Pohakupu residents said this is the closest the community has gotten to ridding the area of what is described as a dangerous and substandard road to the high school, where speeding motorists and heavy traffic clog the roadway and can be a risk to students walking to school.

"This is decades of work from this community, and the eldest of the people who started this 25 years ago get to see this happen finally," said Mike Heh, who has been community project leader for the past five years. "I feel best for them, the people who have waited the longest."

Access to Kailua High School is on 19-foot-wide Ulumanu Drive through the heart of the Pohakupu subdivision on the outskirts of Kailua town. People have said motorists are driving over pets, hitting mailboxes, speeding and frightening elderly pedestrians. During one informal count, some 300 vehicles traveled along the road to the school at peak morning traffic.

Following an accident about 25 years ago, when a motorist struck a child heading for Maunawili Elementary School, access from Kalaniana'ole Highway to the school was restricted during morning hours, forcing Waimanalo residents to go through the junction at Castle and onto Ulumanu Drive.

Under Heh's leadership, Waimanalo and Kailua residents joined forces to call for the new road. At one time the city offered to maintain the road if the state built it and private contractors and building suppliers offered to help, but the project failed to get off the ground.

"Three past governors have made a promise to do the road but we believe this one will keep her promise," said Heh, who at one time vowed that he would move from the subdivision if the new road was not built.

Heh said the announcement about the release of money, made at the Kailua Neighborhood Board meeting Thursday, couldn't have come at a better time. Recently when Kahuku played Kailua in a football game, school officials found there was not enough parking and the gate was locked, forcing people to park in the community. Police were out giving tickets, he said, and the roads were gridlocked.

The road project has wide community support and all area legislators, no matter which party they are affiliated with, have backed the project for at least eight years.

"A lot of people have tried to get this done at different levels," said Sen. Bob Hogue, R-24th (Kailua, Kane'ohe). "There was always something in the way. I've felt so sorry for the residents because they've seen it come so close so many times. This is a step in the right direction."

Barbara Ipson, who has lived in Pohakupu for 39 years said Heh was just what the community needed to reignite this project. The community association decided more than 25 years ago that a new access road should come off of Kalaniana'ole Highway but wasn't able to convince government officials, Ipson said.

"We tried and tried and just came to a dead end," she said. "Mike is the young blood this neighborhood needed to get things done and his work was most welcomed."