Highway 130 shoulder inbound to Pahoa lane is open

[terracore]

The big blinking sign said that the inbound (to Pahoa) shoulder lane will be open starting Tuesday 3-6pm. It also looked like the outbound (to Hilo) side had two full lanes open plus the shoulder today for a large portion of it this afternoon.

[macuu222]

Shoud be interesting on the commute home next Tuesday if the bottleneck at the transfer station will still be there caused from the bottleneck now at Shower!

[terracore]

I've posted this before, but instead of 3 lanes merging into 1 lane immediately (what kind of cluster is that) it will be two lanes merging into one lane (with a turn lane for Shower) over miles. People have said IT WILL NEVER WORK. Maybe they are right. But I don't think it can be worse than what it is now.

ETA: than what it is now

[leilanidude]

All it does is move the bottleneck 2 miles up the road since almost no vehicles turn off before Shower anyway.
They should have just done a 5 lane highway all the way to Paradise. The center lane would be a wider than normal lane size, for left turns and merging. That solution works everywhere else.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

The section under construction is Phase 1. Phase 2 will extend the extra lanes to Maku'u Drive. This will finally alleviate the backup at what will then become the Maku'u merge, since many drivers will exit on Kaloli Dr, Orchidland Dr, and Paradise Dr.

"The second phase of this project, to add a traffic signal light at the Shower Drive intersection, will go out to bid around the middle of this year. Construction should get under way in early 2016 and take between a year and 18 months."
http://www.hawaiicounty.gov/district4-projects (scroll down page)

Why is it taking so long? When the project was originally proposed, I believe the state highway planning director at the time was Lao-tzu, who stated, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

[Amrita]

This was obsolete and very poorly planned right from the start. Two lanes inbound to Hilo and one lane outbound toward Pahoa with the option to open the shoulder outbound during rush hour. Then there is supposed to be a light at Shower eventually to help with the dreaded merge there. It was doomed from the start. Sure it will be a bit better than it is now, and slightly better than it was before they started but it would have been so much wiser to do it right from the get-go and make it four lanes (divided). The county will still desperately need to start on an alternate route or at the minimum a trolley/bike route along railroad into Hilo but that's very wishful thinking. It shall be bumper to bumper from the day it opens during school and rush hour. It will have to be revised before too long anyway and it'll be much more expensive to do it in segments rather than to have done it right. Shame!

[Chunkster]

"The second phase of this project, to add a traffic signal light at the Shower Drive intersection, will go out to bid around the middle of this year. Construction should get under way in early 2016 and take between a year and 18 months."
http://www.hawaiicounty.gov/district4-projects (scroll down page)

Only in Hawaii! Anywhere else, a traffic signal can be planned, built, and fully functional in 90-120 days. Here we have to have multiple layers of redundant planning and union construction workers who only work Monday-Friday 10-3:30 and never too hard. I was at a meeting in HPP where some totally unprepared State DOT officials showed up not knowing about some land ownership issues at that intersection. In a rare moment of competence, the HPP board had actually repeatedly tried to inform them of this issue, but the DOT never got the message passed on through the bureaucracy to the right people.

[terracore]

It takes so long because they can only work a few hours per day. They don't really start work until about 9am and finish by 3pm, and there is probably an hour long union lunch in the middle, so what, 5 hours per day? Plus it takes a long time to "ramp up" that kind of work in the morning and after lunch so 3-4 hours of actual road work gets done? Anywhere else they would work on the road at night and weekends when there isn't any traffic and get it done in 1/4 the time and half the cost.

[Mimosa]

Well Nan.inc is actually ahead of schedule as the projected date was Mid April 2015 for this 1st phase.
The second phase will be the light at Shower / Hwy 130.
The stumbling block though is the Ohana that owns the 3 lots mauka will not give up any of their family trust land or easement,is our understanding,Russle R knows much more about this than we do,Russle can you add any info to this please ?
So our understanding is mediation and or eminent domain the needed widening area's,like where the impromptu self used vehicle sale section is along 130 .
We agree,just shuffling the issue down the road 1.8 miles.
Mrs and Mr Mimosa

[bluesboy]

It will be done just in time for everyone to realize it should be 4 lanes full time. Good grief