Saddle Road shortcut rolls on

By PETER SUR

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A critical link in the island’s cross-island highway is one year away from completion.

That’s the word from Mike Will, project manager for the Federal Highway Administration, Central Federal Lands Highway Division, who is overseeing work on the Saddle Road.

“Moving along very well,” Will said by phone from Colorado. “We hope to be completed (with earthwork), we’ll say, early November.”

Kirkland Construction won the $33.7 million contract for grading, drainage and erosion control for the 10.3-mile highway, which will run from about the 14-mile marker of Mamalahoa Highway to the 41.5-mile marker of the existing Saddle Road.

The next step will be awarding a contract to pave and mark the highway. “This award should be happening within the next week,” Will said. The cost of the paving contract remains confidential.

Will said the new segment could be opened to the public around August or September of next year.

Plans for the new segment call for it to follow the existing Saddle Road alignment from the 41.5-mile marker for about a mile, and then follow the course of an old Mauna Loa lava flow down to Mamalahoa Highway. There will be two 12-foot-wide lanes with 8-foot shoulders, and a climbing lane for most of the length of the segment.

Will said he’s been “very, very satisfied” with the work that has been done.

Walter Kunitake, who sits on the nine-member Saddle Road Task Force, echoed that view.

“Progress is going very well,” Kunitake said, adding that the federally funded project is either on schedule or ahead of schedule, and that he hasn’t heard of any unexpected issues that Kirkland has encountered.

Kunitake’s task force, comprised of community members, meets quarterly with the contractor and government agencies.

“There’s a lot of people that are driving on the Saddle Road now that didn’t use it as a regular route,” Kunitake said. He estimated that the new 10-mile stretch alone would save 10 to 15 minutes of driving time each way between Kona and Hilo.

An environmental impact study estimated the highway’s average traffic load to increase from 1,400 vehicles per day to more than 4,200 vehicles in 2020 and to 6,500 vehicles a day by 2034.

This could result in a decrease in the number of cars that take Highway 19 between Hilo and Waimea, potentially resulting in lost business in towns along the Hamakua and Hilo coasts.

Some say it has already begun.

Augustus “Gus” Elliot, a Hamakua Realtor and president of the Honokaa Business Association, walked around his town on Wednesday and had informal talks with shopkeepers.

Honokaa residents have noticed that as the Saddle Road gets improved, people heading to the Kona side who used to visit Honokaa stores have become less frequent visitors.

“To what degree, I don’t know, but it does have an effect,” Elliot said. He added that “for the overall island, it’s probably a good thing.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but it does have an effect in Honokaa,” he said. “It is what it is.”

After the western segment is completed, it will be turned over to the state Department of Transportation, and attention will be focused on the eastern end of the Saddle Road.

This part of the highway, from the upper end of the Puainako Extension to the 11-mile marker of the Saddle Road, is still in the right-of-way acquisition phase. The state Department of Transportation indicates that three parcels mauka of Hilo are likely headed to eminent domain, while all other landowners have settled with the state.

After that Hilo-side segment is completed, a roughly 10-mile section will be built on the western side, bringing the highway down to the Waikoloa resorts off the Queen Kaahumanu Highway. Environmental studies for that segment are ongoing, and it might not open until 2019, depending on the availability of funds.

Email Peter Sur at psur@hawaiitribune-herald.com.