Bicycle advocates on Thursday gave city officials a petition with more than 1,000 signatures urging that bicycle lanes be installed along Waialae Avenue as part of a major road improvement project in Kaimuki.
A short time later the City Council Transportation Committee advanced a resolution creating a policy that requires planners to consider walking, bicycling and other nonvehicular modes of transportation when they design a road.
About 60 bicyclists and their supporters held a rally urging the city to install bike lanes as part of a $9.4 million rehabilitation project for Kaimuki streets including Waialae Avenue, the major surface street in that section of Honolulu.
Ivy Chuang, who heads the pro-bicycle website hnlbike.org, said the large number of signatures "sends a message that the Honolulu community is for bicycles and pedestrian-friendly and complete streets."
Daniel Alexander, a board member of the Hawaii Bicycling League, said support came not just from bicyclists, but from pedestrians and businesspersons. "It’s not just about bike lanes; it’s about roads that are safer for everyone," he said.
City Transportation Services Director Wayne Yoshioka said rather than hold up the project until a study on the feasibility of a bike lane can be completed, he has asked the Department of Design and Construction to place temporary stripes that can be changed later.
About a dozen bicyclists attended the Transportation Committee meeting to show support for Bill 26, which incorporates what has been dubbed the "complete streets" policy.
A state law passed by the Legislature in 2009 required the state and the four counties to establish "complete streets" policies that provide planners, designers and architects a checklist of items designed to promote safety in street and neighborhood designs by analyzing such aspects as traffic volume, sidewalk conditions, transit facilities and parking restrictions.
Yoshioka said a complete-streets policy "provides another tool in the toolbox" for those who design streets. "It doesn’t mandate anything," he said. "It says you must consider these (different) modes and try to work them in."
Honolulu police Maj. Kurt Kendro, who heads the Traffic Division, said HPD supports adopting a complete-streets policy. From 2003 to 2011, 25 bicyclists and 163 pedestrians were killed on Oahu roadways, he said. "Those are some pretty sobering numbers when you think about it," he said.
Tom Dinell, a retired professor in the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning who is now with the AARP, said streets are an essential part of communities, taking up 20 percent of the surface space in urban areas.
"They should be for everybody: pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers," Dinell said. "The streets need to be for all of us and belong to all of us."
Council Transportation Chairman Breene Harimoto said the bill "is by no means perfect, but it’s a good starting point."
The bill now goes to the Council for a public hearing.
