Visitors don't let strike tarnish trips
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By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
The first thing Asher Diem did when he got to Waikiki on vacation this week was start looking for a bus that his guidebook promised would take him anywhere he wanted to go.
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He walked all the way to Ala Moana Center and was headed back before he realized something was wrong.
Maria Pratt boards a trolley headed to Sea Life Park, along with her husband, Michael, behind her. The Pratts, from Philadelphia, are here for their 10th wedding anniversary.
"I kept looking around to catch the bus, thinking where did they all go," Diem said. "Finally, I got on a trolley and heard people talking about a strike."
Diem, a visitor from Tampa, Fla., and thousands of other O'ahu visitors are finding out that it's still possible to see most of the island even if city bus workers have been on strike for three weeks.
Whether it's by moped, trolley, scooter, tour bus, taxi or just walking, Waikiki visitors say their wanderings are mostly undeterred by the strike. All it takes is a little flexibility and a little more money than expected, they said.
"Hey, I can always call a cab or take a helicopter ride," said Vermont resident Walt Freed, who, along with his wife Marge, was renting a moped yesterday to take a trip to Hanauma Bay on their first visit to O'ahu. "Besides, you can't enjoy the beautiful weather as well inside a bus."
Australian visitor Greg Lander, who remembers being in Hawai'i during the last bus strike in 1971, said he might rent a car, use the trolley or walk more than usual.
"There's not much else you can do," he said. "I guess I just won't go as far afield as I would have done normally."
That seemed to be the prevailing shrug-it-off attitude of visitors outside the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center yesterday, where lines to board the E Noa Trolley service were long but generally moving.
Unlike workers and other O'ahu residents, visitors generally didn't have any specific place they had to be.
"I don't even know which line we're in," said a cheery Karen Nye, who won a free trip to Hawai'i from a shopping mall in Olympia, Wash., and used a free rental car for the first four days of her stay.
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When the car rental ran out, she and her husband Dick turned it in at the airport, caught a cab back to the hotel and resumed their vacation without missing a beat. "We're planning to go to Chinatown today," she said.
Naoki Aoyama, left, and his wife, Kumi, rented bikes in Waikiki to get around during the bus strike.
Businesses that provide transportation alternatives in Waikiki said they've been busier than usual, but weren't sure if that was caused by the strike.
"We've sold out all our bicycles every day for the last week," said Dan Pilurs, owner of Coconut Cruiser, which rents bicycles and motorcycles to visitors on Kalakaua Avenue. Motorcycles were less popular, Pilurs said.
At Segway Experience of Honolulu, which opened just before the strike began, rentals of the high-tech scooter were averaging about 30 a day, manager John Nguyen said. Most of those, however, were for just an hour, not enough to get too far.
"They've got a range of about 12 miles on a full charge," Nguyen said.
While no one called the strike a real hardship, several visitors said it was an irritant and an inconvenience, preventing them from seeing all the places they wanted to, and costing them more than expected sometimes.
"We were going to take the circle island bus trip around the island," said first-time visitor Michael Pratt of Philadelphia, who was celebrating his 10th wedding anniversary with wife Marsha.
Instead of paying $1.75 each for the bus ride, they ended up paying 20 times as much to see the island from a private tour bus. Then yesterday they waited more than 30 minutes to catch a private $20 trolley ride to Sea Life Park, but they had few complaints.
"You've just got to be flexible," he said.
On Friday, the Pratts leave to continue their vacation on Maui, where they know there is no regular bus service.
"We've already rented a car there," Pratt said.
Portland, Ore., resident Eileen Butler was expecting to use the bus a lot during her visit to O'ahu. After all, she rode it all the time when she lived here between 1990 and 1996.
Instead, she spent part of her vacation stuck in a traffic jam on Nimitz Highway in a rented car.
"I've never seen it so bad in the middle of the afternoon," she said. "We're probably stuck in the same area more than we would have been, but at least we're not staying in Kahala or the North Shore."
Even though visitors were making do, it didn't mean they hadn't formed some opinions about the strike in the short time they've been here.
All Nippon Airways pilot Philip Kilvington said he usually uses the city bus to visit friends or sightsee when he has a layover in Honolulu. Yesterday, he was waiting in line for a trolley to take him to Kahala Mall.
"I was last here two weeks ago and thought the strike would be over by now," Kilvington said. "I just wish they would sit down and discuss things, at least."
Pratt agreed: "I'm surprised that in a place where tourism is the No. 1 industry that they would not be able to settle this after three weeks."
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
