Maui: To Bus Or Not To Bus?

[pzarquon]

Maui rethinking bus system
Timothy Hurley, Honolulu Advertiser, Monday, March 28, 2005

Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa, backed by a consultant's study and recommendation, is proposing the county boost annual bus system spending from $500,000 to more than $7 million in five years. Along the way, the county would buy new buses, create new routes and boost the frequency of stops...

With growing congestion on Maui roads, voters approved the creation of a county Department of Transportation in 2002. The County Council immediately established a 5-cent-a-gallon tax to help staff the agency and underwrite its efforts. Since then, officials have patched together a public bus system using a hodgepodge of vehicles owned by two different contractors to offer routes in and between central Maui, Kihei and Lahaina.

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Maui: To Bus Or Not To Bus?

Maui is overdue for better public transit. They're up to 125,000+ by now, aren't they? O'ahu had 125,000 people by around 1920, and by then Honolulu Rapid Transit had been running electric streetcars through the city for 20 years.

[Miulang]

Re: Maui: To Bus Or Not To Bus?

Yes, Maui is most certainly due for a better public transit system! When the workers have to live so far away from their workplaces (a lot of the people who work in Wailea, for instance, live upcountry) because finding anything cheap enough to rent close to work is ridiculous, they have to endure very long commutes (it wouldn't surprise me if it took people more than an hour to get from Kula to Wailea because there's no straight shot to get there. In fact, it looks soooo ludicrous...you could be standing on someone's deck in Kula and see the glistening hotels down below in Wailea and you'd say, "Hmmm...if there was just a straight road from here to Kihei, I could get there in about 20 minutes!"

When I was flying to Hawai'i last month, I sat next to a guy who moved from Washington State to Mau'i a few months ago. He had made the trip up to the Mainland this time to retrieve his animals and take them back to Mau'i with him (I learned a lot from him about how to get past the quarantine regs, too. something I needed to know because when I move I have 2 popokis to bring with me). He belongs to the Rotary Club on Mau'i now and we were talking about how bad traffic and the opala were. He said some of his local friends told him the people in Kula didn't want the County to put in a connector road between Kula and Kihei because the residents in Kula were afraid of the traffic that would be coming upcountry from down in Wailea!

There's kinda sorta a bus service right now, but the problem is the County went out to bid for the contract, and there were only 2 bus companies on Mau'i who bid: Akina's and Roberts. Both of these companies haul tourists around (In fact, Akina's may have gone under). There's also an MEO Shuttle for the elderly and disabled, but that doesn't really qualify as regular public transportation.

After a couple of years, Akina's said they couldn't make any money on public transportation, so they pulled out. Now Roberts has a line that goes between the Central area and Wailea and Kaanapali, but it's mostly for tourists and the workers and their schedules are kinda weird (like they don't run constantly, and not even every hour).

The only way Mau'i will have even the limited services you guys on Oahu have is for the County to bite the bullet and get in the transportation business, because the private bus companies only want to cherry pick the prime routes, which leaves much of Maui to put up with the crowded roads and the accidents.

When Ooka Supermarket in Wailuku closes this June, the elderly will have no supermarket they can walk to easily...the closest ones are either in Happy Valley or Paukukalo. Safeway and Times Supermarket are talking maybe about putting up a new supermarket in Wailuku, but their idea of Wailuku is at the very outer edge of town, next to Waikapu, where all the new houses are being constructed. So that leaves the poor people without cars and the elderly with very few alternatives unless they have friends or ohana who can kokua and give them a ride to the market.

What's also really ironic about the closure of Ooka is they are planning to refurbish it to become a community health center, and in the parking lot, they've already started building a series of senior apartments, but where the hell are those elderly people supposed to go for their food?????

And don't even get me started about the horrible traffic jams on the Pali road to Lahaina. Because it's a one-lane road on both sides, and with the traffic from the tourists and the workers who are commuting, most of the time it's almost gridlock. And whenever there's an accident on the Pali and they close the road, the only alternate way to get back to Central Maui from the West Side is via this semipaved very skinny road around to Kahakuloa...I've made that drive several times, and it's really scary when you're in the lane that's hugging the cliff...Because of that horrible traffic, whenever I visit Mau'i, I seldom go holoholo on that side because of the traffic congestion.

Miulang