HANA, Maui >> Even as Hurricane Lane loomed over the Hawaiian islands last month, dumping 24 inches of rain on East Maui and triggering landslides, flash flooding, downed trees and other perils, tourists were hitting the famed “Road to Hana.”

Hana resident Shyanne Lecker-Agnew said it was “crazy” seeing visitors venture along the scenic highway every day of the hurricane threat.

“It’s obvious there is a severe lack of visitor education and responsible visitor management,” said Lecker-Agnew, 27. “The Hana Highway has always been prone to landslides and always will be. That’s just the way it is.”

The winding route, formally known as Hana Highway or Highway 360, is a perilous undertaking in the best of conditions. The historic highway covers 51 miles from Kahului to Hana, spanning 600 curves and hairpin turns, sheer cliffsides and a chain of 59 bridges. In some sections the road narrows to a single lane and mere inches separate the pavement from a plunge.

A popular souvenir T-shirt proclaims “I survived the Road to Hana,” but many East Maui residents are wondering whether the road to Hana can survive the daily deluge of tourists that has only intensified with record visitor arrivals and the promotion of “hidden” spots by social media, guidebooks and tour websites and apps.

The Hana Highway Regulation Committee, started two years ago by community volunteers, says visitors are creating additional hazards by parking illegally, encroaching on roadways, ignoring safety barriers and warning signs, stopping or standing in traffic lanes to snap photos, and hindering local motorists, delivery trucks and others who depend on the road for their welfare and livelihood.

In an effort to educate what the committee refers to as “the culprits of chaos,” the group released a “Code of Conduct” with 29 pointers for the estimated 1,500 motorists who drive the road daily, and a list of recommended places to visit and others to avoid.

Concerns include trespassing on private property, unlicensed commercial operations and offensive activity at sacred sites and places used for subsistence gathering by the region’s large Native Hawaiian population.

“Tourists are stopping and going into the waterfalls that are not sanctioned county or state parks, and they don’t have any safety railing, no bathrooms or trash pickup, no parking or no lifeguard on duty,” said Shane Sinenci, a specials needs teacher at Hana High & Elementary School.

“And if they’re parking along the road, we’ve had gridlock or only one lane is open. On the hairpin turns you can’t see around them so at times we’ve had 10 to 20 cars having to back up just to get traffic flowing.”

Parking problems along Hana Highway “are by far the biggest traffic issue raised by the Hana community,” said Lt. William Hankins of the Maui Police Department’s Hana Patrol District.

“Many more visitors and local residents are making the drive to Hana and around the entire east side of Maui, stopping at the waterfalls and ponds along the way,” he said via email. “The biggest parking problem we have encountered is illegal parking near bridges and in turnouts.”

In 2017, police issued 1,837 parking citations throughout the district, which covers the portion of highway starting at mile marker 12. In the first six months of 2018, 1,516 parking citations were issued, Hankins said.

Enforcement is hampered by “the vast areas officers have to patrol, as well as repetitive violations,” he said. “Officers will cite vehicles only to return 20 to 30 minutes later to the same area and have an entirely new batch of violators.”

COMMUNITY KULEANA

Community advocate Napua Hueu, 30, is spearheading the Hana Highway Regulation Committee, an initiative of the Hana Community Association. A tall, slender Native Hawaiian mother of a 4-year-old son, Hueu was born and reared in the Keanae peninsula, which lies not quite halfway to Hana.

Her ohana has a generations-long connection to kalo farming and other traditional practices that continue today, but family members also profit from the visitor trade.

A popular stopover on the road to Hana is Aunty Sandy’s Keanae Landing Fruit Stand, named for Hueu’s grandmother and known for its hotdogs, shave ice, banana bread and coconut candy. In addition to helping with the family enterprises, Hueu is general manager of Platinum Tours of Maui, a small company that arranges personalized tours for well-heeled visitors.

“When I got behind the wheel was really when I started to put together what was going on here,” she said. “There are no rules in place, no synchronization. You have 36 commercial operators hitting the road to Hana at same time.

“I just realized what the impact of unmanaged tourism really was, and had to come to a place of implementing solutions not only for the sake of the company I run and for other small businesses but for the community.

“It’s really just kuleana.”

The committee has been collecting vehicle counts at various locations, surveying visitors and compiling other data.

