‘Danny’s Highway’ to Finally Open in Oahu

During the Cold War 1960s, military strategists in Hawaii wanted a direct route to move troops from one side of Oahu to the other.

The $1.3-billion solution finally opens this month--25 years late and 18 times more expensive than the original estimate.

The H-3 freeway, 16 miles long and four lanes wide, was scheduled to open on Friday after the traditional green-leaf lei is untied.

Critics say it’s a colossal road to nowhere. But supporters, including the Hawaii senator who kept federal funds flowing for three decades, say it’s vital to easing traffic on the two other direct links between eastern Oahu and Honolulu.

“It will become without question one of the most beautiful highways in the United States,” said Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), whose efforts earned the road the nickname “Danny’s Highway.”

Motorists will travel along towering viaducts skirting the 2,000-foot cliffs of the Koolau mountains. Then they will drive through twin, mile-long, blue-tiled tunnels that punch through the mountain at the 1,000-foot level. Finally, they will descend through lush North Halawa Valley into Honolulu.

The breathtaking view is expected to become a must-see for Hawaii’s 6 million visitors a year.

Many doubt, however, that the view justifies the price, even if the federal government paid 90% of it.

Tony Hodges, a leader in the legal and political fight against the project, calls the highway “a monument to stupidity and waste” and “a road to nowhere.”

Many Honolulu-bound commuters from eastern Oahu say they won’t use it and will stick to the parallel Pali and Likelike highways, despite their rush-hour jams.

“You’re as far away from downtown when you get on the H-3 as when you get off the H-3,” says the Rev. Bob Nakata, an Oahu resident who runs a nonprofit social services agency in Honolulu.

State officials say use of the H-3 will grow from an initial 12,000 trips a day to 40,000 by 2010.

They are showing off not only the spectacular view but also the $352.6-million tunnel system, which includes a 24-hour camera-equipped traffic-control center.

With the fall of communism, the military argument for the highway is all but gone, Inouye acknowledges. But it’s too late to “just concrete the whole tunnel and close it,” he said. “It’s finished.”

Although popular with the military, politicians, business leaders, unions and many Oahu residents, in the early 1970s the project slammed into the environmental movement.

The freeway was snarled in stop-work injunctions for 17 years because of fights with environmentalists. Those led to two Supreme Court rulings, several expensive realignments to protect archeological sites that were uncovered in the freeway’s path, and an extraordinary act of Congress.

In 1986, Inouye won congressional approval of a measure making H-3 immune to future environmental lawsuits.

Nakata says building the H-3 had more to do with pumping federal money into the local construction industry than with relieving traffic or helping the military. The project provided work for 10 general contractors, 45 subcontractors and 41 design consultants.

“Sadly, that money could have been used for other transportation projects,” he says.