As Oahu rail construction pushes closer toward town, more local businesses along the route are feeling the strain — and more are starting to air concerns that they won’t be able to survive all the work.

On Monday, business owners located at Pearl Kai pleaded with rail officials to help them find a way to keep customers flowing into the shopping center, situated on the makai side of Kame­ha­meha Highway in Aiea, despite severe lane closures expected next year when the construction there ramps up.

A private meeting with rail officials Monday morning was followed by an informal news conference at Pearl Kai.

Work to erect the rail guideway near Pearl Kai shopping center will require that crews completely shut down the vital westbound left-turn lane into the center at Kame­ha­meha Highway and Pali Momi Street starting in early 2016.

That left-turn lane, however, is the main conduit to supply Pearl Kai’s 52 businesses with its customers, according to the center’s property manager, Garrett Littman.

"I believe it’s going to have a severe impact," he said Monday of the looming lane closure. "We want to preserve the left-turn lane at all costs. That’s the bottom line."

Eva Baniqued, who owns Alyssandra’s Lum­pia Express at Pearl Kai with her husband, Robinson, said that most of the center’s customers come from driving westbound on Kame­ha­meha Highway, heading toward their homes in Central and West Oahu — and they use that left-turn lane. Their next option would be to make a U-turn farther down the highway.

Work crews with Kiewit Infrastructure West, the company building the elevated rail guideway, already started closing the lane overnight about a couple of months ago for utility work, according to Hono­lulu Authority for Rapid Transportation officials.

Some Pearl Kai establishments — particularly restaurants — have already seen a slump in business, and the entire center can handle the nighttime-only closures only for so long, let alone a full-day closure, Littman said.

"We’re just surviving, and now that they’re going to close the left lane, it’s going to be worse," Robinson Bani­qued said Monday. "We won’t be able to pay the rent at this location."

HART Deputy Director Brennon Mori­oka acknowledged a full-day closure of the lane at Pali Momi Street for six months will have a "major impact" at Pearl Kai. The agency is trying to come up with a traffic solution so the impact isn’t as severe, Mori­oka said.

HART meets with the business owners affected by rail construction about once a week and is developing other ways to help them, such as an online coupon program, he added.

However, as things stand, there’s no way to avoid the lane closure at Pearl Kai, Mori­oka added.

"It’s going to happen," Eva Bani­qued said of inevitable business closures along the rail line, as workers install foundations into the ground and build columns.