2008-01-11 THALEKII - Laserfiche WebLink

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SUMADA: Yes, we have enough right-of-way. The effective use of the, maybe I should let our traffic chief talk about it. He’s giving me the look like don’t put my foot in my mouth. THIEL: Go ahead. SUMADA: Basically the two-way left turns, the initiative to do that relates to the driveway entrances for the condo units that are along Alii Drive between, near Kamehameha III and Kaleiopapa, and also the golf course. So where those are needed, that’s where we will put it in. It is not only to help the people make left-turns into those driveways but it’s also to create a refuge lane so that people exiting the driveways or the condo units, for example, that want to get on to Alii Drive -. Right now they have to deal with two lanes of traffic trying to, you know, merge in, you know, find a gap that’s safe. So if we give them a refuge lane in the center they just deal with one lane of traffic to, you know, find a gap and make that exit safely. So it’s only where those driveways are. WATANABE: But as far as the right-of-way, we do have the right-of-way? SUMADA: Yes. It’s a 120-foot right-of-way in that area. WATANABE: Okay, thank you. SUMADA: Most of it’s paved. WATANABE: Thank you. Mr. Rho? RHO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Sumada, I’m not sure that you received or you have a coy of some of the public testimony and, but I wanted you to, or if you could elaborate on this Yamagata Road. In the submittal by a person from the public they attached the settlement agreement, Kelly et al. versus Oceanside Partners dated March 2006. And they refer to, I guess, it’s paragraph 3.2. And it talks about using basically Yamagata Road as a temporary connector road that will be completed and available for public use during peak traffic hours. Can you elaborate on that, or talk about that, or tell us why that can’t be done? SUMADA: When we looked at that, it can be done; and especially since they agreed to doing it, I suppose we could enforce that being done. To me when I looked at that, because basically we’re trying to deal with the PM peak, that is the worst traffic on Mamalahoa for the South Kona motorists. And in the PM peak you’re trying to get motorists as far south as possible. By opening up Yamagata Road you basically just give folks a short-cut or a faster route, but they still end up north of the Halekii Street signal light.So to me the benefit is, there’s not much benefit of having that if all they’re going to do is try to remerge with the south bound traffic on Mamalahoa before the signal light. So all you did is they drove around kind of like the long way past Honalo and Kainaliu only to be stuck in the same queue that they were in when they left or tried to avoid the Kainaliu Krawl. Basically we want to be able to give people alternate routes so you distribute the traffic; and in distributing the traffic there’s less congestion throughout, as a general concept, as a general concept. So Yamagata Road could be upgraded to handle the two-way traffic. To me it just created more problems on Mamalahoa by doing that. EXHIBIT A 18