The planned improvements focus on basic infrastructure needs such as raised crosswalks, curb extensions, lighting, gutter cleaning, drainage and sidewalks that connect residential neighborhoods to local schools statewide.
The ultimate goal of the Safe Routes to Schools fund is to get more kids out of cars and onto safe and comfortable pedestrian and bike paths within walking distance of their schools. Studies show that, in turn, could help reduce chronic absenteeism and promote healthier lifestyles while improving pedestrian safety and reducing transportation costs for families.
“Anytime we have schools in communities, there’s going to be heavy congestion during the morning drop-off and the afternoon pickups,” state Department of Transportation Director Ed Sniffen said Thursday in an interview. “We’re always going to see that congestion in communities until we can start adjusting everyone’s ability to get to school in different ways.”
A previous iteration of Safe Routes to Schools was federally funded and went dormant for several years until Hawaiʻi passed a new law in 2023 appropriating state funds for the initiative and establishing a state advisory committee to develop an application process and award upward of $6.5 million each fiscal year to projects recommended by the DOT and the counties.
The relaunched Safe Routes to Schools fund was one of a range of measures signed in 2023 by Gov. Josh Green to address traffic and pedestrian safety after the state suffered 43 traffic fatalities in the first six months of that year.
That included 16-year-old Sara Yara, a McKinley High School student killed in a hit-and-run incident as she was crossing Kapiʻolani Boulevard in Honolulu on the way to school. Elevated crosswalks were installed as part of the response to her death and are a feature of the planned SRTS improvements.
Pedestrians and cyclists make up 40 percent of all Hawaiʻi traffic fatalities, according to the transportation department.
The committee announced the first round of funding awards last week for projects within a mile of schools in all four counties. Advocates welcomed the program’s revival but called for it to be more flexible going forward to meet the needs of rural students who often live much farther from campus.
Crumbling Sidewalks, Fading Crosswalk Markings
August Ahrens Elementary in Waipahu — the state’s largest elementary school — is designated as first on the list to get funding for a $1 million project along five blocks of the adjacent Māhoe Street. The money is to be used for installing raised crosswalks, curb extensions, curb ramps, lighting and drainage improvements as well as signs and pavement markings.
A recent Thursday visit to the south-central Oʻahu campus around the 2 p.m. school bell illustrated the need.
In addition to the conga line of vehicles being efficiently siphoned in and out of the school gates by security, many vehicles were parked along Māhoe Street – some jutting out from corners or parking over gutters and across driveways while they waited for students.
A crosswalk a block mauka from the school terminates in a ditch. Two blocks farther, the crosswalk markings have almost disappeared. The sidewalk on one side is relatively smooth, but the opposite side was a jumble of pavement, undulating driveways, lawns and patches of gravel and dirt.
(Matthew Leonard/Civil Beat/2025)
In theory, Hawaiʻi residents are well-positioned to benefit from the program with over 75 percent living within one mile of a public school, according to the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation.
But the rebooted fund is seeking to regain momentum after “decades of automobile-centric planning,” a DOT report to the Legislature in January said. It added that a lack of complete bicycle and pedestrian networks means that neighborhoods “are becoming increasingly clogged by traffic.”
A Federal Program Revived With State Funds
A $10 million annual legislative appropriation to the Safe Routes to School special fund is bolstered by a $5 fee on every vehicle registration in the state, as well as a surcharge applied to all traffic tickets. The special fund was able to release $8 million in funding this round, Sniffen said.
But that’s still only a fraction of the nearly $800 million worth of potential projects that fit the program criteria waiting for funding, according to the DOT report. The new advisory committee has to decide where the limited funds available will have the most impact, Sniffen said.
The first round of projects selected by a permitted interaction group of the committee using a point system were “already in the pipeline and could be up and running within six months of the funds being released,” new advisory committee chair Abbey Seitz said Thursday in an interview.
Those funds won’t be released until early next year, but Sniffen said the DOT was looking at ways to speed up disbursement by streamlining interagency agreements so that work could begin within four months of receipt.
Sniffen said the benefit of the state fund is that counties don’t have to go through the more onerous process of applying for the projects at the federal level. “Getting the money in play as soon as possible and making the improvements as quickly as possible is what our job should be,” he said.
The largest grant on the list is $2 million for Kalāheo Elementary School on Kauaʻi. That and other projects will also focus on improving basic infrastructure like fixing sidewalks and installing curb extensions and bus stops.
Focusing On The Last Mile To School
Despite the strength of Hawaiʻi’s car culture, where over 50 percent of car trips under five miles are student- or school-related travel according to DOT data, Seitz said improving pedestrian infrastructure was “one of the critical ways we’re going to improve safety and change people’s perceptions around what it means to get around.”
Investments in sidewalks and shared-use trails “have been shown to have a rippling positive impact and not only for young people who may rely on that infrastructure to get to school,” Seitz said. “Everyone is a pedestrian at some point, even if you’re walking from a parking lot to your final destination.”
For now, the program is “fairly focused on making those smaller geographic connections within a one-mile radius of the school,” she said. That reflects the limited budget and resources of the committee, which is looking to hire more paid staff to enable more community engagement in the future, she said.
Committee members also hope to be able to expand access to the program to non-government entities working on transport issues.
The SRTS program is intended to benefit low-income communities, but its current criteria are weighted toward projects within 1,000 feet of school property lines – meaning the funds are of limited benefit to students traveling longer distances in rural areas.
Complicating the problem, the DOE has had to cancel dozens of bus routes in recent years because of driver shortages.
The advisory committee was told Tuesday by a University of Hawaiʻi researcher that it should consider expanding its brief if it’s going to better meet the needs of communities on the neighbor islands.
UH social scientist Treena Becker recently completed a DOT-funded study of school transport needs in the Ka’u District on the Big Island where students face uncertain commutes over longer distances.
Lack of access to transportation has been found to be a major contributor to absenteeism and poor academic results there.
That’s especially the case in communities like the Kaʻū-Keaʻau Pāhoa complex area where families might live several miles from any bus stop – if the area has a bus stop at all.
During a presentation to the committee, Becker shared a photo of an ad-hoc bus stop that had been created by students from Discovery Bay on a narrow rural road without street lighting to illustrate the challenges they face making a safe trip to one of the only two schools in the district.
Becker also pointed to communities like Hawaiian Ocean View Estates on the Big Island, which has one of thehighest rates of poverty in the state.
In an interview Wednesday, Becker said she met some HOVE families who had transferred their children to schools in Kona so the parents could coordinate transportation with their work commutes rather than rely on bus services.
As it stands, Becker said Safe Routes to Schools doesn’t address the kind of situation she saw on the Big Island because of the short distance involved. “I’m saying that we just need to figure out better ways to get these children to within the last mile of their schools.”
The current SRTS priorities aren’t set in stone, Seitz said.
She said she “would definitely like to see the committee be more expansive in its thinking about what it means to create safe routes to school. Pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is not necessarily encompassing all student needs.”
This story first appeared in Honolulu Civil Beat. Read the original here.
