Many at UH learn art of finding parking

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

It's 6:45 a.m. Friday and Shanelle Piano, a 21-year-old junior in microbiology at the University of Hawai'i, has just finished an hour's nap in the back seat of her Mazda MPV parked on O'ahu Avenue and applied her makeup before heading to her first class at 7:30 a.m.

On weekdays, O'ahu Avenue is lined with cars, mostly belonging to students at the University of Hawai'i. Those who get there early usually can find a space. Others wind up cruising other Manoa streets and hoping for a miracle. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

It's all part of the weekday drama that brings as many as 10,000 cars into the area in the morning, filling up the 2,939-space parking structure, the 5,447 spaces on campus, and sending the leftovers cruising Manoa neighborhoods hoping for a miracle.

While the problem isn't new, it resurfaces with intensity each fall as classes begin. Students stress out, streets clog and neighborhood residents fume. While UH officials admit the problem will never be solved completely, they're chipping away at it with the help of city agencies, police and the community.

Relief has come in the form of several measures instituted in the last few years, including improvements to city bus service and expanded campus shuttles. And a new parking garage is planned next to the Center for Hawaiian Studies that will provide space for more than 200 cars.

When Malie Luafalealo, a 21-year-old senior in journalism, can't find room in the $3-a-day parking structure before afternoon classes, she'll drive up University Avenue to the area around College Hill and settle down to wait as long as half an hour for someone to leave.

"I wait for students to get out of class and just follow them," she said.

The parking structure helps, but often fills up quickly, which might frustrate those who shelled out $134 for a semester pass. In addition, there are only 2,000 passes available to students, on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The City Department of Transportation Services is testing marked parking stalls on the 2300 block of Armstrong Street "and it's already reducing the aggravation," said Tom Heinrich, chairman of the Manoa Neighborhood Board. Marked stalls mean fewer cars squeezed along the street and better visibility, he said.

In the four years since the City Council threatened to make street parking in Manoa illegal except for those with special "resident" permits, a committee of neighborhood people, UH personnel, HPD officers, city traffic experts and others have come up with strategies to curb conflicts and problems.

To help get cars off the road, city express buses from six outlying areas now arrive every 10 minutes at Sinclair Circle in front of Bachman Hall, ferrying about 9,500 students a week to the Manoa campus. There are 27 express buses unloading up to 65 people per trip from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. each weekday, according to Paul Steffens, chief of the city's public transit division.

Several years ago, the university instituted the Rainbow Shuttle and has just beefed up its schedule to include stops every 15 or 20 minutes at areas such as Varsity Theater and the Japanese Cultural Center in Mo'ili'il'i and the faculty housing area farther up the valley where parking is more plentiful.

William Toyama avoids parking headaches by getting to UH by bicycle. Toyama, 71, is a student in the senior citizens visitor program. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

"We have about 30 kids in the structure, but we have 200 stalls, so we could have a lot more students parking here," she said.

A university task force is also looking at providing more locked bicycle racks on campus; exploring ways to increase distance-learning choices and create areas away from campus where students can go to access "tele-studying."

But even more could be done right away by the university to ease the situation, suggests 39-year-old student Kanani Fung, who has to work out a daily strategy to make sure her three daughters get themselves off to school as she heads out her Kailua door to get to her Manoa classes on time.

"Why not a shuttle at Windward Community College going across to Manoa?" she said. "We could park there and pay for the shuttle. They could do that with all the colleges. Also why not one picking up at Daiei with that big parking lot?"

Fung, who has returned to school to get her bachelor's and master's degrees in teaching, counts on her 17-year-old daughter Kahlene to drop off the two younger ones at school in Kailua. They eat breakfast at school because there's no time at home.

"I shower at night so I can jump up, get my clothes on and get to school," Fung said. "It's terrible. They should have a parking facility for everyone ... And rainy days are what I dread. If I'm not at Castle Junction by 6:30 I'm dead."

For Bryan Peralta, 23, a part-time teacher at Pu'uhale Elementary who attends classes Tuesday and Thursday in advanced computer training, attending Manoa means a game of cat and mouse.

"I spend a lot of time cruising and looking," said Peralta. First it's a cruise through the parking structure at 8 a.m. to see if he'll get lucky. If not, it's a slow crawl through the neighborhood that can take half an hour. But he shrugs philosophically: "You just gotta look."

From winding, tree-shaded Liloa Rise to the wider sweep of O'ahu Avenue, from the broad expanse of McKinley Street to the top of steep Damon and Lanihuli, he passes cars squeezed in between the city "No Parking" signs. On a few lawns, residents have staked their own signs: "Do Not Block Driveway." To make matters worse, the Honolulu Police Department has recently decided to assign an officer full-time just to patrol the area and give citations — and tow when necessary.

Resident Marie Soon has seen cars get tickets along her own block of McKinley Street and she knows how students struggle. Soon graduated in marketing this year from UH, and always walked to school from her home, even though student friends would occasionally beg to park on the Soon family lawn. That rarely lasted long.

"Have you tried that hill?" she asks, pointing down the deceptively steep Damon Street. "My friends asked to park but that only lasted one day. It was always my exercise."

Exercise is exactly what students get when they arrive late. Twenty-three-year-old graduate student Leah Rothbaum wiped beads of sweat from her forehead Thursday afternoon as she finished the half-hour trudge from campus to her car six blocks away. When she doesn't leave herself enough time to hunt for parking she's had to sprint down the road to class to get there in time.

She prefers the bus. Her $27-a-month bus pass is cheaper than daily parking in the structure, she said, and the express bus gets her to Manoa from Kailua in an hour. "If the timing is right, it's a straight shot," she said.

As the student day winds down, Kevin Leonida, 28, has also hiked up into Manoa from campus. He settles into the cab of his over-sized vehicle and turns on the air-conditioning. Yes, he hates to pay for parking and, yes, he hates the walk back to his car, he said, but it's all worth it, because at the end of those long, sweaty days he'll have a degree in business administration.

"I want to be able to get a better job," he said, and drove away.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.