An interesting thing occurred about the time I was stationed there in 1969. Kaiser (a mainland company) won the bid for the first 10 miles of IH1 from Barbers Point NAS to Waipahu and completed this section very quickly. At that point all of the local construction companies lobbied their congressman and senators to ensure that they got a piece of the IH1 pie. As a result, the remaining pieces of IH1 were chopped into short segments of a mile or so each, and the completion of IH1 took years.
I stopped over in Honolulu for a few days in the late 1980s. I went on a snorkeling excursion, and the bus driver to the boat gave a running commentary on various things, including the adding of a foot or so to the height of the “jersey barrier” on H-1 “guaranteeing lifetime employment for the relatives of state politicians...”