Was the short freeway portion of Route 76 in Ewa supposed to go further south?

[AMLNet49]

Saw this on reddit so I'm just copy-pasting but this is actually a good question. After looking at the street view I do see the points here:

Only a short stretch of 76 is upgraded to funnel a highly populated area to the interstate

- You start at a light, you have exit 5 for Waipahu, you have 6A for Kapolei going SB and Honowai St going NB (no signs??), then exit 6B for H1 East to Town.

But then if you even want to go to H1 West you hit a light within the interchange before having no exit (only an ordinary left turn, but who's going that way anyway?), and despite a major two lane ramp from H1 west onto 76 south you still have to wait at a light before exit 6A going south.

They gotta get rid of those lights around the H1 interchange. Also should actually sign Honowai St exit and probably better signage for the H1 east exit too

And was the freeway supposed to keep going south towards Ewa Beach? If they built exits 1-4 all the way down to Ewa you wouldn't have to sit on 76 North trying to get to the freeway and then the interstate

[kphoger]

I don't have your answer, but have you checked out the main AARoads page for H1?  It gives you a timeline.

[oscar]

I haven't been to that part of Hawaii in many years, so I can't comment on the interchange configuration.

My review of HDOT planning documents indicates that there was never any plan to freeway-ize HI 76 south of Farrington Highway (HI 7101/7110). HDOT did the next best thing, which was to build a non-freeway bypass of Old Fort Weaver Rd. in 1982 to create the current HI 76 alignment south of Farrington Hwy. This all was before the explosive population growth in southwest Oahu, so replacing Old Fort Weaver Rd. with just a straighter non-freeway bypass probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

The exit numbers start at 5 only because mile 0 is at HI 76's south (east) end at Fort Weaver.

Also, HI 76 between Farrington Highway and H-1 serves traffic not only to/from Ewa Beach, but also the eastern part of the high-growth Kapolei area, and residential areas northwest of Pearl Harbor, all of which feed into HI 76 via the Farrington Highway. That might be why HI 76 was improved more between H-1 and Farrington Hwy. than south of Farrington.