In Honolulu, police are quick to shut down an entire freeway for three to five hours to investigate a bad accident or a shooting.
But that’s not standard practice in other major cities.
Highway patrol officers in California, Texas and Arizona say closing freeways is a last resort. And if they do shut down a freeway, it’s rarely for more than one or two hours.
Recent Hawaii highway closures “would be considered exceptionally long-duration incidents,” said John Corbin, chairman of the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition. “Those would be at the high end” of highway traffic hold-ups.
In California, it takes serious criminal activity or multiple-vehicle accidents involving fatalities or serious injuries to warrant a full closure, said Richard Fuentes, a California Highway Patrol spokesman.
“Full closures are a big deal,” he said. “We only do it in extreme circumstances.”
Arizona highway patrol officers often close down one direction after a major collision or an emergency like a hazardous material spill — but seldom longer than about one hour, says Bart Graves, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Public Safety. That hour is spent taking measurements of the accident, clearing debris or gathering evidence, after which they open up the lanes one at a time.
Yet in Hawaii, Honolulu police have shut down all lanes in one direction on several occasions.
On Monday, a fatal crash prompted police to close all of H-2’s town-bound lanes for almost five hours during the morning rush hour. In April, both directions of Kalanianaole Highway were blocked off between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. after a police car chase and shooting, completely blocking access to Aina Haina and Hawaii Kai.
According to HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu, Honolulu police close off some or all parts of a highway to “conduct thorough and complete investigations of all critical and fatal traffic collisions.” Monday’s fatal collision had left 50 yards of debris across all three of H-2’s south-bound lanes, prompting police to close them between 4:45 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.
“While it is important to quickly open roadways, that is not always possible,” Yu wrote in an email.
She did not respond to questions about why closures last for so long or what the department is doing to improve its handling of these incidents.
According to Graves, Arizona’s highways have experienced “several dozen” complete or multiple-lane shutdowns in the past year. Texas has had 40 full closures so far this year.
But those closures lasted for much less time than those here. Arizona and Texas are also much larger than Hawaii.
Many states have adopted goals of clearing an incident after 90 minutes, even for the most serious emergencies, said Corbin, the national traffic management expert.
He speculates that highway closures in Hawaii last so long because of poor communication and collaboration between law enforcement and emergency response agencies.
“If the law enforcement agency does not begin to involve other agencies until [the officers] arrive at the scene, emergency response, if it is needed, isn’t going to be initiated until later,” he said. “If they do so immediately, everybody is alert to the incident and alert to the fact that they may be called to the scene. That often is a determinant of whether the incident has a long- or short-duration clearance.”
Corbin encourages all emergency response agencies to establish plans ahead of time “for making decisions in a collaborative way” about highway incidents.
Detour Options Few in Honolulu
Not only does Hawaii typically close freeways for at least twice as long as many mainland states, but shutdowns here also have a much more severe effect on traffic due to a lack of detour routes.
A shutdown like the one in April can strand thousands of motorists with no recourse.
In other states, highway patrol officers can often redirect traffic off major highways to parallel frontage or service roads.
And because the decision to close a highway is significant, whether to do so typically goes all the way up highway patrol chain of command.
When an emergency does require highway patrol to close at least a few highway lanes, Fuentes says that the highest levels of California Highway Patrol management personnel are notified to further assess the situation.
The highest commanders are consulted on “anything that affects a major artery, especially in the metropolitan areas,” said Fuentes.
Questions to Honolulu police about the department’s highway incident protocol or whether it has undertaken any measures to address the issue went unanswered.
