Many motorists are bemoaning the fact that, at least for a few more days, the Kapa’a bypass road is closed due to final harvesting operations by Amfac Sugar Kaua’i. The road is closed until this Friday, and the lack of
Many motorists are bemoaning the fact that, at least for a few more days, the
Kapa’a bypass road is closed due to final harvesting operations by Amfac Sugar
Kaua’i.
The road is closed until this Friday, and the lack of an
alternative route in and out of the Waipouli stretch of Kuhio Highway has put
as many as 2,500 extra cars per day on the highway. That’s caused traffic jams
even on the weekends.
Some motorists reported last week that drives of 15
minutes from north of Kapa’a to Wailua were taking twice as long because of the
backups through Waipouli.
“It’s just irritating,” one regular driver of
that portion of the highway complained.
But waiting in traffic is really a
small price to pay, many residents feel, as this closure won’t happen again, at
least due to the harvesting of sugar cane.
Last month, Amfac announced it
was getting out of the agriculture business on the island, meaning job losses
for 400 workers and their families.
Right around the same time, Amfac’s
17,000-plus acres on the East Side were put up for sale.
The fact that this
is likely the last harvest of sugar was cause for reflection for Gini Kapali,
director of the Kaua’i County Office of Economic Development, as she sat in
Kuhio Highway traffic near the shuttered Coco Palms Resort.
“I don’t know
if this is positive or negative. When I’m sitting in the Kapa’a traffic, I must
reflect on the fact that this the last time the Kapa’a bypass will be closed,
as this is the last harvest of Lihu’e Plantation,” she said.
Lihu’e
Plantation was for many years what the Amfac Sugar Kaua’i eastern operations
were called.
“We should be taking a lot of pictures of the cane trucks
passing by Coco Palms, even of the cane stalks falling off the truck onto the
road. You’ll never see it again,” she said.
The state Department of
Transportation doesn’t have an exact, current tally of the number of vehicles
using the bypass road on a daily basis. Counts are done every two years, and
the latest numbers available are from 1997. They indicated more than 2,600 cars
per day on the bypass. Add that number to the approximately 27,800 that were
driving daily through Waipouli on Kuhio Highway in ’97, and you get an idea of
why that three-mile stretch of highway is so clogged lately, DOT officials
said.
The advice of Kaua’i Police traffic officers, who have been
monitoring the molasses-like traffic, is for drivers to go with the
flow.
“You can’t do much about it, so just be prudent, drive slowly and
respect other motorists,” said inspector Paul Hurley, head of patrol
services.
Staff writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at 245-3681 (ext.
224) and [pcurtis@pulitzer.net]
