Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway
The Highway 19 section of Hawai’i Belt Road, also known as Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway, was originally completed in 1975 as a limited access highway, according to the Wikipdia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawai%E2%80%98i_Belt_Road
The current Highway Widening Project is indicative of the disconnect between the community, the County Administration, and the State Department of Transportation. During the public Kona Community Development Plan meetings, the consensus across all groups was to include overpasses (also known as grade separations) at congested intersection locations along Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway. The State DOT has maintained that overpassess is not a popular idea and refused to consider that feature. In previous plans, overpasses were included for the pending Highway widening project, again as a result of community input, but DOT reported that the plan that included overpasses was “lost”.
…more to follow
