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Bingham St. work
begins Monday

It's the first part of the
state's massive, two-year
resurfacing project for H-1

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

Work begins Monday on a new waterline along Bingham Street between Farrington and Isenberg streets, just Koko Head of H-1's Bingham Street offramp.

The work will close part of Bingham Street to traffic from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. While work is under way, only local traffic will be allowed to use Bingham Street.

The new waterline is being installed before a planned resurfacing of Bingham Street to eliminate the need to resurface that road twice, the state Department of Transportation said.

The waterline project is the first phase of the state's H-1 resurfacing project slated to continue through 2002. For the next five months, one block of Bingham at a time will be closed, starting near the H-1 exit and working back to Punahou Street.

Construction engineer U Kwong Ung acknowledged residents may be inconvenienced by noise and traffic obstruction, but said their needs won't be ignored.

"Our construction workers know they have to take whatever precaution to make it as safe as possible and the least inconvenience to the public as possible," he said.

"They (residents) will have to slow down and be careful and watch out for the construction crew as well as themselves," he said.

John Kato, chairman, McCully/ Moiliili Neighborhood Board, was mainly concerned with the Bingham offramp. He said the board passed a motion Thursday night requesting a study to evaluate the effect on traffic when the freeway exit is closed later this summer.

Rep. Terry Nui Yoshinaga (D, McCully), a Bingham Street resident, has pushed for a redesign of the offramp.

"I live on Bingham, so obviously that offramp is convenient for me. But I think it's a real safety issue because cars speed off of that off-ramp.

"So with this closure we'll be able to determine what kind of negative impact it will have on traffic ... because there's only the Punahou exit and the University exit that would be available for the area," she said.

"Those of us who live along Bingham feel that it's a safety hazard because cars are unable to slow down after they exit from that freeway offramp."

Drivers going 50 mph or more are unable to quickly slow down soon enough to the 25-mph speed limit on Bingham, she said.