Standing out in her neon-yellow safety vest and holding a clipboard, Hueu is a frequent sight at the trouble spots along Hana Highway, notably Twin Falls in Huelo and Bamboo Forest in Kailua. Tourists often mistake her for a source of visitor information, but when asked how to get to one of the “kapu” sites, Hueu smiles and replies, “I don’t know,” before advising them of current weather warnings or suggesting safer stops farther along the road.

“Some hotel concierges and tour companies are desperate to find new sights and attractions for visitors and they’re more than willing to push the boundaries to fulfill visitor expectations,” Hueu said.

Her graphite-gray Toyota Tacoma pickup truck is equipped with a P.A. system she uses to call out to visitors illegally parked or engaging in unsafe activity as she drives by. Hueu also documents unlicensed passenger motor carriers and tour operators — she said she identified 23 during her initial survey over four 4-hour sessions — and other unsanctioned commercial activity, forwarding the information to the appropriate regulatory agencies.

The Public Utilities Commission, which licenses commercial motor carriers, has only one person assigned to cover the entire island of Maui, according to agency officials. They said the problems raised by Hueu are not exclusive to Hana, noting the PUC recently responded to reports of illegal pick-ups of cruise ship passengers at Kahului Harbor.

“We have been out to Hana several times. It’s not the easiest place to do enforcement; it’s a very narrow road,” said compliance officer Gary Kobayashi.

The PUC issued four citations to unlicensed motor carriers in East Maui in the past 12 months, all of whom later filed license applications, a preferred outcome of enforcement, he said.

TRESPASSING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY

On a busy day, as many as 1,500 people visit Twin Falls, strolling through a portion of the 39 acres adjacent to the attraction that are owned by Ramana Sawyer’s family.

The family runs a farm and roadside stand, and provides free access to the waterfalls, which exempts them from legal liability should anyone get hurt swimming or jumping from the rocks.

“A lot of other places have been closed down for liability or safety reasons, so we found ourselves one of the only places visitors are being directed to,” said Sawyer, 34.

Tourists arrive at Twin Falls from sunup to sundown, he said. Orange traffic cones mark parking areas along wider sections of the highway that can accommodate up to 130 vehicles. When they’re filled, overflow cars snake up the side of the road, intruding into traffic lanes.

“No one listens to the signs and the police can’t sit out there all day long and ticket people,” Sawyer said. “The only real proven effective method for us is to have someone on the ground managing, watching and talking to people and keeping an eye on what’s working and what’s not working.

“We’re located right before the turns start so we’re sort of fortunate to be in a wide area of the highway. But when you get closer to Hana, it gets really bad. In some places people block the road and it’s just a free-for-all.”

The situation is dicier at Bamboo Forest in Kailua on land owned by East Maui Irrigation Co. The area is off-limits but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of visitors a day from parking along Hana Highway to hike to a series of waterfalls and freshwater pools.

Honeymooners Ryan and Jenna Lodge of Morristown, N.J., said they heard about Bamboo Forest from various sources, including an Uber driver, a relative, Reddit and the Shaka driving tour app.

“It’s more touristy than I expected,” said Jenna Lodge, 29, surveying the chaotic highway scene on a weekday in mid-August. “But it’s cool. We hadn’t gotten off the beaten path yet and this forced us to leave the town.”

When informed the hike traversed private property, she said: “I had no idea. Usually we try to be sensitive to local concerns. We move over and let cars pass and try to be mindful by getting a lot of information first.”

Hiker Vicky Jefson, 39, of Atlanta, said she and her husband “wanted to do the right thing” and called EMI to ask for permission but never got through to anyone.

EMI Manager Mark Vaught said the situation at Bamboo Forest “is not good” and creates a “huge hazard for motorists.”

He said the company’s “private property” signs are regularly vandalized.

“The people who are nice enough to call, we let them know it’s private property and they say, ‘It says so in the book that I read.’ The only deterrent would be posting someone there every day, and that would have to be every day because there’s a new group of people coming every day.”

CONSTANT STREAM OF TOURISTS

In 2017, Maui recorded 2.74 million visitor arrivals — a number the island is well on track to beat this year, according to data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. The average daily visitor count in July was nearly 75,000 on an island with a resident population of roughly 166,000, according to a 2017 Census Bureau estimate.

Curt Cottrell, head of the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of State Parks, described Hawaii’s natural areas as “the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the impacts of the success of the visitor industry,” he said.

The increase in commercialization of these resources is “astounding and appalling at the same time,” Cottrell said. “Social media has blown the lid off all the places that used to be known only to locals.

