Hana residents face big road job
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By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor
East Maui residents are bracing for another round of repairs to the scenic Hana Highway.
The state Department of Transportation is planning a $2.4 million, two-phase project to repair guardrails and road shoulders at 18 points along the winding 52-mile highway that is the main route between Hana and Kahului.
Because the road narrows to a single lane at many points, the highway will have to be closed periodically to allow crews to work.
Bob Siarot, state Highways Division chief for Maui, said activities requiring complete closure of Hana Highway will be done at night over a period of up to two months. Shorter daytime closures also may be necessary, he said.
Because construction money is limited, the project is being broken into two phases. Designs are not yet completed, but Siarot said officials are working against a deadline of June 30, the end of the state government's fiscal year, to advertise the Phase 1 contract before the money lapses and is lost.
Along with East Maui residents who commute to jobs or to shop in Central Maui and beyond, the picturesque drive to Hana draws more than 500,000 tourists a year.
Most return on the highway after visiting Hana and Kipahulu. A longer road around Kaupo is not fully paved and is subject to periodic washouts. Most car rental companies prohibit renters from driving that road.
State highways officials learned from a 1999 project that the need for a safer road must be balanced against the interests of East Maui residents and the tour companies that send dozens of vans streaming along Hana Highway each day.
State officials have announced three community meetings this week to tell people about the project and collect advice on times for road closures.
"The design has not been completed. We are going to go out to the community and give them alternatives," Siarot said. "Do they want us to repair what we have there or put it back to what it was? And the closure times, that was controversial the last time."
"The last time" was from May to August 1999 with work on a 600-foot section of road at Honomanu Bay that had been undermined by landslides over the previous decade.
The $1.8 million project involved blasting and carving into the side of the cliff to create an 18-foot-wide pavement with a 30-foot shoulder/rock catchment.
Because of the dangerousness of the job, much of work had to be done in daylight.
The highway was closed for hours at a time, and although tourists and residents were advised to stay off the road, those who didn't get the message found themselves stuck at roadblocks.
After numerous complaints, state officials revised the road closure schedule to twice a day — 6 to 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The community was saved from an extended inconvenience when contractor Goodfellow Brothers finished the job six months ahead of schedule.
The new project is not expected to be as disruptive as the Honomanu job, but those who live in the small clusters of homes along the highway can feel trapped by any road work.
"You're not free to come and go as you please," said Hana resident Candice Helekahi, who works at the Hotel Hana-Maui.
Helekahi's husband, Bolly, was one of many small-business operators who suffered during the 1999 project. He weaves hats and bowls for visitors at a stand in Wailua.
Candice Helekahi said his income dropped "to nil" when the stream of visitors dried up.
"When you're on an island, basically your whole resource is tourism, and if you cut off the tourists from being here, you're pretty much cutting off everybody's lifeline — small businesses, large businesses, everybody."
Ray Hutaff of Ekahi Tours agrees that those who live and make their living along the East Maui coastline have more at stake.
"Our philosophy is that the residents are the ones who really live out there, and they should be the ones who have first say (about the schedule of road closures). We as a tour company will try to work around whatever the residents come up with," he said.
Ekahi Tours runs a 10-hour tour to Hana that leaves Kahului around 8:30 a.m., travels along the Hana Highway, then continues around the flank of Haleakala through Kaupo and Upcountry Maui.
The trip schedule varies from tour to tour, depending on the customers' desires, Hutaff said. If they want to spend more time swimming in a waterfall pool, the driver will make adjustments in the stops. This flexibility allows the company to adapt more easily to any problems on the roads, he said.
"They (transportation officials) have to do what they have to do, and we have to adjust accordingly," he said.
The project will repair and restore drainage culverts, guardrails and shoulder areas between mileposts 11 and 20 leading up to Ke'anae and a little farther beyond.
The first phase of construction will include repairing guardrails, installing structural guardrails, and restoring shoulder areas of the highway that have deteriorating from erosion.
The second phase, which will consist mainly of drainage structures, will take place when additional money becomes available in the next two or three years.
A Department of Transportation design proposes installing a structural guardrail system that uses a cantilever concrete slab built on drilled-shaft foundations at three sections of the highway that originally were two lanes wide but have eroded away to a single lane. The slab will restore the road in those areas to two lanes.
Metal guardrail posts will be mounted along the edge of the concrete slab to maintain a uniform appearance with the rest of the highway.
The project will not involve blasting and will not touch the famed one-lane bridges of Hana Highway.
The public information meetings will be at 7 tonight at Ke'anae School, tomorrow at Helene Hall in Hana, and Thursday at the Pa'ia Community Center.
