Following the deaths of two cyclists hit by a car along a main road in Ewa, some lawmakers and officials are reiterating their calls to tackle the issue of speeding not just through more law enforcement but also through changes in road design.

Iroquois Road is wide near its intersection with busy Fort Weaver Road, which many commuters use to get to H-1. It’s the site where a driver lost control of his car and killed two cyclists in late March. Police have said they believe speed may have contributed to the accident.

It’s one example of a location whose appearances makes motorists feel like they can drive fast, said Eduardo Hernandez, advocacy director of the Hawaii Bicycling League.

“Even though it’s maybe illegal to speed — they give visual cues that it’s OK,” Hernandez said.

City and state officials are discussing a variety of tools for slowing down the traffic. These include speed bumps, raised crosswalks, miniature roundabouts and sometimes even repainting the roads to remove a lane of traffic. 

The speed limit along Kapolei Parkway is 25 mph in some areas, but residents at a recent Kapolei town hall hosted by Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said that drivers often go much faster. Particularly troublesome, they said, is that multiple schools are located along Kapolei Parkway, placing students who want to cross the street at risk.

“There’s lots of racers out here in Kapolei and Ewa. Since there’s no race park, they were using thoroughfares like Kapolei Parkway — since it’s straight — just to do some drag racing,” said Rep. Diamond Garcia said, who represents the area.

He said that speeding was a big issue for residents when he was campaigning in 2022, and that cars sometimes drive close to 50 mph down Kapolei Parkway — double the legal limit.

Garcia introduced a resolution this year calling on the state Department of Transportation to place speed bumps and speed limit signs on the stretch between Kapolei Middle School and Kapolei High School. Supporters of the resolution include the DOT along with Wesley Shinkawa, principal of Kapolei High School.

“This stretch of Kapolei Parkway experiences a significant volume of traffic, particularly during morning and afternoon school hours. Unfortunately, many drivers exceed the posted speed limit, creating a dangerous situation for pedestrians crossing the street,” Shinkawa wrote in his testimony.

The city’s Complete Streets administrator Renee Espiau said that driving fast can be a matter of psychology.

“If you have a straightaway, and cars can see for super far, they tend to put their focus way in the distance and step on the gas,” Espiau said.

Responding to a concerned resident at the Kapolei town hall, city Department of Transportation Services Director Roger Morton said that speeding could be discouraged through basic measures like converting a middle lane into a turn-only lane. 

Different areas might be best served by different speed mitigation tools. But one obvious advantage of paint is that it would be much cheaper than putting in speed bumps, which according to data from the state DOT can cost $125,000 each. 

“We could do an awful lot with just paint to make our streets safer,” Morton said at the town hall.

Kilauea Avenue, which runs behind Diamond Head before it curves towards Kahala Mall, is one location where the city recently presented its repainting proposal to a neighborhood board. Board members were generally receptive.

Espiau, the Complete Streets administrator, showed how the city would replace a lane of car traffic with a buffered lane of bike traffic for one stretch of road. The number of cars that typically travel on that section doesn’t warrant more than one lane anyway, according to federal guidelines, she said. 

During her presentation, she said that one section with no median contributes to drivers speeding — a problem that can be fixed with repainting, she said. 

“You can see there’s four lanes out there and parking — basically a wide sea of asphalt that communicates to drivers that they should go as fast as they feel comfortable,” Espiau said. 

The city has pursued many similar changes in recent years to minimize speeding and accidents, Espiau said in an interview. 

She pointed to Kalihi Valley, where in 2016 the city repainted the Kamehameha IV Road to reduce the number of car lanes in each direction from two to one and put in bicycle lanes and a center turn lane, similar to the proposed change along Kilauea Avenue. 

According to city data, “the crashes were basically cut in half,” she said.