A measure to make permanent a years-long program to restrict parking on Kalihi Valley streets has stalled.
The Honolulu City Council earlier this month decided to steer Bill 20, which is intended to reduce parking congestion, noise, crime and other quality-of-life concerns, back to the Council’s Committee on Transportation for further review.
As drafted, Bill 20 would transition Kalihi Valley’s “restricted parking zone” pilot program — first established in 2017 and located in three spots around the valley — to permanent status, while paving the way for similar types of restricted on-street parking zones around the island.
An approved ordinance would allow the city’s Department of Transportation Services director to oversee the program and set and collect annual permit fees, while residents could, based on the city’s yet-to-be determined criteria, potentially lobby for future restricted parking programs in their own neighborhoods.
Bill 20 was introduced by Council members Tyler Dos Santos-Tam and Radiant Cordero in March. Dos Santos-Tam and Cordero are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the five-member transportation committee.
Under the proposed bill, a restricted parking zone (RPZ) on a public street would be reserved “for the exclusive use of those vehicles displaying a valid RPZ permit or other identification issued by the director as part of the RPZ program.”
In addition, parking on the street would be reserved during certain posted hours for vehicles displaying the RPZ permit or other identification issued by the DTS director, the bill reads. An ordinance, if approved, would establish time limits that apply to all permitted vehicles.
Meantime, no formal fees have been set for the restricted parking program.
However, future permit fees being bandied about by Council members could be around $100 or higher per permit. Fee waivers, due to provable economic hardship, may also be implemented under this program.
At the Council’s Sept. 6 meeting, in the 5-4 decision, some members offered their own versions, or amendments, to Bill 20.
But an additional four floor drafts appeared to make the issue too complex for a final vote. The floor drafts offered revisions to things like a resident status within Council districts, proximity to a shoreline, blocking designated stalls for permitted on-street parking, granting of future permits and fee collections.
“I guess I was not expecting to have four drafts today,” Vice Chair Esther Kia‘aina said of the matter. “And as a result, I’m thinking that it might be wise … to recommit (Bill 20) back to committee.”
Dos Santos-Tam was not pleased with the requested deferral: “This is the eighth time that this has come before either this body or committee,” he told his Council colleagues. “Going to transportation would be number nine, and then it would come back (to the full Council) in October, number 10.”
He added, “this has been fairly extensively discussed and I think some of these are just policy decisions that we have to make.”
Regardless, Kia‘aina, Council Chair Tommy Waters — who’d advanced two floor drafts of his own for Bill 20 — as well as Council members Val Okimoto, Calvin Say, and Matt Weyer voted to send the bill back to the transportation committee for further review.
Prior to the Council’s vote, members of the public who spoke objected to restricting parking on public streets.
“I oppose this measure,” resident Natalie Iwasa said, adding the program is meant to be an enforcement tool. “But it’s ineffective, and the reason is that it moves the problem from one area to another.”
She said Bill 20 also “privatizes our roadways, but taxpayers are not required to pay for those repairs or maintenance or buy those roadways.”
Under this measure, Iwasa said too much discretion would be given to the DTS director which could allow for future corruption. She added the restricted parking program was ripe for abuse by current homeowners who already park multiple vehicles on large, residential properties.
“And now you’re going to allow people to privatize our roads and get permits to put two, three, four more vehicles on the road,” she said. “This does nothing to reduce the number of vehicles on our roadways. And it’s a gross misuse of taxpayers’ funds; it’s just wrong.”
Likewise, resident James Manaku Sr. said he believed all public streets were for public use.
“My concern is to be able to go into any community,” he said. “And yet you folks are denying me my ability to go into any community; you’re denying me that, why are you doing that?”
Meanwhile, DTS Director Roger Morton told the Council the restricted parking program could undergo further study — perhaps for one to two years — in order to determine the pros and cons of implementing such a program, including the collection of fees toward city revenues.
“If it doesn’t make sense, I think our engineers and our planners should tell us that it doesn’t make sense,” Morton said of a possible study. “And that would be our recommendation to Council, if that’s what we felt.”
He added that city-led study should also elicit greater public comment as well.
“I think listening to what residents, and folks in the community, and businesses and everybody else say is part of a process that we would go through,” said Morton, “but we would also apply professional judgment to our recommendation that we made.”
Prior to the meeting, Dos Santos-Tam — who, like Cordero, represents portions of Kalihi — told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser that the city’s first restricted parking zone program set up in Kalihi Valley has been more than worthwhile.
“It was a resounding success,” Dos Santos-Tam said via email. “Parking availability jumped from 9% to 30% and a staggering 98.8% of surveyed residents wanted the program made permanent.”
But the effort to get this program rolling has hit a few potholes along the way.
In 2019, Bill 70 made RPZs law. “It established a lengthy process in which an RPZ had to be established by ordinance,” he added. “Multiple attempts were made to make the Kalihi Valley RPZ permanent through this process, including Bills 32 and 24.”
Still, Dos Santos-Tam said he believed the version of Bill 20 that he and Cordero have proposed will change all that.
“It would give Kalihi Valley residents what they’ve been waiting for, while streamlining the city’s ability to establish RPZs in communities that desperately need it,” he said. “More broadly, it gives the city another tool to manage parking in Honolulu.”
And he noted Kalihi Valley is not alone among neighborhoods who have ongoing issues with parking.
“There are number of unique situations — Kalihi Valley is one of them — in which a community may need support for parking issues,” he said, adding restricted parking could be the answer from some neighborhoods. “Not every situation will get one, but it gives us that option.”
