City officials are spending more than $100 million annually to dig out from years of road-repair neglect, and new data show that paving crews are sustaining their scheduled pace to fix the worst of the island’s city-owned roads.
In 2014, those crews paved 305 lane miles (individual lanes of road — not the full width of the road), according to the latest report of completed and ongoing road jobs released Tuesday. The tally, provided by the Department of Design and Construction, brings the total city lane miles repaved on Oahu to 703 since January 2013.
That puts Honolulu at nearly the halfway mark in Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s push to repave the 1,500 worst lane-miles in a five-year period.
The city maintains more than 3,500 total lane miles across the island.
Before taking office in 2013, Caldwell campaigned heavily on smoothing Oahu’s crumbling, degraded roads. Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research firm TRIP estimated Honolulu’s roads cost each driver an average of $598 in added repairs a year, based on 2011 data.
"I heard everywhere I went around this island about the condition of our roads," Caldwell recalled Tuesday during a news conference in Mililani to tout the repaving of Meheula Parkway, which is wrapping up.
Honolulu’s road woes date back years. A 2005 audit found that the city did not adequately fund its roadwork, lacked cohesive street maintenance policies, and failed to meet most of the industry’s best practices. In 2002, the city budgeted about $6 million that year to maintain its then-3,000 lane-miles.
Some city roads have been neglected for as long as half a century, Caldwell said.
"We owed it to the public to do a better job," he added.
The total roadway paved during his administration’s first two years shows promise. However, city officials acknowledged Tuesday that many of the tougher road projects to complete still remain on their checklist. In 2013, crews repaved a record 398 lane-miles, but they likely won’t hit that number again any time soon.
"It’s going to be harder to hit those targets," Caldwell said Tuesday, referring to the average 300 lane-miles a year needed to keep pace. "But we’re going to push as hard as we can. And it’s good to know we’re ahead of our target so if there’s some slippage we’ll still hit our goal."
Residents on the North Shore and in Kalihi should soon see repaving work on their neighborhood streets, Design and Construction Director Robert Kroning said. Work is also slated to start in Kaneohe and Hawaii Kai neighborhoods later in 2015, he added.
City officials said say they prioritize the work based on how the roads rate on a damage index and how much traffic travels on them.
The city’s repaving push does not include state-controlled roads such as the H-1 freeway and Kalanianaole and Kamehameha highways, which were similarly neglected before crews launched efforts in the past couple of years to finally fix those thoroughfares and bring some relief to the vehicle owners who drive on them.
In addition to Meheula Parkway’s completion, this year saw another busy and degraded artery, Waialae Avenue in Kaimuki, repaved for the first time in 24 years. And this fall, crews started repairs on Beretania Street from University Avenue to Alapai Street, through the heart of town. That work is expected to last through November 2015.
Darrell Goo, senior vice president of repaving firm Grace Pacific LLC, said Tuesday that his company has brought in about 22 additional workers from neighbor islands to help handle all of the roadwork taking place on Oahu.
Caldwell and Kroning said the city is on pace to use all of the $130 million budgeted this fiscal year for road repaving projects. They say they’ll have $128 million to use in the next fiscal year. Caldwell’s administration intends to ask for more than $100 million for the year after that, spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said.
The city’s Facility Maintenance Department uses what’s called slurry-seal to help better maintain repaired roads and extend their use, Director Ross Sasamura said.
