Communication Number 2019-10 Waikoloa Intersection Subcommittee Report

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Communication No. 2019-10 Waikoloa Subcommittee's Waikoloa Road-Paniolo Avenue Intersection Report The County recognized decades ago that the Waikoloa-Paniolo intersection would need safety and capacity improvements. To support this, the County and the LUC added requirements to three lots near the intersection when the respective owners of those lots, Waikoloa Highlands, Waikoloa Mauka, and Hawaiian Riverbend, applied for rezoning or subdivision, as early as 1990 (in Ordinance 1990-160, requiring signalization of the intersection, based on a Traffic Impact Analysis Report (TIAR) from 1989). Unfortunately, none of the owners have engaged in any substantial development of those properties and their various requirements to build intersection improvements remain unfulfilled. In fact, one of the owners, Waikoloa Highlands, has recently had their rezoning revoked due to inactivity. The owners of the other lots do not show any signs of engaging in development of their respective properties, resulting in the intersection being unimproved for far longer than the County envisioned when the requirements were added. For example, Ordinance 1995-051 amended the earlier 1990-160 to require the signalization of the intersection by June 30, 1996. This deadline was among many missed by the respective developers. In 2005, the County passed Ordinance 2005-157 which amended the requirement further to specify a roundabout, and the developer did contract with an engineering firm to create plans for this improvement, which was noted in a 2016 annual report from Waikoloa Highlands as "construction plans for the roundabout at the Waikoloa Road/Paniolo Avenue intersection have been completed." However, the plans were apparently not paid for by the developer and were never approved or acted upon. As Waikoloa Highlands was the only developer that had even taken any steps, and they are the developer that has lost their rezoning due to inactivity, it appears that the reliance on developers to make the needed safety and capacity improvements to the intersection has failed, and the improvements are now overdue. It is time for the County to create a new plan that does not rely on developers, or to find a way to get contributions from developers regardless of their development progress so that the community involved is not harmed simply because developers decided not to develop their properties. 8. Improvement/solution Options As part of researching the Waikoloa Road - Paniolo Avenue intersection, the subcommittee received some feedback from the community and reviewed some documentation that suggested adding a traffic signal or a roundabout to the intersection as a solution to the apparent safety and capacity problems. The subcommittee spent some time to evaluate if one or the other solution, or even a different solution, would be better for the intersection. Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of professionals in traffic design to determine the correct type(s) of improvement(s) for the intersection, so the subcommittee is providing this very brief synopsis for information only. Research into the topic of traffic signals vs. roundabouts revealed that roundabouts are generally considered safer than traffic signals, as any accidents that occur in a roundabout are typically at a lower speed than at a traffic signal (or unsignalized intersection), resulting in fewer and less June 18, 2019 Page 15 of] 7