‘There are too many people losing their lives’: Residents want safer road
HONOLULU (KHON2) — Friends of the victims in the deadly crash in Punaluu on June 17 say the victims were on their way to work. Community members say the incident is devastating, and high-lights the need for improvements on the road in that area.
“They were hardworking girls and it’s just a terrible tragedy for their families, just a terrible tragedy,” said Dotty Kelly-Paddock, Koolauloa Neighborhood Board vice chair.
2 dead, 2 critical in Punaluu car crash
While community members admit the collision could’ve been prevented, they also say the road there is dangerous — especially at night.
“These big buses go whizzing through there and they’re very scary,” Kelly-Paddock said. “I try to be off the road by 9 o’clock at night, because I know there’s going to be 20 buses coming from Polynesian cultural center, you know, going back to town. It’s just the way it is.”
“Starting pretty much from Kahekili, off Haiku, all the way to Haleiwa, it’s a two lane road,” said Nara Sihavong, Punaluu resident. “And the speed limit is pretty much 35 miles an hour.”
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Community members say the road is in dire need of improvements: better lighting, it could be wider and there could be sidewalks put in.
“In that corridor specifically, what is a hard part is when you go left or right, you’re either next to a property or you’re next to the shoreline,” Rep. Darius Kila said. “It’s going to involve either condemning properties or exploring the possibility of eminent domain and nobody wants to go down that route.”
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“There are too many people losing their lives,” Kelly-Paddock said. “A lot of people are just walking, you know, along the road and they get killed.”
Kila says the issue — the Punaluu community is similar to his on the west side — is that the roads were built decades ago with infrastructure that can’t handle the current population. He says speed and safety devices installed by the state Department of Transportation do help. But it’ll take more to keep our roads safe.
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“We need help from the state to really take a really serious look at this road and not just tell us it’s too expensive to fix,” Kelly-Paddock said.
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