City targets $2 million for emergency repairs
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
The city plans to spend $2 million on emergency road repaving projects in urban Honolulu, using a new fast-track contract process that eventually could be expanded islandwide, officials said yesterday.
Work could begin as early as Monday on repaving major roads from Diamond Head to Liliha, city managing director Ben Lee said. Normally, the process for designing, bidding and awarding similar contracts could take more than a year, he said.
The emergency repairs come amid hundreds of complaints about the deteriorating quality of city and state roads after recent heavy rain.
The new process, which essentially asks contractors to evaluate road conditions and offer their own cost proposals for repair work, was developed as an "out of the box" way to deal with the problem, Lee said.
"You will see an immediate major improvement on our streets," Lee said.
The city has asked street-paving contractors to evaluate major roads in the Ho-nolulu and make proposals for "per unit" repairs by as early as tomorrow. Target areas include major east-west roads like Kapi'olani and Ala Wai boulevards and Beretania and King streets as well as larger mauka-makai routes, including Pi'ikoi and Pensacola streets and Monsarrat Avenue.
If state permits can be obtained, work on some streets could begin Monday. The state has promised to work with city officials to expedite permits, Lee said.
Whenever possible, the work will be done at night or in off-peak daytime hours, he said.
City road resurfacing and reconstruction work had fallen off sharply in recent years as officials moved to a private contracting system that relied heavily on detailed city design requirements before proceeding with a project. The number of road projects already was scheduled to increase this year, Lee said.
Meanwhile, city crews have been working overtime to fix hundreds of potholes (damage at least six inches deep) that developed after the heavy rain, said Larry Leopardi, director of the city's Facility Management Department.
However, six other major types of road damage — including cracks, rutting and peel-offs — can be fixed only with larger surface repairs, which have to be contracted out to private businesses.
"Fixing the potholes wasn't going to get the job done," Lee said.
The expanded repairs could include putting a simple overlay of new material on top of the road, scraping the top layer of the road off and replacing it, or doing a major reconstruction of the road and its subsurface, Lee said.
The new contract system will allow repairs to roads ranging from 50 feet of one lane to entire blocks of the road, depending on what level of repair work contractors suggest is necessary.
City Councilman Rod Tam, chairman of the council's Public Works Committee, praised the city's innovative thinking.
"The institutionalized repair system wasn't working," Tam said. "This is the type of new approach that we need, providing that we can do it legally. Sometimes, it takes a problem like the one we've been having to get someone to sit down and figure out how to do things differently."
Lee acknowledged that the new contracting process could sacrifice some quality and economic controls at the expense of getting the work done quickly, but said the city will monitor the work as it goes along. If it's successful, the streamlined process could be expanded to other areas, he said.
The $2 million for the emergency repair work will come out of the $30 million budgeted for road repairs in the 2004 fiscal year, he said.
State officials this week also contracted with a private firm to repair potholes on an emergency basis, said Transportation Department spokesman Scott Ishikawa.
The contract allows private workers to supplement state efforts to reduce the backlog of road repairs caused by the heavy rain, Ishikawa said.
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
