Posted on: Saturday, January 29, 2005

EDITORIAL
Double-decked Nimitz a non-starter for sure

No one will dispute the state's assertion that Nimitz Highway needs help.

The menu of projects projected for this blue-collar artery range from badly needed to just plain bad.

Certainly the stretch from Aloha Tower to Iwilei, torn up for 18 months, is a driver's nightmare just begging for the complete resurfacing now promised by state Transportation Director Rod Haraga.

But the idea of a double-deck flyover between Ke'ehi Interchange and Pacific Street is an old idea that doesn't get better with time.

It would do little to improve traffic, merely moving the point of congestion a few miles closer to the urban center.

And the trade-off would be huge.

Honolulu celebrated when the flyover in front of Aloha Tower was taken down. Mother Nature, in the form of an earthquake, helped remove the Embarcadero Freeway that cut off San Francisco from much of its beautiful waterfront.

That should be enough of a lesson for us.

We need to open up our waterfront, not block it off with a transportation project that would achieve relatively little good.

The most radical proposal, we think, deserves a sympathetic hearing. Developer Ken Harding has proposed realigning four lanes of the highway fronting Aloha Tower and sending them underground as part of his $300 million residential and commercial waterfront development.

The reasons for Aloha Tower Marketplace's disappointing performance (it's currently in bankruptcy) since it opened in 1994 are two: lack of parking, and separation from the downtown area by the busy Nimitz Highway.

Harding's plans would tie the marketplace to downtown pedestrian traffic as it adds substantial parking, not to mention the sort of offices and condos that would bring a critical population mass to the vicinity (think Victoria Ward).

It's an idea that needs a serious look.