State postpones lane closures to relieve traffic woes on H-1

West Oahu-bound drivers will get a reprieve this week from the latest round of nightly roadwork shutting down Ewa-bound lanes on the H-1 freeway.

On Monday the state Department of Transportation announced it would "postpone" lane closures and roadwork along the Pearl City/Wai­malu off­ramp (Exit 10) and the Wai­pahu off­ramp (Exit 8B) for at least a week. The agency will re-evaluate its approach to the lane closures at the Pearl City viaduct, aiming to ease some of the nighttime traffic caused by the work to widen stretches of the state’s busiest highway. DOT will consider rescheduling them or breaking the work up into smaller intervals, department spokes­man Derek Ino­shita said.

The agency should know by Thursday or Friday what the lane-closure plan for next week will be, he added.

Thousands of drivers, many commuting home for the evening, are affected by the weeknight closures. Last week the closures caused huge backups on the freeway which were made worse by the city’s rail construction lane closures taking place simultaneously on Kame­ha­meha Highway.

The H-1 freeway work coincides with extensive city road repaving and repairs and construction moving Diamond Head into town to erect the island’s 20-mile, 21-station elevated rail transit proj­ect.

All that work will require coordination among state, city and rail authority officials — but it’s clear that coordination isn’t yet occurring at the levels it should.

While there is some communication between state and city, the state’s H-1 work last week occurred "unexpectedly" from the Hono­lulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s perspective, HART spokes­man Scott Ishi­kawa said Monday.

HART canceled its Wednesday night Kame­ha­meha closures to help with traffic, but drivers nonetheless encountered backups getting home throughout the week.

From now on HART will invite state DOT officials to the rail authority’s weekly internal meetings on construction-related work, Ishi­kawa added.

Inoshita said DOT also intends to work with rail officials to try to keep from closing lanes on the H-1 and Kame­ha­meha Highway simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Hono­lulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration has said it hopes to hire a traffic consultant in the coming fiscal year to help better coordinate all the construction amid the various public agencies across the island. City officials did not respond to requests Monday for an update on the plan to hire a consultant.

The state said work will continue from 11 p.m. Saturday through noon Sunday with two left lanes closed for pavement resurfacing.