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Early birds find smooth
commute to UH-Manoa
A new structure eases the search
for parking as the semester begins
University of Hawaii-Manoa students were pleasantly surprised yesterday at how easy the commute was and how easy it was to find parking on the first day of school.
"I was expecting traffic to be bad, but it wasn't," said senior Dyan Kanda.
Kanda left her Kaneohe home at 8:15 a.m. yesterday and arrived on campus 35 minutes later for her 9:30 a.m. class.
Kanda and other UH students adjusted their travel times to ensure they arrived on time to their first class of the 2004-2005 school year. More than 40,000 UH students started classes yesterday, as did 1,100 Chaminade University students.
About 1,828 students resume classes at Iolani School today, while 3,700 Punahou students go back on Thursday.
Morning rush-hour traffic got heavier yesterday sooner than it has the last couple of months. Traffic was bumper to bumper by 5:30 a.m. for H-1 freeway commuters coming in from Leeward Oahu.
Normally, it would be OK to leave just before 6 a.m., said Jason Yotsuda, KSSK traffic reporter at the city Traffic Management Center.
"Folks (have) got to leave real early," he said.
Despite a couple of minor accidents, traffic moved along with backups in the usual places, Yotsuda said.
State Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa noted that people decided to leave a little earlier so they would not get caught in back-to-school traffic, and the rain might have also slowed things down. The Transportation Department has also put several road projects on hold through Sept. 3.
At the Manoa campus, some students said they were grateful for the new parking structure near the Center for Hawaiian Studies. The $4.5 million parking structure offers space for 276 vehicles.
"Thank God for this," said junior Kyle Nerona, who was denied campus housing this year. For the past two years, Nerona stayed in a dorm at Hale Noelani.
Nerona, who left his Hawaii Kai home at 7 a.m., said he was able to find parking at the new structure that opened at 6:30 a.m.
"I expected to look around for a couple of minutes," he said. "I was one of the first ones here."
Freshman Cherise Madriaga said the new parking structure "helped out a lot," but complained of the distance from the structure to the campus.
"It still sucks," said Madriaga, of Kalihi, as she headed to her car. "I have to walk here to the top of the campus."
Vehicles filled the new parking structure by 8:30 a.m., while vehicles filled the larger structure near the William S. Richardson School of Law by 7:45 a.m., said UH spokesman Jim Manke.
Despite a student housing crunch and enrollment increase, Manke said "it was a typical first day of school."
Manke, however, noted that many students took some time to eat breakfast at the Campus Center and the Paradise Palms Cafe after they arrived earlier than expected.
"Food service was caught a little off guard," he said. "A lot of people came early. They discovered they had a lot of time."
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