A pair of overnight H-1 freeway closures later this month will kick off a massive, nearly yearlong project to repair and repave the state’s most heavily used highway through the heart of Honolulu, state officials announced Monday.
Crews will completely close the H-1 eastbound from Likelike Highway to Ward Avenue from 8 p.m. Sept. 22 to 4 a.m. Sept. 23, according to the state Department of Transportation.
They’ll also close that same stretch during the same hours the following night.
The move will launch the DOT’s H-1 Freeway Rehabilitation Project — an effort to fix a 3.5-mile stretch of highway between Ward Avenue and Middle Street.
The accompanying lane closures will cause commuters to face added H-1 congestion, in the evening hours and overnight, through at least July, state transportation officials say.
The project will also require construction crews to shut down the freeway in one direction for up to 120 nights. The two full closures coming up later this month are the only such shutdowns scheduled for the remainder of 2013, DOT officials say.
"We will be causing a little disruption, but we need this work badly," state DOT Director Glenn Okimoto said at a news conference Monday to announce this month’s full-closure dates.
Once the project is underway, Honolulu commuters can expect overnight lane closures Sundays through Thursdays in the H-1 stretch between Middle Street and Ward Avenue. Typically one lane will close in each direction starting at 9 p.m., with an additional lane closing at 11 p.m., DOT officials say. The closures will end at 4 a.m. each morning, according to DOT’s schedule.
For Sept. 25 and 26, those overnight two-lane closures will be eastbound only, DOT spokeswoman Caroline Sluyter said.
Local traffic officials are encouraging drivers to use School, King and Beretania streets as well as Vineyard, Ala Moana and Dillingham boulevards as alternate routes to travel in the Ewa and Diamond Head directions during the night.
The city Department of Transportation Services will work with the state to extend green light signal times where possible on those alternate routes, DTS Director Mike Formby said Monday.
"There’s a lot of congestion on the alternate routes, but we do the best we can," Formby said. "We’re going to do our best. That’s all I can commit at this time."
DTS also plans to have traffic engineers working at Honolulu’s traffic management center at night, when they normally wouldn’t be there, he added.
When the overnight eastbound full closures take place later this month, Okimoto urged H-1 drivers to avoid the area entirely if possible.
Otherwise, they should exit at Dillingham Boulevard or Nimitz Highway. Drivers on Moanalua Freeway (H-201) should take the Tripler Hospital exit, head onto Puuloa Road and then use Dillingham or Nimitz as alternate routes.
The upcoming work in town will coincide with the ongoing "PM Contraflow" project — highway deck repairs in the Aiea and Pearl City areas that have commuters facing lane closures there from 7:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. That schedule is expected to last through April.
The in-town rehabilitation project will repave an asphalt-concrete layer about 12 inches deep along that H-1 stretch — a material that’s stronger than typical asphalt and designed to last 10 to 15 years instead of seven to 10 years, to better handle the 200,000 vehicles that use the corridor each day.
State officials did not have figures available Thursday on how many of those vehicles travel the H-1 between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m.
The $42 million project will also reconfigure H-1 to have four lanes in both directions from Punahou to Middle streets. It will further replace existing highway lights with modern models that better contain the light to the highway and are more environmentally friendly for migrating birds, officials said. The effort also includes widening the Nuuanu Stream Bridge about five feet on the makai side of the freeway, and putting up new glare screens along the median.
The project is 80 percent federally funded and 20 percent state-funded, officials say.
