On a recent Saturday in Kailua, families and friends lounged on the beach, kids bodyboarded in the gentle surf and locals played Frisbee. The parking lots and side roads along this popular strip of coastline that’s hugged by radiant turquoise water were full, with cars lining up waiting for parking spots. An occasional Mustang convertible, typical of rental car fleets, could be seen cruising the beach parks.
There was a feeling that the beaches were once again approaching their tipping point as Hawaii begins to welcome back tourists. And while that will surely bring economic relief, it also has communities like Kailua bracing for the not so pleasant side effects, one of them being rogue tour buses. In an attempt to curb the nuisance, Hawaii lawmakers this year are looking to crack down on the buses that illegally take up rows of parking spots, block residential driveways and drop off scores of visitors in locations coveted by locals.
Under Senate Bill 766 the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, which regulates motor carriers, would be able to significantly increase fines for tour buses that repeatedly flout Hawaii’s laws. For the fourth and any subsequent offense in a calendar year, the commission could fine operators $5,000, up from the current maximum of $1,000.
The bill has cleared both the Senate and House of Representatives without any opposition and is poised to enter a final round of negotiation between the two chambers before it can be sent to the governor for final decision-making.
Public Utilities Commission Chairman Jay Griffin, in testimony in support of the bill, said that in some cases the current fine wasn’t discouraging illegal activity.
In 2019 up until the pandemic hit last year, the PUC issued 74 citations for tour vehicles for various violations. Griffin said the PUC suspended issuing citations in April 2020 due to the pandemic, but that enforcement is expected to resume in coming months.
The laws and entities regulating tour buses vary by location throughout the islands. But rules are particularly strict in Kailua, where the City and County of Honolulu in 2012 banned nearly all commercial activity at Kailua and Kalama beach parks. At the time, residents complained they were getting caught in gridlock weekend traffic for hours as they tried to make their way through roads clogged with tourist buses.
In the years since then, residents have reported tour buses continuing to violate the ban, unloading scores of people in front of residential driveways and relocating down the road to Waimanalo, where locals have also grown wary of the increasing visitor numbers.
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“There have been some companies that have clearly, intentionally, completely ignored the law and continue to drop off over and over again in spots that are dangerous and otherwise inappropriate,” said state Sen. Chris Lee (D, Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua), who introduced the bill.
Lee said he had already heard reports of tour buses dropping off people in spots where they are banned as tourism begins to pick up.
Gareth Sakakida, managing director of the Hawaii Transportation Association, which represents the commercial ground transportation industry, said his agency supports the bill. He said that a lot of the illegal activity seems to be from “fly by the night” operators.
“This gives the PUC a bigger hammer,” he said. “Anything that the PUC wants to help their enforcement effort, we support.”
As the tourism industry shut down last year, local residents were suddenly experiencing parks and beaches free of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who flock to Hawaii each month. Hawaii’s visitor numbers have grown markedly over the decades from just half a million in the 1960s. In 2005, 8 million people visited Hawaii. In 2019, right before the pandemic hit, this figure had surged to 10.4 million. In recent years Hawaii’s visitors have increasingly ventured out of the tourism hot spots such as Waikiki into more of the state’s residential areas, including Kailua and Waimanalo.
The sudden drop in tourism due to the pandemic has left state leaders and communities throughout the islands anxious about returning to pre-pandemic tourism. Lee said this bill is just one facet of a much larger strategy that’s needed to better balance tourism with the needs of local residents.
“I think there’s some sense of relief that there’s stability in the economy, and I think everyone wants to welcome visitors, but there is also hesitation and outright dread that it is going to go back to a situation where everything is just overrun and there are negative impacts on the community that people feel day to day that decreases quality of life,” said Lee.
The “real concern from the community that we hear is the sense that in our previous economy, before COVID, tourists were always put first, and now, coming out of COVID, what we want is to make sure concerns of residents are put first.”
