Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Safe Routes To School topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Safe Routes to School coordinator outlines funding history, program services and crossing-guard bottlenecks
Summary
Safe Routes to School staff described the program’s scope, funding history and infrastructure and education activities, and discussed the state special fund and operational hurdles with crossing guard recruitment and deployment through HPD.
City transportation staff told the Council committee the Safe Routes to School program coordinates infrastructure recommendations, school-level outreach and small grants but has faced multi-year interruptions in the state special-fund distributions that historically supported the work.
“Most of the funds were used for infrastructure, but we have used about 11% for non infrastructure,” Safe Routes to School coordinator Yamato Sasaki said, describing how previous distributions were spent.
Sasaki and Transportation Engineering Division Chief Kelly Akasaki told the committee the program supports all K–12 schools on Oahu, performs walk audits, provides education materials and distributes small “care packages” to schools that lead walk-to-school activities. The coordinator said the walk zone the program evaluates can extend from 1 mile to 1.5 miles from a school and that she focuses both on the 1,000-foot school zone and the larger walk shed when making infrastructure recommendations.
Sasaki gave a timeline of the Safe Routes program and funding: the special fund was created by statute (noted in the meeting as 291C-4) and initially distributed from federal sources; funds were received from about 2014 until 2020, after which the program relied on federal grants and Department of Health grants. The coordinator said the program received roughly $2.5 million total from 2014 to 2025; the meeting record also noted that the legislature deposited $20 million into the special fund in 2023 but that funds had not yet been fully distributed or expended for county projects.
The committee pressed staff on crossing-guard availability. Sasaki and Akasaki said the Honolulu Police Department (HPD) manages the crossing-guard program and that current policy requires a school to recruit a candidate and submit that person to HPD for vetting, physical exam and training; that process can take roughly six months. Akasaki said the program’s operational steps and necessary HPD approvals make filling vacancies difficult and that many current crossing guards are kupuna. “It takes roughly 6 months,” Akasaki said of the HPD approval timeline.
On compensation, staff told the committee the current paid rate for crossing guards is about $19.50 per hour for roughly two hours a day when school is in session. Akasaki said there are about 20 crossing guards islandwide and that the number fluctuates; staff estimated roughly 70 elementary campuses are in contexts where crossing guards could be used. Committee members also discussed whether HPD could take a larger public role in recruitment or whether alternative program models (privatized deployment, school-led recruitment) might shorten the approval timeline; staff said they had compiled working-group notes and were willing to share suggestions with council members.
Sasaki said the Safe Routes program spends most money on infrastructure projects (examples cited included the $1.9 million Keiki Corridor at Fern Elementary) and small non-infrastructure mini-grants (one example: a $3,500 contribution to a Blue Zones project). The coordinator said the program also runs education events, summer presentations and the Hawaii Bicycling League’s bike-education programming.
No formal Council action occurred; staff said further funding allocations would be governed by the HDOT advisory process for the state Safe Routes to School special fund and that the department will continue identifying projects to recommend to the advisory committee.
