Elevated highway
estimated at $3.3 billion
It would cost $3.3 billion for the state to build a 20-mile, elevated, reversible highway for Leeward Oahu motorists to get to and from the downtown area, a state official told lawmakers yesterday.
Highways Division Engineering Program Manager Ron Tsuzuki told the House Transportation Committee that the Department of Transportation has been looking at the elevated-highway proposal made by Gov. Linda Lingle to ease the rush-hour traffic jams to and from West Oahu. It would begin near the proposed North-South Road just east of Kapolei and run along Farrington Highway to the Waiawa Interchange and along Kamehameha Highway past Pearl City and Pearl Harbor, he said.
It would go alongside the H-1 freeway's airport viaduct and then over Nimitz Highway through Kalihi and finally come back to the surface streets in Iwilei, just short of downtown.
"It's a very expensive undertaking," said Tsuzuki.
"If we do pursue this, we're going to have a lot of challenges to face," he said. "We may have impacts to homes, businesses, schools churches -- all kinds of things along those alignments.
"We'd have to fly over a number of different overpasses and the H-1 freeway and all of those locations, and we probably have environmental impact we'd have to address."
With an elevated structure 40 feet off the ground, there would be visual impacts, noise and, in some areas, possible problems finding a firm foundation, Tsuzuki said.
"Also, the challenge is the cost. How are we gong to fund something like this?" he said.
Lingle had suggested a toll be charged to pay for the highway but has held off pursuing it pending recommendations from her task force on mass transit options.
Committee Vice Chairman Kirk Caldwell (D, Manoa) said he opposed an elevated highway instead of finding some other form of mass transit.
"The highways, no matter where you are in America, if you build them, they just fill and you've got to build more," he said.
