on the preferred alternative.

In 2021 the draft environmental assessment was released. And by 2023 the city was awarded a $25 million federal discretionary grant to offset the estimated $63 million cost of the bridge, the city said.

GET INVOLVED

Workshop information:

>> www8.honolulu.gov/dts/ala-pono

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Star-Advertiser staff writer Leila Fujimori contributed to this report.