By Kristine Uyeno – KHON 2-News. All traffic cameras damaged in a construction mishap Wednesday night were back up and running Friday. Crews worked day and night Thursday to restore 101 of the city’s 265 traffic cameras in Leeward, West and Windward Oahu. A contractor for the Honolulu rail transit project accidentally damaged a fiber optics line Wednesday night near Aloha Stadium, according to the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.
No one was hurt, but the damage temporarily affected nearly half of the city’s traffic camera coverage, including some of the island’s most congested roads in Aiea, Pearl City, Ewa, Kapolei and Kaneohe. “It’s uncommon to have half out, but you know it’s a construction project, accidents do happen,” said Ty Fukumitsu, Honolulu Transportation Services. Cameras in other areas, like town and East Oahu, were not affected.
As crews worked to restore the cameras, the city used the state’s GoAkamai.org website to monitor traffic along with Google maps. If those website showed congestion, “I would actually have to send personnel out there to do some timing adjustments because we need to see what’s going on. We don’t want to guess and guess wrong, so we do have personnel on standby, actually this afternoon, to… physically go to a site and if need to adjust the signal timing,” Fukumitsu said.
City officials said they had other eyes on the road, including the Honolulu Police Department, HART and other drivers who will call them with updates. Contractor Kiewit was conducting utility relocation work along Kamehameha Highway shortly before midnight when the cable was damaged, and will pick up the tab for repairs. HART and Kiewit apologize to drivers for any inconvenience.
100+ traffic cameras restored after construction damage…
