Fixed It! MIA Bridge Railing Gets Replaced; Bumpy Bike Path Gets Smoothed
After two years, a long-damaged bridge is suddenly fixed and a past Fix It! column gets results along Date Street on Oʻahu.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect the precise cost of the repair to the bridge railing.
It was a long way down for a long time.
The bridge on South King Street passes under the Kapiʻolani Boulevard on-ramp to the H-1 and crosses over the Mānoa Pālolo Stream more than 30 feet below.
The state Department of Transportation, which is responsible for its upkeep, discovered in December 2022 that a vehicle accident had taken out a 10-foot stretch of the safety railing on the bridge’s north side.
Workers strapped a two-by-four onto the bridge’s concrete posts and mounted some plywood on it to prevent pedestrians from falling through the gaping gap. And so things remained until early this year — when someone surreptitiously removed the plywood.
While the two-by-four was left in place, a sizable space remained.
“It’s unsafe,” said a man named Ron — he declined to share his last name — who periodically stays in his tent on the bridge near the hole.
“You never know if someone’s going to trip and fall through,” he said, recalling that the plywood had been removed sometime back in January. It was still MIA when a Civil Beat reporter first visited the bridge on March 24.
Civil Beat contacted the Department of Transportation two days later, on March 26. On March 27, the department sent crews to strap another two-by-four across the hole and set up orange cones as warning markers.
The department “did not foresee the apparent issues with materials being stolen from the site, compromising the temporary safety measures,” department spokesperson Shelly Kunishige said in an email. “This notification has alerted HDOT staff and the temporary safety measures were assessed and repaired.”
On April 1, department workers completed the job and installed a new railing.
“It was helpful to know that the wooden planks had been taken down, so our crews went out and fixed it,” Kunishige said of the April 1 repair job.
Kunishige said the full repair took as long as it did because the department had to prepare design drawings and obtain required permits. Asked whether the repairs required permits to be especially expedited, she said that wasn’t necessary because the repair itself was considered under procurement rules a “small purchase” of of materials and staff time, costing altogether under $200,000. The total cost was $100,777, she said, including materials and labor.
To report other highway-related problems or complaints to the Department of Transportation, email complainthighwayoahu@hawaii.gov or call:
On Oʻahu: (808) 831-6714, or after hours (808) 485-6200
On Maui: (808) 873-3535
On Kauaʻi: (808) 241-3000
On Hawaiʻi island: (808) 933-8878 or (808) 933-8866
Update: Bumpy Bike Path Repaired
Part of Date Street’s bumpy bike path is smooth again after city officials trimmed the tree roots that had ruptured the pavement. The bumps were bad enough that cyclists swerving to avoid them had gradually carved a new path into the dirt.
Civil Beat wrote about the problem in February, learning in the process that responsibility lay among three agencies: the Department of Enterprise Services (which controls the golf course where the tree sat), the Department of Parks and Recreation (which oversees tree removals on city land) and the Department of Facility Maintenance (which had a work order to repair the path).
That sounded like a lot of coordination but DES went ahead and trimmed the tree roots itself, according to parks department spokesperson Nate Serota.
Work on the most egregious section started on March 12, spokesperson Ryan Wilson said, wrapping up March 31. He said city crews also worked on other root-marred portions of the path throughout last week.
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