Parking lot across from Laniakea Beach has reopened

After being closed for months — initially, to add and tweak pedestrian and traffic safety improvements, and later to repair damage from a mudslide during December’s torrential rains — a parking area on city land across from the North Shore’s popular Laniakea Beach reopened Monday, the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation announced.

“The Hawaii Department of Transportation conducted modifications to the crosswalk and yellow (roadside) barriers in mid-March, and then the City DPR came in to fill in some of the pukas with crushed coral, (which) ultimately, we placed over more than just the pukas,” Nathan Serota, DPR spokesman, wrote Tuesday in a text message to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

“I think HDOT and the parks department did a great job, put in lot of effort, to create a safe place for residents to surf and fish and families to enjoy the beach at Laniakea,” North Shore resident Blake McElheny said Wednesday in a phone interview.

McElheny is also a member of Save Laniakea Coalition, which together with individual surfers won a temporary injunction in a 2014 lawsuit demanding public parking be reopened and crosswalks and traffic signs added, after the state blocked vehicle access to the mauka area in 2013.

For decades, North Shore residents have complained about traffic bottlenecks as cars stopped for beachgoers randomly darting across the highway along the 200-foot-long stretch fronting Laniakea Beach, promoted as must-visit “Turtle Beach” by tour guides and social media for the threatened Hawaiian honu that rest there.