A potentially life- saving pedestrian bridge in Kakaako should be ready for use by the end of the year following multiple construction delays on the project once expected to be finished over a year ago.
If no further setbacks occur, the elevated walkway across six-lane Ala Moana Boulevard midblock between Ward Avenue and Kamakee Street will have taken a little over 2-1/2 years to build, or 31 months instead of an originally anticipated 17 months.
The time it is taking to build the bridge is about as long as it took to erect some of the roughly 40-story condominium towers at neighboring Ward Village.
On a more positive note, a contractor’s bid to build the bridge for the state Department of Transportation in partnership with Ward Village developer Howard Hughes Corp. came in at $17.8 million, below an initial estimate of $23.5 million.
The bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists was first conceptualized by Hughes Corp. in 2018 as a way to better connect its master-planned community — which includes seven completed condo towers so far, public park space and a possible future city rail station — with Kewalo Harbor and Ala Moana Regional Park.
DOT quickly partnered with the company on the project, and soon afterward the prominence of an elevated crossing in the area for pedestrians as a safety measure grew in the wake of a fatal January 2019 crash near the bridge site.
The tragedy was caused by a speeding truck that veered across Ala Moana Boulevard and hit several people standing on a mauka traffic island at the Kamakee Street intersection. Two pedestrians and a bicyclist were killed. Four other pedestrians were seriously injured.
DOT applied for and received a federal grant to cover 80% of the project’s cost, while Hughes Corp. offered to share in the local share of the cost, providing land for the mauka side of the bridge while also contributing design work and project management collectively valued at $5 million.
“With the expected rise in pedestrian traffic in the affected area due to the rail station and population growth of (Ward Village), the project will significantly increase pedestrian safety and remove interaction between pedestrians and vehicles in the area,” DOT’s grant application said.
DOT estimated that about 2,100 pedestrians and bicyclists will use the overpass daily.
“This overpass will provide the community with a safe and secure pedestrian experience connecting mauka to makai,” Simon Treacy, then-Hawaii president for Texas-based Hughes Corp., said in 2019. “Through this public-private partnership, we look forward to developing a world-class, public amenity.”
Construction began in May 2022 and was projected for completion in October 2023.
More recent estimates from DOT to complete the bridge were February and then August, but proved too optimistic. The agency said delays were due to rework needed to meet concrete strength standards and long lead times to acquire materials to replace communications and electrical infrastructure displaced by the bridge landing work.
The project is one of at least three pedestrian bridge additions envisioned around the state. The other two are in conceptual or design phases.
One of the other projects is a bridge over the Ala Wai Canal linking Waikiki with Moiliili for pedestrians and bicyclists. The estimated $63.3 million bridge project has an anticipated three-year construction timetable, and is led by the city Department of Transportation Services in partnership with DOT and the Federal Highway Administration.
Another bridge is planned on Maui as a safe passage over Piilani Highway for students at Kulanihakoi High School in Kihei, which opened last year.
State Department of Education officials have estimated that construction of the roughly $10 million to $15 million project will take three to five years.
Civil engineers say it may not be fair to compare the time it takes to build a pedestrian bridge with far larger and costlier projects, such as high-rise buildings, because conditions pertaining to site constraints, design, traffic accommodations, available labor and other factors can be unique.
The first condo tower at Ward Village, Waiea, which opened in 2016, took about 2-1/2 years to build at a cost of around $300 million just for construction. It took about the same amount of time to build another tower in the community, Ke Kilohana, which opened in 2019.
Yet the most recent Ward Village tower, Victoria Place, broke ground in February 2021 and opened earlier this month after nearly four years of construction.
Still, Douglas Sarkkinen, a senior project manager and bridge engineer at Oregon-based engineering firm Otak, said a three- to five-year timetable to build a roughly $15 million pedestrian bridge, even over a highway, seems about double what he would expect.
