Fix It! The Leaning Traffic Light Of Kalākaua Avenue

Three traffic lights used to regulate heavy traffic into Waikīkī via Kalākaua Avenue. For over a year, a scrappy interim traffic light has been holding down the fort.

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Three traffic lights used to regulate heavy traffic into Waikīkī via Kalākaua Avenue. For over a year, a scrappy interim traffic light has been holding down the fort.

When a water pipe burst last year at the corner of Kalākaua Avenue and Ala Wai Boulevard, city workers had to remove the row of three traffic lights that stood over it.

The plan is to eventually restore the traffic light to its former glory. But for now, in its stead stands an interim light – one that’s diminutive, a little crooked and harder to see.

Fix It - Traffic Light at the corner of Kalakaua and Ala Wai Blvd., sits on a temporary stanchion that inhibits the pedestrian pathway. The light leans forward and apparently once hung from a position over the roadway now barely stands above it.(David Croxford/Civil Beat/2025)
This interim light’s gaze faces precariously towards the ground. (David Croxford/Civil Beat/2025)

“They’ve got like three buckets of cement or something trying to hold it up,” nearby office worker Marissa Culp told Civil Beat on Friday.

Her building’s security footage shows the flooding started just before 3:50 a.m. on April 15, 2024. Workers from the Honolulu Board of Water Supply eventually came and removed the footing supporting the big traffic light, allowing them to make repairs.

“But they never put the traffic light back in,” Culp said over a year later. “I really do not understand the city and the infrastructure here.”

Google Street View of the road heading into Waikīkī with three traffic lights hanging over the road from a single solid support structure.
Three lights stood proudly over Kalākaua circa 2019, five years before the water pipe incident that would spell their doom. Another traffic light still stands to the right just behind this street view. (Screenshot/Google Maps)

Some 16,000 vehicles travel into Waikīkī through this intersection each day. Four vehicle collisions have occurred there in the past two months, Honolulu Department of Transportation Services spokesperson Travis Ota said in a written statement.

“Nothing similar to previous years,” Ota said.

The Department of Transportation Services, which is in charge of traffic lights, doesn’t have a timeline for fixing this light, Ota said, because they’re waiting for the Board of Water Supply to put in a new base that can hold the large pole.

The Board of Water Supply couldn’t provide an estimated timeframe on Monday.

Who Is Responsible?

Roger Morton, director of Honolulu Department of Transportation Services, 808-768-8303.

Ernie Lau, manager and chief engineer of Honolulu Board of Water Supply, 808-748-5061.

Residents can also submit reports online at honoluluhi.citysourced.com; by email at complaints@honolulu.gov; by phone at 808-768-4381; or through the free Honolulu 311 app.

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