State spends $750,000
to pave over Oahu’s
worst potholes

State officials are hoping to fix a few of the worst potholes on Oahu's highways with an extra $750,000 to spend before the end of the fiscal year in June.

Under a recently awarded contract, Grace Pacific Corp. is repaving up to 15 short segments of road, identified by the state Department of Transportation as most in need of repair, said transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa. The list includes:

» Moanalua Road, leading to the Pearl City onramp.
» 600 feet of Likelike Highway town-bound halfway between Kahekili Highway and the Wilson tunnels.
» 300 feet of Wilikina Drive between the H-2 overpass and Kamehameha Highway.
» Kamehameha Highway between the Karsten Thot Bridge and Kilani Avenue.
» Kahekili Highway and Haiku Road intersection.
» Farrington Highway between Makaha Beach and Makau Street.
» Farrington Highway between Hawaiian Waters Park to Palailai interchange.

Work under the $750,000 contract started Monday. Likelike Highway, Wilikina Drive and Kamehameha Highway have already been repaved, Ishikawa said.

The state has compiled a list of about 15 small projects for repaving through calls to the state pothole hot line and inspections by state engineers.

Some of the roads are infamous, Ishikawa said, such as the Moanalua Road Pearl City onramp.

"Everybody knows where this pothole is," he said. "We tried patching it with asphalt, but this problem persists."

More money might be set aside during the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, to fix the other sites, including the town-bound Mililani onramp to the H-2 freeway, and the Kapahulu and Harding avenues intersection under the H-1 freeway.

While the rest of Kapahulu and Harding avenues are city streets, the section under the freeway is state property, Ishikawa said.

He explained that the sites on the lists are too small to put out to bid individually. The contract is an experiment to see if it is worthwhile to put projects together to get them done by a single contractor.

"We're going to see how far we can stretch this contract," Ishikawa said.

Rather than just fixing the potholes, whole sections of highway and roads will be repaved, which should prevent the potholes from reappearing after the next rain, he said.

The best time to do the repairs is during the summer, when the weather is dry and school is out so traffic is lighter, he added.

The road repairs are concentrated on Oahu because Honolulu's roads are more heavily used than highways on other islands, Ishikawa said.