Starting Monday, urban Honolulu dwellers will need to make reservations if they want the city to collect refrigerators, couches or other bulky items from their front sidewalks.

At the end of the six-month pilot project in January, the city may decide to extend the program islandwide and charge a fee for the now-free pickup or stop the service altogether, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said.

“People have been using our city streets for decades as a dumping ground, an illegal dumping ground where they put their opala out when they’re not supposed to,” Caldwell told reporters Wednesday. “We continue to struggle with people who just don’t follow the laws and procedures that we put in place.”

Environmental Services Director Lori Kahikina agreed that “our existing system is broken, we need to do something to fix it.” A Northern California municipality that implemented a call-in system saw less illegal dumping, she said.

In recent years, the city’s bulky-item pickup trucks have cruised each Oahu neighborhood on designated days each month, picking up discarded furniture, appliances and other oversized items.

That will end Monday for Oahu residents between Foster Village and Hawaii Kai, who now must contact the city to schedule an appointment time either by telephone (768-3200) or online at 808ne.ws/2HPBOxq. More than 70,000 houses and apartment-condominium buildings will be affected.

The pilot project does not include areas outside the eight refuse collection sectors from Foster Village to Hawaii Kai. Residents outside those zones will continue to receive the traditional monthly drive-by service for now.

The city Department of Environmental Services began accepting reservations for bulky refuse pickup from households within the affected area on May 15. As of noon Friday, the agency had received 1,148 appointments across the eight sectors. City officials said they are hoping more people call in for reservations across all the sectors. Participation has been particularly sparse in Kalihi, where only 179 appointments had been made as of noon Friday.

Caldwell said no other city the size of Honolulu picks up bulky items — for a fee or for free.

“If we can’t get a handle on getting the folks, the citizens of this community, to respect our aina, perhaps we shouldn’t do bulky-item pickup at all and we should step back and let the private sector do it just like it’s done in many other jurisdictions around the country,” he said. “And perhaps they’ll do a better job.”

He warned residents that a law passed in 2016 allows the city to slap fines of up to $2,500 on those found guilty of intentionally dumping trash improperly.

Caldwell’s Bill 13, which called for a new $5 monthly regular curbside fee, also included a plan to charge for bulky-item pickup at $5 for every one-half cubic yard, with a maximum of 1 cubic yard per visit. Those fees were rejected by the Council, although the bill is continuing to move because it establishes the language for the new bulky-item policy.

Caldwell said the proposal to charge for bulky-item pickup will be resur- rected if the appointment system proves successful.

Tim Houghton, the city’s deputy environmental services director, said the appointment system should prove more efficient. Bulky-item trash collectors “are out there today, traversing every street, once a month, whether there’s anything there or not,” he said. “By doing appointments, we can direct them to very specific locations and be much more efficient in the process.”

City officials hope the new system will also mean pickups occur more efficiently, leaving less opportunity for scofflaws to pile on their own junk with legitimately placed bulky trash, Houghton said.

Under the new program, only one appointment can be made at each address per month. Crews will pick up a maximum of five bulky items at single-family homes.

The department’s original plan called for property managers or associations to be tasked with coordinating appointment times for individual multi-unit building. But after objections were raised by condominium owners, Environmental Services is revamping its program to allow individual condominium and apartment owners to schedule their own appointments.

Houghton said the city is in the process of inputting about 16,000 addresses for multifamily lots into its database. Once that happens in the next two to three weeks, individual unit dwellers will be able to make appointments, he said.

Kahikina urged residents to consider sending their bulky items to repurposing and restoration companies when possible instead of trashing them as a way to reduce waste.

The public can also take their bulky items to Keehi Transfer Station starting Monday, something not allowed previously. Bulky items also can be taken to other transfer stations and convenience centers.