“Social media statewide is pernicious to any of us who manage public or private lands. If there’s something cool in any way, shape or form, people want to take a picture of themselves at this cool thing, and it becomes like the Disney movie ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ and it grows exponentially.”

DLNR manages three parks frequented by travelers on Hana Highway: Kaumahina and Puaa Kaa waysides and 122-acre Waianapanapa State Park, just outside Hana town.

“Waianapanapa used to be a quiet park for locals with cabins and a campground and an occasional day visitor and two or three vans, but now it’s a constant stream of commercial activity,” said Cottrell, who lived on Maui in the 1980s.

Tour buses have been redirected to park away from picnic areas meant for campers and a new comfort station is planned, he said.

“The toilets weren’t flushing; the leach fields were saturated from constant, constant use,” Cottrell said. “Those bathrooms were designed to service campers and occasional day users.”

Kaumahina and Puaa Kaa waysides are under similar pressure. “There’s a constant need for rubbish disposal, cleaning and toilet paper, and there’s parking congestion,” he said.

The Parks Division employs eight maintenance workers for the entire island of Maui. Waianapanapa has been staffed with a resident caretaker and a laborer, and a second laborer position has been added to help maintain the three East Maui sites, Cottrell said, but Hawaii’s parks system continues to struggle with “severe understaffing.”

“The state has made a tactical decision to go for quantity over quality, and the state parks are now suffering for it,” he said. “Hawaii is a branded visitor destination, but we’re like a meth addict: We just want more and more and more, and we’re not as pretty as we used to be.

“Do we want to have a quality visitor experience or just maximize the patronage until something snaps? It will be the local community that snaps.”

Some Hana residents are already on the verge.

Retired Department of Education employee Lehua Cosma, 58, drives to Central Maui at least twice a week for food shopping and medical appointments. She said she usually tries to leave by 6 a.m. to avoid the steady procession of rental cars and tour vans headed to Hana.

“It slows us down in getting to where we need to be,” said Cosma, who runs P&L’s Kaukau Wagon. “They don’t read the signs. They just park all over the place on the highway and in the wrong direction. It’s very disrespectful, and through the years it’s just gotten worse.”

Cosma is especially upset by the trespassers. “Us local folks, when you see ‘no trespassing,’ we respect that. We don’t go onto somebody’s property, but they don’t care.

“A lot of time at waterfalls you see them climbing over the bridge just to go swimming. Not even local people do that. It’s slippery and dangerous. Sometimes I call out to them, ‘Be careful!’ But because they pay big money to come to Maui, they want to explore.”

Sinenci, the Hana teacher, said more visitor-generated taxes should be spent on managing Maui’s tourism infrastructure instead of promotion, “so we can be good hosts.”

“No pun intended, but we don’t want to have the crappiest bathrooms in the state,” he said.

FINDING A BALANCE

The Hana Highway Regulation Committee is making headway toward its goals.

In a step to address the problem of illegal parking near bridges and in turnouts, the group worked with Maui County police and the state Department of Transportation to have delineator posts installed along the side of the highway at Waikane Falls at mile marker 19 last year. Hankins said the delineators have drastically reduced parking complaints and helped the traffic flow.

The committee also is collaborating with the Maui Visitors & Convention Bureau to develop brochures to make tourists aware of conditions and protocols on the road to Hana, and plans to create videos to be shared via airlines and the hospitality industry.

In June, the highway committee launched its Hana Pono certification program to recognize businesses that operate responsibly.

More recently, when Polynesian Adventure Tours began using taller and longer motor coaches that carry up to 25 passengers for its Hana tours, the company decided to switch to smaller vehicles after hearing residents’ concerns.

Jamie Barut, vice president of operations, said Polynesian Adventure Tours ordered four 14-passenger vans last month that should be ready to roll out in October.

“We want to be good community partners,” Barut said. “There’s a great demand for the Hana tours and not everyone wants to drive the road. We only stop at state parks; we never go into hidden or culturally sensitive places of Hana.”

Maui County officials also appear to recognize the growing pressures epitomized by the Hana concerns.

The Mayor’s Office of Economic Development and the Maui Visitors Bureau announced last week they are moving ahead to implement a 10-year Tourism Industry Strategic Plan 2017-2026, unveiled last November, that includes efforts to emphasize visitor safety and environmental awareness, and find “a sustainable balance” between a thriving tourism industry and residents’ desire for “a good place to live.”