US Sen. Brian Schatz: $17.5 million earmarked for roads reconstruction in Hilo on Big Island

The Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation and the City and County of Honolulu will receive a total of more than $42.5 million in new federal funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation to support improvements to roads, sidewalks and infrastructure in Hilo on the Big Island and Honolulu on O‘ahu.

“This new federal funding will help make streets in Hilo and Honolulu safer for everyone – drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians,” said US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, when announcing the funding Monday.

The federal Department of Transportation funding, which comes from two Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grants, includes the following:

• Hilo Bayfront Highway and Waiānuenue Avenue Intersection in Hilo – $17.5 million
  
  The funding will be used to reconstruct roadways adjacent to and at the intersection of Bayfront Highway and Waiānuenue Avenue to allow for a single-lane roundabout, Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant sidewalks and roadway crossings, drainage improvements, reconfiguration of parking and other roadway improvements including new highway lighting, electrical infrastructure relocations, signage, pavement markings, pedestrian signals, raised crosswalks, landscape, traffic management devices and other utility adjustments.
  
  In the past two years, this intersection saw three collisions and one fatality, in which the police cited lack of bicyclist infrastructure as the reason for the cyclist’s death.
  
• Salt Lake Boulevard Complete Streets in Honolulu – $25 million
  
  The funding will be used to add an additional lane and execute a complete streets redesign of a 1.5-mile segment of Salt Lake Boulevard near the newly opened Hālawa Rail Station.
  
  The project includes expanding the roadway from two lanes to four lanes, turning lanes, dedicated bicycle lanes, widened ADA sidewalks, waterlines, utility relocations, stormwater drainage system, bioswale, lighting and traffic signal upgrades.
  
  This is the final segment of a project started in the 1970s, and as such acts as a traffic bottleneck for the corridor.