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October 11, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hawai‘i Transportation Evolution

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.)

© 2024 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Economy, General, Hawaiian Traditions Tagged With: Hawaii, Trolley, Horse, Lunalilo Freeway, Evolution, Mauka Arterial, Makai Arterial, Transportation, Automobile, Tram, Omnibus

January 15, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Interstate

Planning for what is now known as the Dwight D Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (“The Interstate System”) began in the late-1930s. They then studied the feasibility of a toll-financed system of three east-west and three north-south superhighways – the subsequent report concluded a toll network would not be self-supporting.

Later, Section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 provided for the designation “within the continental United States of a National System of Interstate Highways not, exceeding, forty thousand miles … to connect by routes, as direct as practicable, the principal metropolitan areas, cities, and industrial centers, to serve the national defense, and to connect at suitable border points with routes of continental importance in the Dominion of Canada and the Republic of Mexico.”  (Bureau of Public Roads, 1960)

Although the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a “National System of Interstate Highways,” the legislation did not authorize an initiating program to build it.  After taking office in January 1953, President Eisenhower made revitalizing the Nation’s highways one of the goals of his first term.

As an army Lieutenant Colonel in 1919, Eisenhower had accompanied a military convoy across the US and saw the poor condition of our Nation’s roads.  Later, during World War II, as Commander of the Allied Forces, his admiration for Germany’s Autobahn network reinforced his belief that the US needed first-class roads.

President Eisenhower continued to urge approval and worked with Congress to reach compromises that made approval possible.  The President signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 on June 29, 1956.  The feds provided a 90/10 math – 90% of the funds for the Interstate Highway System from the feds; each state was required to match the remaining 10%.

The numbering of the interstate highways on the system was developed in 1957 by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO). The numbering pattern of Interstates is the reverse of US Highways; for example US Route 10 is in the North of the USA, while Interstate 10 is in the South.

In the numbering scheme for the primary routes, east-west highways are assigned even numbers and north-south highways are assigned odd numbers. Odd route numbers increase from west to east, and even-numbered routes increase from south to north.

Major north–south arterial Interstates increase in number from I‑5 between Canada and Mexico along the West Coast to I‑95 between Canada and Miami along the East Coast. Major west–east arterial Interstates increase in number from I‑10 between Santa Monica, California and Jacksonville, Florida to I‑90 between Seattle, Washington and Boston, Massachusetts.

On one- or two-digit Interstates, the mile marker numbering almost always begins at the southern or western state line; the exit numbers of interchanges are either sequential or distance-based so that the exit number is the same as the nearest mile marker.

As a result of statehood for Alaska and Hawaiʻi in 1959, US Bureau of Public Roads was directed to study the needs and opportunities for Interstate routes there.

Four basic factors were used in considering the relative merit of routes: (1) national defense, (2) system integration – the value of the route as a connector between centers of population and industry which generate traffic, (3) service to industry by manufacturing, fishing, agriculture, mining, forestry, etc, as measured by value of products or by traffic data, and (4) population.  (Bureau of Public Roads, 1960)

When the routes considered for Interstate designation in Hawaiʻi were studied in relation to the established criteria for selection, it was determined that routes totaling about 50 miles have factors of service that are definite characteristics of the Interstate System.  (Bureau of Public Roads, 1960)

Honolulu Westerly to Barbers Point.………..19
Honolulu southeasterly to Diamond Head…7
Honolulu northeasterly to Kaneohe Base…14
Pearl City to Schofield Barracks………………..10
Total…………………………………………………………50

The result was the initial identification of three Island Interstates – H-1, H-2 and H-3.  These roads also have names: H-1 is called Queen Liliʻuokalani Freeway (from exits 1-18 – about Middle Street) and Lunalilo Freeway (from exits 19-27.)  H-2 is called Veterans Memorial Freeway and H-3 is called John A Burns Freeway.

H-1 runs along the southern shore of Oahu, from Kapolei, around Pearl Harbor to just past Diamond Head State Monument. H-2 extends north from H-1 and Pearl Harbor to Wahiawa and the Schofield Barracks Military Reservation. H-3 runs from northwest Honolulu at Āliamanu Military Reservation to the Hawaii Marine Corps Base on Kāneʻohe Bay.

Interstate H-1 was first authorized in as a result of the Statehood Act of 1960.  Work was completed on the first segment of the new H-1 Interstate, spanning 1-mile – from Koko Head Avenue to 1st Avenue, on June 21, 1965.

A temporary westbound exit to Harding and a temporary eastbound entrance from Kapahulu Avenue allowed motorists to access the new freeway until the Kapiʻolani Interchange was completed in October 1967.

On November 1, 1989, the Federal Highway Administration approved the State’s request for a fourth Interstate route, a 4.1-mile section of Moanalua Freeway/State Route 78 between H-1 exit 13 and H-1 exit 19.  It was assigned the temporary number H-1-A, but was numbered H-201 on December 8, 1990.  (DOT delayed putting the signs up, thinking Hawaiʻi drivers may be confused between H-2 and H-201.)

H-4 was an idea once proposed for the city of Honolulu in the late 1960s. Interstate H-4 was to provide traffic relief for the congested Interstate H-1 through the downtown area. From the west Interstate H-4 was to begin at Interstate H-1/Exit 18 interchange, head to the waterfront to a point somewhere between Atkinson Drive and Waikīkī, then head back up to the Kapiʻolani interchange (Exit 25B) on H-1.

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

 

Filed Under: General, Economy Tagged With: Veterans Memorial Freeway, Interstate, H-3, Queen Liliuokalani Freeway, H-2, John A Burns Freeway, H-1, Hawaii, Oahu, H-4, Lunalilo Freeway

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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