City announces Waialae repaving completion

WAIALAE, OAHU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell Thursday announced the completion of the repaving of the Waialae Avenue Project.

"The last time it was repaved was in 1990. Almost 25 years ago, and it was really in bad condition" he said at a press conference.

While restriping has yet to be done, the completion of the surface comes at a great relief to motorists, who’ve endured a project that went six months past deadline, and roughly 2.3 million dollars over the original 9.3 million dollar price tag.

Unforeseen circumstances led to the slowdown, namely, large soft spots that had to be accounted for. There were other hindrances as well.

"We found when they uncovered the road there were areas that were filled, when the road was first built, with garbage, with debris from construction” said the Mayor.

While the road isn’t wide enough for designated bike lanes, bicyclists will be getting “sharrows”.

"That's a shared lane where we don't have enough room to dedicate a bike lane. We'll put in these symbols on the pavement warning drivers there could be bikers within that lane as well" explained Mark Yonamine, Acting Director of the Department of Design and Construction.

The Mayor also announced the City’s next repaving project, in Palolo. 29 lane miles will be repaved at a cost of approximately 10-12 million dollars.

So far, 203 lane miles have been repaved in 2014, ahead of pace for the targeted 300 lane miles to be repaved for the year. This is year-two of Caldwell’s five year plan to repave a total of 1500 lane miles on Oahu. Last year, the City repaved a record 398 lane miles.

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