Drivers in town, be warned: Honolulu’s yearlong version of “Carmageddon” kicks off tonight.
Road crews will fully close the eastbound H-1 freeway 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. from Likelike Highway to Ward Avenue. They’ll close the same stretch, during the same hours, on Monday night.
The work is part of a massive — and overdue — project overseen by the state Department of Transportation. It will close lanes overnight for five days a week on Hawaii’s busiest freeway, through the heart of town.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” DOT Highways Administrator Alvin Takeshita said Friday. “We understand the impact … but it’s something that had to be done.”
The agency has put off the undertaking for several years because of the stress it will put on Honolulu’s central business district, the state’s largest university campus and Oahu’s tourist hub in Waikiki. But the H-1 pavement and potholes have worsened to the point the agency said it can no longer avoid the task.
It’s been about 15 years since the 3.5-mile corridor between Middle Street and Ward was last paved, even though that work should be done every eight
to 10 years, Takeshita said.
Drivers in town, be warned: Honolulu’s yearlong version of “Carmageddon” kicks off tonight.
Road crews will fully close the eastbound H-1 freeway 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. from Likelike Highway to Ward Avenue. They’ll close the same stretch, during the same hours, on Monday night.
The work is part of a massive — and overdue — project overseen by the state Department of Transportation. It will close lanes overnight for five days a week on Hawaii’s busiest freeway, through the heart of town.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” DOT Highways Administrator Alvin Takeshita said Friday. “We understand the impact … but it’s something that had to be done.”
The agency has put off the undertaking for several years because of the stress it will put on Honolulu’s central business district, the state’s largest university campus and Oahu’s tourist hub in Waikiki. But the H-1 pavement and potholes have worsened to the point the agency said it can no longer avoid the task.
It’s been about 15 years since the 3.5-mile corridor between Middle Street and Ward was last paved, even though that work should be done every eight to 10 years, Takeshita said.
The project, dubbed “H-1 Rehabilitation,” will replace much of the road and repave the full section.
“The longer you ignore the pavement, the more extensive the reconstruction work you have to do,” Takeshita said.
While freeway rehab is underway, thousands of drivers will have to rely on Honolulu’s main Ewa- and Diamond Head-bound city streets to navigate at night and the early morning hours. Local traffic experts say those streets can handle the extra traffic loads but only if they’re managed correctly.
DOT officials say they’re “cautiously confident” that side streets can absorb the extra vehicles. But they recommend avoiding the area,
if possible, during the nighttime work.
Typically, the weekly work schedule will look like this: Sundays through Thursdays, road crews will close a freeway lane in both directions at 9 p.m., then close an additional lane at 11 p.m. That will leave one lane open in each direction for traffic to pass through the construction zone. The lanes will reopen at 4 the next morning.
In addition, road crews will completely close the freeway in one direction for up to 120 nights. The full closures tonight and Monday are the only ones scheduled for this year. The remainder of the full closures is slated for next year.
In Los Angeles, where the roadwork dubbed Carmageddon first unfolded last year, drivers saw part of the chronically congested 405 freeway closed in both directions for two weekends.
For Hawaii’s yearlong undertaking, DOT officials maintain that they’ve picked the best possible hours for the roadwork. About 200,000 vehicles use that H-1 corridor each day, but only 21,000 to 35,000 vehicles are on it between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m., depending on the day of the week, according to DOT spokeswoman Caroline Sluyter.
State transportation officials are flagging Nimitz Highway; Dillingham and Vineyard boulevards; and King, Beretania, Middle and School streets as alternative routes to dodge the closures.
University of Hawaii civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros said those routes can handle the extra traffic during a full closure, but only under what he described as “clean” conditions.
Roughly 4,000 drivers use the H-1 from Kalihi to Middle Street from 8 to 10 p.m., according to 2012 data that Prevedouros said he collected for DOT.
Therefore, during those first two hours of nighttime construction, about 2,500 vehicles will have to be diverted to Nimitz Highway, about 1,000 vehicles to Dillingham Boulevard, and about 500 vehicles to King Street, Prevedouros said.
“There’s room, but there’s no wiggle room,” he said.
“It’s not a nightmare type of thing.”
The success of the alternative routes, Prevedouros said, will hinge on agencies making sure there’s no overnight construction or roadwork taking place on those routes when the extra cars are using them.
Officials better make “darn sure nobody drops cones and closes a lane,” he added.
Takeshita said one of the key lessons Hawaii’s DOT learned from Los Angeles’ “Carmageddon” was to warn of the worst-case traffic scenarios well in advance, mostly through the media. The traffic nightmares that L.A. drivers braced for over those weekends never materialized, thanks in part to the constant advisories.
DOT officials say headaches tied to the H-1 work will likely be unavoidable and advise avoiding the area as much as possible. The agency is also working on a preventive maintenance plan that it hopes will help avoid dramatic and extensive roadwork projects in the future, Takeshita said.
“Traffic is very fickle,” he said. “It’s not going to be a normal ride. It’s not going to be a smooth drive.”
For more information, visit www.H1rehab.com or call the project hotline at 735-7465.
