Hawai`i Roads - HI 31

Pi`ilani Highway



Wailea Ike Drive NB ends at HI 31, but since all that's to the south is a highway stub, this is the beginning of 31. This would have been a channelized T intersection, and HI 31 would have continued southeast from here across barren lava slopes (the hinterlands of Haleakala) to south of `Ulupalakua. That's where HI 37 ends and CR 31 begins, and CR 31 happens to be the Pi`ilani Highway, just to make Hawai`i's plans obvious with both name and number.


In the other direction as HI 31 SB ends. Couldn't ask for a prettier stub.


One of the "forbidden" islands off-limits to general tourism, Kaho`olawe.


The old HI 31, Kihei Rd., has these town-erected assemblies with tiny shields to keep traffic off of the congested restaurant- and hotel-laden old road and put it on the four-lane new road. (Yes, it doesn't look like four lanes from the stub end, but it widens out after the first intersection - why carry four lanes into a two-lane stub?) These are both SB in Kihei.


The first SB distance sign leaving the HI 310/311 intersection, past the shield atop the page. The extra green space outside the white border is in error, and probably due to a sign company that will only cut signs in certain increments. Those aren't pine trees in the background - Hawai`i doesn't have any evergreen trees that I saw - but deciduous trees whose leaves have been modified to cluster in branches that mimic evergreens. Close up, the "blades" are made of dozens of tiny leaves and are actually on the order of centimeters thick.


HI 31 NB turns into HI 311 NB, and then the same occurrence from HI 311 SB. No idea where HDOT pulled the tiny green BEGIN and END signs for this intersection, because as you see in the first photo they already had some of the correct kind. The NB 311 shield and both 310 shields are off, unless Hawai`i has finally started in the last year or two to fill out the entire shield with the numerals. Finally, the NORTH above HI 310 in the first photo is also incorrect, because the big N should be bottom-justified to the rest of the letters. The same problem strikes the first southbound reassurance marker, the one atop this page.


One more little green sign on HI 310 WB, and then S. Kihei Rd. branches off from HI 310 EB. So if S. Kihei Rd. starts here, and HI 310 is N. Kihei Rd. to the west, does that mean HI 310 is the old alignment of HI 31? Yes. In fact, 310 is milemarked as part of 31, says Oscar Voss - I didn't notice. Although HI 31 now flows straight into HI 311 (Mokulele Highway), cutting off the old end of Mokulele Highway at S. Kihei Rd., that is a new development. When this was a four-way intersection, HI 311 ended here as a spur of HI 31, not as the old route. Originally, when S. Kihei Rd. was 31, Mokulele Highway was HI 35.

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