Halloween morning was not much of a treat for commuters from East Oahu.
Traffic was backed up for miles because the contra-flow lane was not set up on Kalanianaole Highway. The city is changing its policy to prevent future problems. Kalanianaole Highway gets backed up closer to town but Monday morning was considerably heavier, especially for drivers coming in from Hawaii Kai. "It was backed up all the way past Koko Marina onto Lunalilo Home Road," said commuter Kathy Ahlo. The biggest problem, drivers coming into town didn’t have the extra lane set up as the HOV lane. That’s usually open from 5 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. from Niu Valley Shopping Center to the beginning of the H-1 Freeway. The city says the driver of the truck that installs the cones is on leave so the backup driver was scheduled to work, but- "The backup driver that was supposed to have reported in had a sudden personal emergency and was not able to come in and report his absence in a timely fashion so that we could dispatch another backup driver to take his route," said Westley Chun of the Department of Facility & Maintenance. It doesn’t exactly satisfy Hawaii Kai resident Kathy Ahlo whose normal commute of 20 to 30 minutes, took over an hour. "Things happen, but I think they should have made an effort, even if it didn’t open on time to at least open it part of the time. That would have really helped, I think," Ahlo says. The city is apologizing to drivers and thanks them for their patience. It’s also grateful to Honolulu Police officers who prevented a potential disaster by making sure drivers didn’t turn into the contra-flow lane when it wasn’t coned off. Chun says in the future, the city will schedule truck drivers so there’s always a backup. "If there’s a scheduled leave, and the backup driver is gonna take that person’s route we’re gonna make sure that a second backup driver will be deployed to the yard as standby," Chun says.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
