A miniature version of an ages-old plan to improve traffic flow between Waimea and Kawaihae has raised its head.
State transportation officials have requested proposals for planning, preliminary engineering and environmental documentation for a mini Kawaihae Road bypass. The route would connect from Kawaihae Road near Mahua Street to Mamalahoa Highway south of Waimea, taking freight traffic off the congested portion of Kawaihae Road where it comes into town, according to a request for proposal detailing the scope of work.
It’s not yet clear exactly where or when the road will be built, how it will be configured or what it will cost.
The solicitation, which had a deadline of July 9, surprised the South Kohala Traffic Safety Committee. The project doesn’t appear on the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, and little information from the Department of Transportation has been forthcoming, said Gunner Mench, chairman of the traffic committee.
“If they’re talking about stuff, they’re not sharing it with us,” Mench said.
The engineering analysis will include cost estimation, assessment of right-of-way and preliminary design.
The route appears to roughly follow the mauka portion of the 14.5-mile Kawaihae Road bypass, a $280 million project which was decades in the making — and which community members rallied for — but which was deferred indefinitely in favor of the $100 million extension of the Daniel K. Inouye Highway to Queen Kaahumanu Highway.
Waimea has about 18,000 vehicles passing through a day. Kawaihae Road is steep and crowded, with sobering hairpins and grades that have been the stage for multiple fatal truck crashes. While the mini bypass may not do much to reduce the number of vehicles passing through Waimea or solve many of Kawaihae Road’s problems, Mench said he could see positive impacts from a reduced flow on the most mauka portion of Kawaihae Road, and the elimination of trucks swinging through a major intersection in the middle of Waimea.
“It would supplant the first phase of the (original) bypass,” Mench said. “It’s a lot easier to build the next phases if the first one is built. I feel like they threw us a bone.”
Calls and emails to the Hawaii Department of Transportation had not been returned by deadline.