2005-06-17 HUGGETT SMA03-007 - Laserfiche WebLink

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everybodys driving. We need more space than is provided by these smaller driveways. And so thats why were asking for this movement to get us safer driveways. Also Id like you to think too about that driveway in front of Lulus its 21-feet, its flat graded, its got a decent line of sight and its in a 15 mph zone. Now drive just a little bit further down Alii Drive to where the proposed project is imagine a 20 foot driveway with a sloped grade going down to this property which is below the grade of Alii Drive. It doesnt have a good line of sight and its in a 30-mph zone and its 20 feet instead of 21 feet. And imagine the cars that are going to be turning in around the V.I. office building, which is on a variance and is already too close to the highway. This is not a safe situation. Its not something we feel comfortable with and this is not something where its you know were being greedy because were living at Sea Village. This is a public safety issue and as residents of Sea Village were going to be impacted more than anyone else because our driveway sits just 35 feet away from this one. So, thats basically covers what the problems we have with the driveway are. If you can flip to the next slide, this one shows some photographs of the driveway. And the first top photograph shows the view comingupthedriveway;youcanseethegrade.YoucanseetheV.I.officebuildingontheleft. We have existing problems some of, which are actually proposed to be taken care of already by removing the vegetation on the Sea Village side. Thats part of the agreement that was negotiated between Mr. Soto, the previous owner and the Sea Village Board. The second photograph coming up out of the driveway shows the view into downtown. This is what somebody will see when theyre making their normal left-hand turn to go into town coming out of this driveway. This is a very common turn that people are going to be making and the view is negligible. You have to basically pull your car into the pedestrian and bike lane in order to get a view of whats coming down the highway. We see this as a major issue. There was 2 known accidents that I know of personally in this area already. One of them was a building right down the road very similar to the V.I. building, too close to the road; its got a variance. Its that big tall white building that hangs over the Tiki surf area. Somebody plowed right into the entryway of that about 2 years ago. The car smashed the entire entryway. Fortunately nobody was standing in the entryway so as far as I know at least nobody in the house was hurt. Im not even sure what happened to the driver. I heard the crash while I was sitting on my lanai. The V.I. office building sits in a very similar situation. Its staffed with people 8 hours a day. We have guests that walk across this driveway checking into their condos over at Sea Village. This is going to be a lot of pedestrian traffic going back and forth across this driveway. People situated 8 hours a day right at the mouth of this driveway. If somebody plows into this building the way they plowed into that other building somebodys going to get hurt or somebody could die. Its a real concern. I wanted to point out that the ITE in their guidelines mentions that 12% of all traffic related fatalities happen because of poor driveway design. Seventy people have died on the Big Island in the last 2 years in traffic fatalities, accidents are on the rise and there are 7 or 8 of those by statistical probability that would be due to poor driveway design. We had 7 or 8 people that have died in the last 2 years because of poor driveway design. Now I know that the Planning Departments busy and I was a Transmission Planning Engineer in Silicon Valley during the dot com boom, you got my sympathy guys. You know buildings are dropping out of the air and you gotta figure out a way to serve them. I know its difficult but if you take a day or two and you work on your driveway design and you know some building permit takes a couple of extra days thats a couple of extra bucks out of somebodys pocket because they didnt get their permit quite as fast as they should have. If you dont take the time to work on your driveway design thats 2 or 3 lives per year that youre putting on the line. And when it comes EXHIBIT A 10