Lee Cataluna: Moving the problem doesn’t solve it

The end of the road on the north shore of Kauai is now Hanalei, not Haena. Since the devastating April flood, the road into Wai­niha has been closed to all but those who live there, and residents can drive in and out only in scheduled convoys.

Hard to imagine there could be an upside to the widespread damage and the limitations that destruction has brought, but some residents are enjoying the new normal. It reminds them of the old normal. The north shore is quiet for the first time in decades. Kids can ride their bikes to the beach without parents worrying. Hanalei shops and restaurants are bustling because now it’s the place to stop, not just to drive through. There are lines out the door and down the steps for restaurant tables at lunchtime. Tourists are going where they’re supposed to go, not rambling off-road anywhere they want.

On Maui the National Park Service has had to impose limits on the number of people crowding the summit of Haleakala to see the sunrise. Reservations can be booked online 60 days in advance. However, the problem of tourists trampling over undeveloped sections of overdeveloped Maui is growing in Kipahulu, a place so far from resort areas that it’s hard to imagine tourists would venture there. It wasn’t long ago that no local resident would journey that far past Hana without four-wheel drive and canteens of water. Every wilderness and back road of Maui is now fair game. Even the serene lavender farm upcountry has to have parking lot attendants, which shows how good business is, I guess, but seems incongruous with the idea of lavender being calming and farms being low-key.

Even the Big Island of Hawaii, despite its vastness, can feel overcrowded. Traffic jams into and out of Hilo have become a regular thing.

It’s been discussed before without any suggestions for a solution, but social media clearly entices too many tourists to seek remote, often dangerous places. Brochures warning of the dangers of off-road, back- country gallivanting don’t work. Neither do educational videos, cautionary tales on Yelp or real-life scary stories of injury and death that get picked up by national news media.

Of course, this is not a problem unique to Hawaii. It’s happening all around the world. Too many tourists tromping around Stonehenge. Too many tourists taking selfies on Lombard Street. Too many tourists walking the Great Wall.

But Hawaii is different because it’s small. Small places start to feel crowded very quickly. And too many tourists crowding Hawaii’s natural resources isn’t solved by management. The heart of the problem is too many tourists in an island-state that cannot, by it’s very nature, accommodate everyone at the same time.

The thing is, though, that Hawaii’s tentative approach to over-tourism and creeping Airbnb-ism is starting to look as ineffective as its approach to the homeless problem. Limit access to one place and the problem just moves someplace else. So now we have both affluent visitors and hard-core homeless right where we don’t want them.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.