Long-anticipated
Hilo road opens

The 1.25-mile street will help
ease access to Hilo Hospital

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By Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.com

HILO >> Forty years after it was proposed, the new "Mohouli Street extension" linking central Hilo to the upland Kaumana area opened yesterday.

The 1.25-mile street runs from Komohana Street, near the University of Hawaii-Hilo, uphill to the intersection of Kaumana Drive and Ainako Avenue.

The cost: $10 million, 80 percent of it in federal funds.

It is money well spent, says County Council member Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd, who represents the area.

Narrow, winding Kaumana Drive, which the new road partially bypasses, has the highest accident rate of any two-lane road on the island, higher even than the Saddle Road which Kaumana leads to, Leithead-Todd said.

With homes and driveways all along Kaumana, widening would have been impossible.

Instead, diversion of some traffic away from Kaumana will provide easier access to Hilo Hospital and may even end the need for a morning one-way traffic pattern on connecting Waianuenue Avenue, said county Department of Public Works head Dennis Lee.

The $10 million price tag includes 14 box culverts side by side, each essentially a bridge span for Alenaio Stream, and 32 dry wells, each 50 feet deep, to capture rain runoff.

Instead of sidewalks and gutters, the road has eight feet of paved shoulders and 11 feet of shallow paved swales for water runoff on each side. That makes a wide paved area already being used following yesterday's opening by walkers, joggers and bicyclists, Leithead-Todd said.

An unusual feature of yesterday's ceremony was the joint opening of the road by former Mayor Stephen Yamashiro, under whom the project began, and current Mayor Harry Kim.