State highways officials say they are trying to determine whether it is possible to re-stripe or make other modifications to a major, clogged Big Island highway that serves the fast-growing Puna region as a temporary substitute for widening the highway, as residents were promised.
That re-striping plan is part of a larger effort by Gov. David Ige’s administration to defer major construction projects that would increase the traffic capacity of Hawaii highways, and instead focus most state highway funding on highway maintenance.
Ige has said his administration wants to use tactics such as re-striping, contraflow and other relatively inexpensive fixes to try to make traffic flow more smoothly through jammed corridors.
Puna motorists who commute to jobs elsewhere on Hawaii island have for years found themselves stuck in frustrating morning and afternoon traffic jams on the Keaau-to-Pahoa highway, and the state Department of Transportation promised them relief.
The original plan was to widen the highway — also known as Highway 130 — from two lanes to four along a critical 9-mile stretch that serves sprawling Puna subdivisions such as Hawaiian Paradise Park, Orchidland Estates, Nanawale Estates and Hawaiian Beaches. Those neighborhoods offer the most affordable housing in the state, and have been a magnet for many thousands of lower-income and working families.
Intersections along the route rank among the most dangerous in the state, and the 2011 environmental assessment for the project concluded the population in the area will likely more than double over the next 20 years. That would “further exacerbate the
existing traffic congestion,” according to the report.
The Highway 130 widening project was developed and detailed for Puna residents in a series of community planning meetings over the past decade. An environmental assessment for the project was completed in 2011, and state transportation officials estimated in 2010 that construction would be completed in 2018.
They were wrong. State Highways Division Deputy Director Ed Sniffen now estimates the Highway 130 widening project will cost
$180 million, and said it has been deferred indefinitely because the state doesn’t have the money. State officials say the project “will be delivered and phased as funding allows.”
In the meantime, Sniffen said, the department will “re-look at re-striping that whole route to add in a fourth lane so we can have continuously two lanes in each direction full time. So that’s what we’re looking at right now.”
The idea is to create four 11-foot lanes with two
5-foot shoulders in each direction to increase the capacity, Sniffen said.
Sniffen offered few details about that proposal, and a spokesman for the department said there is no target date yet for when those improvements would be completed or how much the reconfiguration of the highway might cost.
DOT officials said design work for the larger Highway 130 widening project will continue, and Sniffen said the Keaau-to-Pahoa widening project remains the department’s top-priority capacity project for the island.
Bill Walter, president of major Puna landowner W.H. Shipman Ltd., said the department committed to improving the highway for Puna residents, and that the department needs to deliver on that pledge.
“Department of Transportation’s promise to this community was that they would build out (Highway) 130 to take care of the expected throughput on that route for a period of 30 years … which is quite a build-out, and it makes sense,” Walter said. “Whatever the current financial situation is, of course it doesn’t change the need, but if they can achieve that result through re-striping, they ought to do that.
“They need to do whatever they can to relieve the issue,” Walter said.
Sniffen and Gov. Ige have said the Department of Transportation is dramatically shifting its resources away from large new “capacity” projects such as the Highway 130 widening to focus instead on maintaining the state’s existing highway system.
“My first and foremost objective is to try to preserve the system that we have and make it as safe as possible,” Sniffen said. “The funding that we have currently is not sufficient for me to (both) bring our system up to good repair and build new roads and maintain that. It’s just not there.”
Ige has said he will propose tax increases again next year to provide more funding for new highway construction. He has rejected any suggestion that his administration is deferring popular highway capacity projects as a way of pressuring lawmakers into approving the tax increases.
