Castle Junction work to begin

By Zenaida Serrano Espanol
Advertiser Staff Writer

State transportation workers will begin construction tonight to clear the way for reopening a busy right-turn lane at Castle Junction as early as next week, a transportation official said yesterday.

Officials closed the lane Monday after 30 cubic yards of soil and rock fell on the road. They expect to re-open the lane about two weeks earlier than initially expected, said state Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa.

Using concrete barriers, workers will create a temporary wall, about 1,400 feet long, along the hillside.

The barriers will allow drivers heading toward Honolulu to turn right onto Kamehameha Highway, but keep them at a reasonable distance from the cliffside, Ishikawa said.

Construction will take place today and tomorrow between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. During these periods, officials will close the Honolulu-bound lanes of Kalaniana'ole Highway and allow contra-flow traffic onto the Kailua-bound lanes between Castle Junction and Kapa'a Quarry Road.

"We'd like to reopen the right-turn lane sometime next week, but that will depend on how quickly we proceed at night and ... how the weather is," Ishikawa said.

Officials initially thought the re-opening wouldn't be for another three weeks because they thought they didn't have enough of the 20-feet-long and 3-feet-high concrete barriers, Ishikawa said.

"We had to get 70 of them to create this stretch along the cliffside," he said. "If we had to create new concrete barriers, it would have taken a week or two."

In the meantime, drivers headed mauka can still get to Kane'ohe by making a hard right turn at the intersection onto Kamehameha Highway. Traffic lights have been adjusted to help the flow.

The barriers are a temporary measure while officials try to come up with a more permanent solution to the landslide situation, Ishikawa said.

The closed lane follows the curve of a bluff that a recent study by the Honolulu firm Earth Tech ranked fifth on a list of O'ahu's 66 most hazardous highway landslide areas.

The study noted that high, steep slopes of volcanic rock above the highway are highly deteriorated and there is no rockfall catchment in the area, where traffic is heavy.