The canoe was a principal means of travel in ancient Hawaiʻi, extensive cross-country trail networks. Overland travel was on foot and followed the traditional trails.
Then, in 1803, American ship under Captain William Shaler (with commercial officer Richard Cleveland,) arrived with three horses aboard – gifts for King Kamehameha.
In the 1820s and 1830s, more horses were imported from California, and by the 1840s the use of introduced horses, mules and bullocks for transportation was increasing.
In 1825, Andrew Bloxam (naturalist aboard the HMS Blonde) noted in Honolulu that, “The streets are formed without order or regularity. Some of the huts are surrounded by low fences or wooden stakes … As fires often happen the houses are all built apart from each other. The streets or lanes are far from being clean …” (Clark, HJH)
By the 1830s, King Kamehameha III initiated a program of island-wide improvements on the ala loa, and in 1847, a formal program for development of the alanui aupuni (government roads) was initiated.
Sidewalks were constructed, usually of wood, as early as 1838. The first sidewalk made of brick was laid down in 1857 by watchmaker Samuel Tawson in front of his shop on Merchant Street.
It wasn’t until 1850 that streets received official names. On August 30, 1850, the Privy Council first named Hawaiʻi’s streets; there were 35-streets that received official names that day (29 were in Downtown Honolulu, the others nearby).
At the time, “Broadway” was the main street (we now call it King Street;) it was the widest and longest – about 2-3 miles long from the river (Nuʻuanu River on the west) out to the “plains” (to Mānoa).
It wasn’t until 1852 that the Chinese became the first contract laborers to arrive in the islands. At about that time, Honolulu had approximately 10,000-residents. Foreigners made up about 6% of that (excluding visiting sailors). Laws at the time allowed naturalization of foreigners to become subjects of the King (by about that time, about 440 foreigners exercised that right).
The majority of houses were made of grass (hale pili,) there were about 875 of them; there were also 345 adobe houses, 49 stone houses, 49 wooden houses and 29 combination (adobe below, wood above). In 1847, Washington Place was built by future-Queen Liliʻuokalani’s father-in-law.
The earliest public transit was the Pioneer Omnibus Line, with a horse-pulled vehicle serving parts of Honolulu for a few years beginning in the spring of 1868. (Schmitt)
In the quarter century from 1872 to 1896 the population just about doubled in the kingdom from 57,000 to 109,000; Honolulu doubled from 15,000 to 30,000.
In 1884, the legislature passed a law “granting to William R. Austin and his associates the right to construct and operate a street railroad upon certain streets of the city of Honolulu.” Later amended, the law granted authority the Hawaiian Tramways Company, Limited (from England.) (Kuykendall)
In 1888, the animal-powered tramcar service of Hawaiian Tramways ran track from downtown to Waikīkī. In 1900, the Tramway was taken over by the Honolulu Rapid Transit & Land Co (HRT).
That year, an electric trolley (tram line) was put into operation in Honolulu, and then in 1902, a tram line was built to connect Waikīkī and downtown Honolulu. The electric trolley replaced the horse/mule-driven tram cars.
The first automobiles appeared on the streets of Honolulu on October 8, 1899, the date on which both Henry P Baldwin and Edward D Tenney took possession of their newly arrived vehicles (both described as Wood electrics.) (Schmitt)
By 1900, Honolulu had a population of more than 39,000 and was in the midst of a development boom, creating tremendous need for more housing.
“[T]here were only four automobiles on Oahu in 1901 – you lived downtown because you worked downtown, you couldn’t live in Kaimuki or in Manoa.” (Star Bulletin)
The “first gas-engined automobile complete with steering wheel and tonneau,” acquired by CM Cooke in 1904, and the Honolulu Automobile Club later adopted this date for the “first real automobile” in the Islands. (Schmitt)
Spurring a boom, in 1903, Henry Ford officially opened the Ford Motor Company and five years later released the first Model T. In 1907, Henry Ford announced his goal for the Ford Motor Company: to create “a motor car for the great multitude.” (pbs)
“The automobile owner uses his car six days a week either in direct pursuit of his business or as a means of quickly transporting himself and others to and from that place of business.”
“The fact that he may take his family out on a Sunday is not a pleasure trip, but a necessary recreation in order, to ‘keep fit’ for his work.” (McAlpine, Schuman Carriage, Honolulu Star Bulletin, November 3, 1907)
“The census of 1908 gave 259 cars imported into the islands in that year, thus showing that the automobile is in use pretty generally, as it is now estimated that there are nearly seven hundred cars in the islands, an increase of more than 100 per cent in one year.” (Beringer, Overland Monthly, July 1909)
“The automobile is here to stay. If we had better roads there would be more automobiles sold, naturally.” (Gustav Schuman, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 24, 1916)
The first traffic lights in the Islands were installed at the intersection of Nuʻuanu Avenue and Beretania Street, Honolulu; an overhead signal was put into operation February 19, 1936.
On February 24 the overhead lights were “replaced by side bracket lights, flashing the green go and red stop light from a post at each corner.” The new lights were “operated by the flow of traffic itself.” (Schmitt)
In 1938 automobile registration stood at 43,785. In 1945 the number of automobiles on island had grown to 52,527; a dozen years later, in 1957, automobile registration stood at 159,227, a 329.8 percent increase since 1945.
This tremendous influx of automobiles resulted in myriad needs having to be addressed, ranging from the reduction of traffic congestion to improved parking, and enhanced traffic safety measures.
The Territory undertook two other major highway projects, the Mauka and Makai Arterials, to divert traffic off downtown streets. (HHS)
“‘A super highway through Honolulu, 120 feet wide and running mauka of the business district from Kalihi to Kaimuki … would be invaluable in solving Honolulu’s pressing traffic problem,’ engineer John Rush told the City Council in 1939.”
The 1945 Territorial Legislature enacted a liquid fuel tax in order to generate the funds necessary to match the federal funds available for the highway’s construction. This tax was increased to five cents a gallon in 1955 to help offset Hawaii’s match for the increasing federal dollars coming to the islands for highway construction.
From 1952 to 1962, Honolulu officials kept adding to the Mauka Arterial, described as the first road in the state “tailored to the flight patterns of people.”
The Lunalilo Highway project was expanded to become the H-1, a 28 mile roadway running from Palailai at Campbell Industrial Park to Ainakoa Avenue, with the Lunalilo Highway being the section running through Honolulu. (DOT)
A companion Makai Arterial that would have run past Waikiki, down Ala Moana and along an elevated roadway near the Honolulu waterfront never materialized as planned. (DOT)
Instead, the eight lane Makai Arterial, named Nimitz Highway, opened to traffic in November 1952, ten years after construction had commenced at the Pearl Harbor gate. (HHS)
A section of the Federal-Aid to Highways Act of 1959 required that a study be undertaken to consider the eligibility of Hawai‘i and Alaska for interstate highway funding.
As a result of the study, the Hawaii Omnibus Act, which President Eisenhower signed into law on July 12, 1960, removed the language in the Federal-Aid Highway Act which limited the interstate system to the continental US.
It also authorized three interstate highways for Hawaii, H-1, H-2 and H-3 to address national defense concerns, an allowed interstate highway justification which resulted from a 1957 amendment to the original act. (DOT)
An interesting remnant of apparently changed alignment (and probable interconnection of the Mauka and Makai Arterials) is a stub out to nowhere at the on/off ramps at Kapiʻolani Boulevard to H-1. (Lots of information here is from DOT, HHS and Leidemann.)
