PUHI — Changes ahead.
Kauai Bus is tweaking a couple of pickup and drop-off points around Lihue as a safety precaution for bus riders trying to catch a lift.
Beginning Monday, every bus on routes 100 and 400 will stop at the Kauai Community College Performing Arts Center, not just the early morning buses that do so now.
All routes will then return to Kaumualii Highway without stopping at Island School. The changes mean Route 100, coming from the Westside, will no longer drop off passengers on the side of the highway by the Shell gas station across from the college.
That means KCC students won’t have to cross the highway to get to class, which makes class commuting safer and was a primary reason for the change, the county said.
“The changes to the KCC bus routes were based on safety concerns expressed by representatives of KCC’s student government, a KCC instructor who rides the Kauai Bus daily as well as representatives of the Youth Advisory Committee to the Mayor,” Celia Mahikoa, county transportation executive, wrote in an email. “Essentially, they all were concerned about having to cross six lanes of traffic in 30 seconds and the need to cross the pull out lane and then stand in the small triangle, waiting for the cross signal.”
Count bus rider Kira Rowan, of Eleele, in favor of the change, which begins on the day the spring semester starts.
He rode the Kauai Bus to the Puhi campus Tuesday, and said he’d seen students darting across the busy street after getting dropped off on the opposite side of the school.
“I hope they can make this KCC Performing Arts Center stop all day,” said Rowan. “Last semester, I needed to be on campus at noon and got dropped off at the bus stop past the Shell station. I waited for the light, but other students didn’t.”
The changes do mean more time for bus riders who want to go beyond KCC. The Island School drop was discontinued as a way to pick up those additional minutes lost.
Not everyone is in favor of the proposed change.
One bus driver, who didn’t want to give his name because the subject involved his job, said officials are underestimating the amount of lost time when the buses have to go through the lighted intersection and back out on the highway. It could mean missed connections down the line, which would be unfair for all those non-student riders.
“All so those kids don’t have to walk, what, 100 yards?” the driver said. “It’s stupid.”
And if safety is an issue for students crossing the street, would safety be as big an issue for riders dropped off at the college who want to cross back to the Shell station? Does this mean the signalized intersection is unsafe in the county’s view?
“The action signals no assumption on the part of the county that the intersection is unsafe,” Mahikoa wrote. “The Kauai Bus was merely being responsive to the concerns of its riders in creating a more direct drop-off for this particular destination (KCC).”
Another change that’s scheduled to take effect on Monday is the removal of the Kauai Village parking lot bus stop. This stop will be replaced with a new bus stop on Kuhio Highway next to Hoi Road just south of the Kapaa Taco Bell restaurant.
The county said it didn’t receive any feedback against the change when the college students expressed their concern.
Kauai Bus has 70,000 fixed route trips and 6,900 paratransit trips provided per month and has a $6.3 million budget of which the county general fund provides nearly $4 million.
Andrew “Kumu Punohu” Meade, of the Punana Leo school, said he too was in support of the change on Tuesday.
Meade, who rides the bus to work from Hanapepe to the Puhi Hawaiian immersion preschool, said the changes would help.
“I used to catch the 5:30 bus to Lihue, and I think that bus and the 6:30 bus were the ones making the Island School stop,” Meade said. “I used to get dropped off on Kaumualii Highway past the Shell gas station and that was a dangerous stop.”
He said students on the same bus would be looking at the stop light at the Puhi Road junction, and if it appeared they would not make the light, would run across the road (Kaumualii Highway).
“With the change, the bus comes to the KCC Performing Arts Center Bus Shelter,” Meade said. “This is much safer.”
• Tom Hasslinger, managing editor, can be reached at 245-0427 or thasslinger@thegardenisland.com.
