The Maui News

What is the quickest way to solve Paia's daily gridlock? The answer is more development. How is that? Paia is in gridlock because developers have built huge numbers of houses in Kuau and Haiku, and nothing more. You can't live your entire life in your house, and in order for Haiku residents to go to work, they have to get on the Hana Highway and commute past Paia every day.

All those trips can be short-circuited by building a downtown in Haiku where residents could work, shop, socialize and do business. Nobody thinks of this as a desirable solution because developers in America make horrible messes out of downtowns. For a model of a beautiful, workable town, you have to go to turn-of-the-century America, or to today's country villages in Europe.

But the ``traditional town design'' movement on the Mainland is changing this. Its main tools are traditional neighborhood-district zoning overlays and urban-growth boundaries. If Haiku and Paia adopted these, they would develop into charming, functionally complete villages. The need to commute into the sprawl of Kahului would be greatly decreased. Current zoning law must be overthrown if gridlock is not to become our common future.

The problem is lack of democracy: Residents of these communities cannot put citizens' initiatives on the ballot that would have the force of law necessary to do the job. We depend on the County Council, whose majority is about 30 years behind current understanding of how to create ``smart growth.'' The people of Maui must investigate these issues for themselves and, for our love of Maui, demand from the political system whatever it takes to set a new course.

Lee Altenberg

Kihei

From: altenber@hawaii.edu
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:19:51 -1000
To: letters@mauinews.com
Subject: Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Let's face it: the development of Maui has been nothing more than poorly executed sprawl. Current suggestions to end gridlock on Maui deal only with the "poorly executed" part---even in the best case, sprawl development ends up with the same traffic congestion, utter dependence on the car, blight of the landscape, and alienating pedestrian-hostile strips---only later in the game that has occurred on Maui. If you don't want a landscape of freeways, strip malls, and parking lots, there is only one way around it: traditional neighborhood design, combined with urban growth boundaries, and transportation options beyond the car. Why these three? Suppose Maui instituted an island wide bus system tomorrow. When you step off the bus at Maui Marketplace, the area is so pedestrian-hostile you don't even want to walk across the street to shop at Costco, Down to Earth, or anywhere else. The sprawl design forces you to prefer a car. To make public transit work, the destinations have to be people-friendly like Lahaina, Paia, or Makawao. That's traditional neighborhood design. And it won't happen on Maui unless developers are required to build that way by code. Many mainland communities that saw sprawl coming have given the force of law to traditional neighborhood design, urban growth boundaries, and public transit, and the results are very popular and economically lucrative. The ignorance of these success stories among Maui's County officials is inexcusable. Either they learn fast, or we vote them out. "Let's build a town six miles long, and one block wide, and call it Kihei..." Ultimately, only the voters of Maui can prevent more stupidities like Kihei from being set in concrete in the future.

The Maui News
Sunday, June 17, 2001

The Maui News' weeklong series about traffic problems on Maui concludes today, and what better way to wrap things up than to let readers have the last word.

As part of the series, our Speakout question was: "What do you see as the best solutions to Maui's traffic problems?" Readers were invited to respond by telephone, e-mail or fax. And respond you did.

Throw out the last 50 years of zoning laws

[Submitted version]

"Transportation is what you need when you are not where you want to be," writes Richard Register.

Everyone is focused on the roads as the solution to Maui's traffic problems. It's the obvious---but wrong---solution. Ask an alcoholic how to stop their craving for a drink, and they'll tell you---another drink. The clamor to build more roads is always a phase that sprawl development goes through---on the way to becoming another Los Angeles. Clearly, road expansion is needed to solve the current traffic crisis on Maui. But more roads merely pave the way to the next wave of development, and the next traffic crisis.

Building more roads is not the solution. The solution is how to develop without becoming an ocean of freeways and parking lots. There is only one solution that anyone has found: throw out the last 50 years of zoning laws and make it possible---or required---to build real towns again. A well designed town has a network of streets instead of cul de sacs and collector roads. People's offices are above shops on the local main street, and most people's houses are within a few blocks of this main street. Kids normally walk to school. Libraries are not vandalized because they are prominently placed on the public square where people can keep an eye on them, instead of being hidden behind a huge parking lot on the end of a road. Parking lots are set back, out of the way of the walkable streets, instead of being the dominant feature of every storefront. Public transit works because when you step off the bus or tram, you don't find yourself stuck in a lava flow of asphalt, you are in a walkable town where most everything you need for the day is right there.

The idea of Traditional Neighborhood Design has become a movement on the mainland, and has produced some marvelous new places to live such as Seaside and Celebration, Florida, and made towns that were being abandoned, like Wailuku, into centers of business and culture again. Why aren't the Mayor and County Council members talking about Traditional Neighborhood Design zoning? Because they are ignorant of how successful it has been in other communities. This ignorance is inexcusable among those trusted with the future of our land. Maui citizens need to demand that they become fluent about Traditional Neighborhood Design zoning and act now before "too late" becomes "way too late".

Lee Altenberg, Kihei