Traffic meltdown?

[Chunkster]

Friend coming over for dinner just called and said that the Puna and Volcano bound traffic out of Hilo was backed up all the way to the zoo turnoff. Anyone heard anything about this? This the night time work on 130 mentioned in a thread a week or so ago. Or maybe an accident? Looks like dinner will be late.

[punafish]

A big accident happened about 5 cars in front of me late afternoon. I was in the Pahoa-bound lane just before Pohaku at 2:30-ish. It was pretty bad, saw one person being taken off on a stretcher.

[TomK]

Just battled through it. Definitely nothing to do with 130, but don't know the cause.

[TomK]

Thanks punafish, seems we were typing at the same time.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Just came through it between 5-6 PM. No accidents, no road construction, just ... rain.

[Kapohocat]

quote:

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Originally posted by punafish

A big accident happened about 5 cars in front of me late afternoon. I was in the Pahoa-bound lane just before Pohaku at 2:30-ish. It was pretty bad, saw one person being taken off on a stretcher.

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We were on Hilo side behind it about 12-15 mins or so - we decided to turn right before HS back to Keaau town when I saw ambulance - and go up through Kurtistown to Ainaloa to Pahoa... 12 miles further but about 1 hr or more less time (today).

[TomK]

I'm a little confused about the information here. Hwy 11 was backed up towards Hilo from at least Keaau. I drove it and turned off into Keaau as I needed to visit Foodland. This was around 17:40. There was a relatively small backup at the 130 bottleneck, so my impression is that the backup on Hwy 11 was caused by something just south of Keaau and not on Hwy 130 as the latter was fairly clear.

[Kapohocat]

What I saw on Hwy 11 is a lot of people did what I did and it started to back up on Hwy 11 behind us. It probably took longer for it to clear than 130 did is my guess. At the area where it narrows to one lane around Kamehameha school is where it bottlenecked a lot.

Or an accident happened on 11 too is possible.

[punafish]

Tom, it might have been a different reason/cause for the back-up you're referring to. The accident I saw was on 130 at Pohaku around 2:20 or so. We were at a standstill for at least half hour, probably more, while the cars started accumulating behind us. The traffic had to be horrendous for the poor folks who left later than we did.

[TomK]

Yeah, we possibly may not know for certain. Wish the Puna Police Dept. were a little more active with Nixle. Other departments seem to quite proactive when it comes to traffic delays and accidents.