Congratulations to all of the runners in this year’s Honolulu Marathon! All your training and hard work paid off.

I’d also like to take the time to recognize some of the “behind the scenes” people. An event of this size and scope doesn’t just happen overnight, especially when it comes to traffic closures.

The Honolulu Marathon is the biggest event of the year for our Rentals division. For over 10 years G P Roadway Solutions Rentals division has been providing traffic control services to the Honolulu Marathon. The Marathon uses nearly 90% of our rentals equipment and 100% of our rentals workforce. 4500 barricades and 4000 traffic cones are setup on the streets from Ala Moana, to downtown, to Diamond Head and reaching to Hawaii Kai. We also use all of our arrow boards and message signs, portable lighting systems and crowd control barriers. Our warehouse is stripped to its bare bones.

And it all is taken care of by the 68 crew members, 3 dispatchers, supervisor Kelly Lenfest and Rentals Manager Kenneth Young.

This year, the Honolulu Marathon was on Sunday December 9. But preparation for the Marathon started months before. The week before the event we start delivering the equipment, and by Saturday night everyone is ready to rock n’ roll.

Crew member started clocking in at 6:00pm Saturday night, and then setup started around 11:00pm. By 12:01am Sunday morning, street closures were in full swing.

5:00am and the runners were off! Our crew followed behind the last runner, picking up the equipment as the runner progressed. They did this until the last runner crossed the finish line. But even after all runners have finished, the crew’s job was not done. All of the barricades that were set up around town need to be collected and brought back to the warehouse.

With over 10 years of experience providing traffic control services to the Honolulu Marathon, our Rentals department has gotten very efficient. Most of the crew members can return to the warehouse by 5 or 6pm Sunday.  It’s a long and grueling two day effort, not including the previous months of preparation.

But they pull it off.

The next time you participate or attend an event that includes traffic closures, please take a moment to recognize the crew members and the hard work that went into making traffic go smoothly.