Imagine if every time the city wanted to buy a vehicle, the Honolulu City Council had to approve the checklists, guidelines and manuals that were used to build it.

Further imagine that parts of the car over a certain dollar amount had to be line-itemed in the budget, with descriptions and provisos, for approval or disapproval by the council in order for the part to be purchased.

That’s basically what we would have with Bills 8 and 84, except we’re talking about Complete Streets, and that means all county roadway projects.

In 2012 the council unanimously passed Bill 26, which stated “every transportation facility or project, whether new construction, reconstruction, or maintenance, provides the opportunity to implement complete streets policy and principles.”

This does not mean that every roadway project will include Complete Streets features such as bike lanes, bulb outs or roundabouts. It does mean, however, that consideration will be given to those features, as well as others, and that consideration is documented in the Complete Streets Checklist.

Bill 8 states that the checklists, “updated from time to time,” shall be submitted to council for approval or disapproval. Council member Trevor Ozawa, introducer of the bill, clarified that means checklists for all complete streets projects would go before the council via a resolution.

The council would then have the option of whether to take action, and if none were taken, the resolution and underlying project would automatically be approved after 45 days (or 90 days, if Council member Carol Fukunaga’s suggestion is incorporated as an amendment to the bill).

This bill would also require the council approve manuals and guidelines used in the design of our roadways. The city uses manuals put out by the Federal Highway Administration, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

These manuals have been well vetted and contain requirements that the city must follow by federal law. While it was mentioned the bill could be amended to include a federal preemption clause, no such amendment was introduced during the bill’s last hearing.

The city has also put together a draft of the Honolulu Complete Streets Design Manual based on the Los Angeles County Model Design Manual for Living Streets with input from a variety of local stakeholders. It’s over 270 pages and includes details such as the length of time a crosswalk signal should be on “walk” and how much lighting should be on various types of roadways.

What happens if the council disapproves this manual? Isn’t it the executive branch’s function to create these manuals based on the policy the legislative branch has set, and isn’t that what has already been done?

Bill 84, the other piece of this puzzle, would require that certain bikeway and complete streets projects in the “primary urban center” that have an estimated implementation cost of $100,000 or more would be required to be line-itemed in the city’s budget with descriptions of the streets impacted, including start and end points.

Not only would that be extremely cumbersome, it would create a chicken and egg situation.

Currently funding is obtained for an entire bulk repaving project, e.g., $125 million for this fiscal year, as one line item. Then as the projects come up, plans are finalized and the checklists completed. If both bills pass, it appears that projects that were required to be line-itemed into the budget but weren’t would have to wait until the next budget cycle to be approved.

What impact would these bills have on our road repaving program?

That’s a big question right now, but there would certainly be delays and added costs. From a practical standpoint, it’s even hard to figure out how this would all fit together.

During hearings for both of these bills, the King Street cycle track and public input was brought up. I understand there are concerns about the cycle track (I have some as well), but let’s not bury ourselves so far in red tape that improvements to our transportation infrastructure come to a grinding halt.

Both of these bills will be heard during the full council’s meeting Wednesday at Kapolei Hale. The agenda is available here.