THERE'S a two-story building under construction out by the airport viaduct and we hope the occupants won't be sensitive to traffic noise, because it's not only close to the highway, it's right in the middle of the median. Wat’s up wit dat?
A building sprouts up right in the
middle of the airport viaduct
The building being put up by the state Department of Transportation, which is calling the structure "Zipper Hale." That's your first and last clue as to its use.
Give up? Zipper Hale is a kind of garage for the state's new zipper machines, each of which is 67 feet long and 11 feet wide. Two of them are arriving this summer, one in early July and the other in early August. Since each is made from scratch, and together they're costing $1.7 million, you'd want to keep them out of the rain, too.
What the zipper machines do is reshape the highway every day, shifting the barriers so that extra lanes are created in the direction of rush-hour traffic. They've been highly successful in mainland traffic nightmares like southern California, and creating another lane each morning, even a temporary one, in the hump area of H-1 between Pearl City and Aiea should relieve congestion.
The machine will trundle out about 3 each morning and race toward Waikele on H-1 at about six miles per hour, explained department spokes-person Marilyn Kali. As they move along, the concrete highway barriers will be lifted and moved on a conveyer belt, creating a new lane each morning. Then they start again in the other direction, moving the dividers back into place, finishing about 8:30 a.m.
The dividers will look the same as the current dividers, except that they're half as long and are strung together so they move -- well -- so they move like a zipper.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin.
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