Kokua Line

By Hildegaard Verploegen

Thursday, April 4, 1996

The two-lane traffic pattern for drivers is very dangerous with everybody coming and going in the same area. Why can't it be fixed so there is one place to enter and one place to exit, as is the case at some other post offices?

The way it is now begs for a head-on collision.

Also, why require people to get out of their cars and get wet in the rain when they want to put letters in the outside mail drop box? At other stations, the driver reaches out of the car window to put letters in the drop box.

Finally, do postal workers pay to park in the employee parking lot at the Hawaii Kai post office?

The parking area for customers is limited and right in front of the building. The combined entry-exit on the left side is particularly treacherous as lines of customer and post office vehicles cross in an "X" pattern in a short distance.

If a locked metal gate in the back of the post

office can be opened, postal vehicles could continue to enter on the left side but exit through the back gate and out through the separate employee parking lot.

That arrangement could end two-lane traffic and the dangerous X cross-traffic pattern. Cook said she does not know if the post office's seven-ton delivery trucks can maneuver out through the back gate; that will be checked.

If the traffic pattern is changed to flow in one direction, it may be possible to erect a snorkel mail drop box, for use by drivers with no need to get out of their cars.

Postal workers at the Hawaii Kai station do not pay for parking in the separate employee parking lot, Cook said.

Other items in today's Kokua Line:

- Owner must clean up overgrown property
- Nimitz potholes reported to state
- Mahalos