State transportation crews will work overnight starting Sunday on the H-1 Freeway westbound between the Vineyard off-ramp and Palama Street.
"What we have to do is we have to go down and take down that large electronic sign in the Liliha area and then we gotta take it down and then we gotta put a brand new one," said State Department of Transportation spokesman Dan Meisenzhal.
Workers will first close off two Ewa-bound lanes starting at 9 p.m. Sunday night then a complete closure will take effect from 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. nightly through Friday.
"We know that its going to be a terrible inconvenience to whoever is on the road at that time of night, but it’s something that we need to do and we wanted to do it at a time that would impact the least amount of motorists," Meisenzhal says.
Crews are also prepping for projects along the H-1 from Makakilo to Kunia and the H-2 in Central Oahu. On these stretches of freeway it has been lights out for several years because of copper thieves.
"They went in there, they stole the copper wiring. The DOT went in, we put the wiring back. They went back, they took it out again," Meisenzhal says.
Now state officials are gearing up to move forward with the project and rewire the system.
"This is money that should be going into our roads or to doing other things, but instead we are having to replace perfectly good equipment because it’s getting stolen," Meisenzhal says.
Upgrades are being made to the lights and its security, but federal regulations prevent state officials from completely locking the system to prevent theft.
"It has to be accessible and there are federal standards on how accessible it is. So we can’t weld a steel plate on there because if in case of an emergency someone has to get in to that wiring, get into that system, it has to be easily accessible," Meisenzhal says.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
