What has happened to Hilo?

[Arktikos]

Those roundabouts and the lane expansions are excellent improvements. Nevertheless, I retain my opinion for both lower Puna and especially upper Puna, where no such improvements have been made.

Instead, three lights have been added since a couple decades ago that all work to create traffic bottle necks: Shipman, lower Puna bypass and Kamehameha school. With 4 lanes and perhaps a roundabout or two between Keaau and Mt. View, traffic flow would be much better. Although there are far fewer autos on this route than between Pahoa and Keaau, the carrying capacity is being stretched to its max.

For sure, the number of added vehicles on the road in the Hilo/Puna area is incredible compared to the time OP brings to mind.

[stephenMM]

To their credit, right after the newspaper article on this the police cleaned up the area around the Mo'oheau bus terminal and along the Bayfront fence line. I think they did the same w/ the bandstand area. The problem though is their mind set. In the article concerning the clean up, the people who were responsible for it kept mentioning over and over how it was done in a friendly manner w/ plenty of aloha.

Sorry, this needs to be done in a straight up legal manner because it is eroding the safety of everyone who comes around there, especially children. It's also an area that is totally exposed to almost everyone downtown. That's the trouble w/ this sort of thing, as so many mainland cities have found out. Once it gets established it is very, very difficult to reel things back in.

I remember when a political group was camped out behind a big furniture store in downtown Hilo for ages. Those folks had built a mini city of tents and tons of trashy stuff and were partying it up 24/7. The city kept threatening to do something (only after numerous business owners and others complained), but never did. The city's viewpoint was because it was on private property and the owners were OK w/ it, then they were powerless. Almost anywhere else, a city would have condemned all those structures, private property or not, and charged the owners for the code violations and clean up. I think something eventually happened similar to that, but it took way, way too long, and this just empowers every fringe group there is to do something similar.

[terracore]

Originally Posted by Arktikos

Those roundabouts and the lane expansions are excellent improvements. Nevertheless, I retain my opinion for both lower Puna and especially upper Puna, where no such improvements have been made.

Instead, three lights have been added since a couple decades ago that all work to create traffic bottle necks: Shipman, lower Puna bypass and Kamehameha school. With 4 lanes and perhaps a roundabout or two between Keaau and Mt. View, traffic flow would be much better. Although there are far fewer autos on this route than between Pahoa and Keaau, the carrying capacity is being stretched to its max.

For sure, the number of added vehicles on the road in the Hilo/Puna area is incredible compared to the time OP brings to mind.

That light at shipman needs to go. It's a solution looking for a problem.