City has resurfaced 256 lane miles in ’15

Officials report they’re keeping pace with Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s goal to repave Oahu’s worst city-run roads in five years, although some of the island’s most-used and hardest-to-fix streets — the ones that leave a lasting impression on commuters — still need to be repaired.

Drivers should finally see many of those vital yet still-crumbling streets in town, such as Beretania, Liliha and Date streets, and Ward and Kapahulu avenues, repaved in 2016 and taking less of a toll on their cars, according to the city’s Department of Design and Construction.

In 2015, crews from the four companies on the island that bid for city repaving contracts smoothed 256 lane miles across Oahu, according to the latest report of completed and on­going road projects. They included jobs in Kaimuki, Kailua, Kalihi and Hawaii Kai, and on the North Shore.

That’s down from the 305 lane miles the city paved in 2014, and the 398 lane miles paved in 2013. Heavy rains amid this year’s record hurricane season helped lower this year’s tally, DDC Director Robert Kroning said Tuesday. The rain stopped the work more than 40 days this year, he said.

Overall, however, the city remains slightly ahead of schedule to repave the island’s 1,500 worst lane miles in a five-year period. Since January 2013 it has reported repaving 959 total city lane miles (which represent individual lanes of road — not the full width of the road). That averages out to more than 300 lane miles per year, which is what the city needs to hit its goal.

“No government entity in the history of this place has paved this many lane miles in this period of time. Not the state, not the feds, not any other county, not this county,” Caldwell said Tuesday. “I don’t think anyone has come close to that. It’s a coordinated, huge push.”

Under Caldwell, the city is currently spending more than $100 million annually as part of a repaving surge to make up for decades of road care neglect on an island where city officials say some roads haven’t been paved for more than 50 years. Once they’ve caught up, they aim to trim that spending (although by how much isn’t yet clear) and better manage road maintenance in the future, said Department of Facilities Maintenance Director Ross Sasamura. The agency manages the island’s current road-repair plan.

“If we do it right, we should never have to have a surge again,” Caldwell said. “People should be saying our roads don’t feel like we’re in a Third World country.”

On Beretania, it’s not even clear when the road was last paved, Kroning said. “It seems like never,” he said. “It’s hard to tell — we would have to go back into the archives.”

Beretania is one of several key roadways in Honolulu hit by repaving delays when workers encountered unexpected utility lines or sinkholes.

In June, repaving crews accidentally sparked a spectacular fire that could be seen for miles, injured two workers and caused an estimated $700,000 in damage when they accidentally cut a 4-inch steel gas line underneath Kapahulu Avenue while preparing to repave there. The incident stalled the Kapahulu repaving and revealed other such gas lines, postponing the project to January or February 2016, according to officials.

In 2014, work to repave the badly degraded Waialae Avenue stalled for about six months and cost an extra $2.4 million after workers discovered sinkholes and “soft spots” below the surface.

Meanwhile, on Beretania, crews had started repairs in fall 2014 but then stopped, Kroning said, after they discovered shallow utility lines that blocked plans to repave that road as deep as 18 inches in some parts below the surface. They plan to resume that project early this year with a shallower, “mill-and-fill” repave that goes only 4 inches deep, Kroning said. Then, the city will double back and repave Beretania again several years later once the utility companies have the approvals they need to rework the lines below the surface, he added.

The city looks to prevent further such surprises once repaving begins on other major arteries such as Ward Avenue and Date Street. It will now have its in-house designers thoroughly analyze what’s below those roadways’ surfaces before contract crews start work, Kroning said. The city typically hadn’t done such in-depth checks because that work is expensive, but based on what’s happened in the past couple of years DDC now believes it’s worth it, Kroning said.

“We don’t want to bang our head against and making the same mistake over and over again,” he said.

Additionally, the city will require the contractors to include a certain amount of money in their bids to further inspect for utility lines before repaving, Kroning added.

The city’s repaving push does not include state-controlled roads such as the H-1 freeway or Kame­ha­meha and Farrington highways, which have been torn up for rail construction in West and Central Oahu. The agency overseeing rail is responsible for repaving those major roadways once the work is done.

Before taking office in 2013, Caldwell campaigned heavily on smoothing Oahu’s crumbling, dilapidated roads.

“It’s not a sexy thing, building roads,” Caldwell said Tuesday, adding that he believed that’s why previous administrations neglected their repair to a large extent.