Haleakala park aims to cut road congestion
By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Maui Bureau
Faced with increasing visitor traffic in the form of rental cars, buses and bicycle tours, Haleakala National Park is launching a $325,000 study to come up with alternative transportation ideas aimed at easing the congestion.
An informational workshop, the first public meeting for the two-year project, will take place at 6 p.m. today at the Mayor Hannibal Tavares Community Center in Pukalani.
Attendance is approaching 2 million a year at Maui's national park, a 30,183-acre spread that extends from the 10,000-foot summit of Haleakala to the ocean at Kipahulu and Ka'apahu.
The focus of the U.S. Department of Transportation-financed study will be the summit district, where visitor facilities have become crowded at sunrise and throughout the morning, keeping park rangers busy with traffic control.
Superintendent Don Reeser said the visitor count is expected to continue its upward trend, with more cars, buses and bikes climbing Crater Road to squeeze into a parking lot where the demand for spaces often exceeds the supply. Downhill bicycle tours alone take up a great deal of parking lot space, with more than 75,000 riders annually.
Reeser said there are no plans to expand parking at the summit.
"Where do you stop?" he said, noting that the summit is home to silversword plants and Hawaiian dark-rumped petrels, among other rare wildlife.
"The feeling is: Someplace you have to draw the line."
Officials at national parks across the country are facing the same challenge of balancing access while preserving the natural resources people come to see in the first place.
Nationally, the Park Service is moving to create public transit systems in lieu of parking lots. Alternative-fuel transportation systems are popping up from Acadia National Park in Maine to Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park.
Reeser said preliminary ideas for Haleakala include creating a shuttle and staging/parking area outside the park farther down Crater Road. Tourists could park their cars at a designated lot and catch a shuttle up the mountain, while learning about the park and its natural features on the way.
Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island also is looking at ways to deal with visitor traffic from the increase in busloads of tourists from cruise ships calling at Hilo and others drawn to the continuing eruption of Kilauea.
Officials are analyzing the data from portions of a study similar to the one to be conducted at Haleakala, according to park ranger Mardie Lane.
The draft data indicate that parking areas on Crater Rim Drive — including Sulphur Banks, Steam Vents, Kilauea Picnic Area, Southwest Rift and Thurston Lava Tube — as well as the Mauna Ulu parking area on Chain of Craters Road are at or over capacity for at least a portion of the day.
Survey data also indicate that the end of Chain of Craters Road is approaching the maximum number of cars that visitors consider acceptable, mainly because of the long walk from parking to the lava-flow trail.
The report suggests that using alternative forms of transportation to bring visitors to the end of Chain of Craters Road could improve the visitor experience.
On the other hand, 86 percent of visitors surveyed reported no problems and only 9 percent reported that lack of parking was a problem. What's more, visitors generally do not support the idea of a shuttle bus service in the park, according to the survey.
At Haleakala, officials hope to develop a final environmental assessment by the fall of 2005.
Those unable to attend the meeting today may be send comments to Haleakala Transportation Management Plan, Haleakala National Park, P.O. Box 369, Makawao, HI 96768; or leave a recorded comment at (808) 572-4400; or e-mail comments to Frank Baublits, facilities manager, at frank_baublits@nps.gov. Information about Haleakala National Park is available on the park's Web site at www.nps.gov/hale.
