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Designing infrastructure is not an easy task, and mistakes happen. In some cases, people discover those errors before contracts get signed, and before work begins on the task at hand.
Occasionally, things go wrong, mistakes get made, and nobody notices them until something bad happens. This is the case of the Queen Kaahumanu Highway in Hawaii, which did not account for right turns in its design.
The said problem with right turns is that the space that was necessary for these turns was not considered for the project, which will need an extension of the funding, along with a delay of the completion date.
Right turns were not apparently considered for linking the highway to existing roads, which otherwise meet it perpendicularly. Evidently, because authorities do not want people to stomp on their brakes on the high-speed road to perform a sharp turn to the right, the road needs to be widened with curved sections to allow a safe deceleration.
According to West Hawaii Today, the delays will add up to 14 months, and historic places were already affected by construction equipment, which breached 19th-century curbstone horse trails. Apparently, the problem was caused by an incorrect identification of the protected sites in the field.
Before construction equipment was dispatched in the area, it appears that the historic trails were not included in the project’s map that was supposed to accompany the documentation. However, they were present in the grading plan, which means that someone knew about their existence, and even accounted for it in the original project.
Unfortunately, because authorities did not accurately map those historic trails, the entire project will cost more than initially intended, and long delays will exist.
Furthermore, this massive oversight raises the need for an investigation to discover the responsible individuals for the mistake, which should be penalized somehow. The estimated costs of this error are in the range of $100 million, but this is just a ballpark figure.
The said problem with right turns is that the space that was necessary for these turns was not considered for the project, which will need an extension of the funding, along with a delay of the completion date.
Right turns were not apparently considered for linking the highway to existing roads, which otherwise meet it perpendicularly. Evidently, because authorities do not want people to stomp on their brakes on the high-speed road to perform a sharp turn to the right, the road needs to be widened with curved sections to allow a safe deceleration.
According to West Hawaii Today, the delays will add up to 14 months, and historic places were already affected by construction equipment, which breached 19th-century curbstone horse trails. Apparently, the problem was caused by an incorrect identification of the protected sites in the field.
Before construction equipment was dispatched in the area, it appears that the historic trails were not included in the project’s map that was supposed to accompany the documentation. However, they were present in the grading plan, which means that someone knew about their existence, and even accounted for it in the original project.
Unfortunately, because authorities did not accurately map those historic trails, the entire project will cost more than initially intended, and long delays will exist.
Furthermore, this massive oversight raises the need for an investigation to discover the responsible individuals for the mistake, which should be penalized somehow. The estimated costs of this error are in the range of $100 million, but this is just a ballpark figure.
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