An influx of commercial activity has clogged the streets of the popular Lanikai community and prompted some fed-up residents to seek restrictions on one of those activities: beach weddings.

Automobiles, kayak trailers and tour buses regularly ply the area as visitors flock to its white-sand beach and breathtaking view of the Mokulua Islands. But it's the wedding parties with their oversized limousines that can barely navigate the narrow, rural-style streets that the Kailua Neighborhood Board has chosen as the first target in an effort to address the problem.

Last month, board members watched a PowerPoint presentation showing limousines double-parked and taking up half the roadway, parked in bike lanes and dropping off people while parked in the middle of the road.

Afterward, the board voted to urge the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to refrain from issuing wedding permits on public land that is adjacent to residentially zoned areas and where there are no public facilities such as off-street parking, restrooms and adequate refuse disposal.

The request — if approved by the DLNR — has the potential to affect beach weddings far beyond Lanikai, where just 76 permits were issued in the past 13 months out of 1,570 permits island-wide. The most popular O'ahu spots for beach weddings — Kahala, Wai'alae and Waimanalo — could also be affected. A total of 953 permits for those areas was issued from Aug. 1, 2008, to Sept. 15 of this year.

Donna Wong, who introduced the Kailua Neighborhood Board motion, said this request is a starting point for a larger problem that includes filming, beach equipment rental businesses and tour bus trips that clog Lanikai streets.

"The bigger picture is the commercialization of our residential communities," said Wong, chairwoman of the Kailua board's Planning, Zoning & Environment Committee. "It's bad enough you can't even go to the beach; you just name the commercial activity and there it is."

The board's request was received by the DLNR and will be channeled to the appropriate division to handle, said agency spokeswoman Deborah Ward.

But she noted that the beach wedding permits issued for Lanikai amount to just 4.8 percent of those issued islandwide. Anecdotally, the number of wedding permits issued doesn't justify traffic problems in the area according to the DLNR official who handles the permits, Ward said.

"If that's true, and he's just going by the number on the wedding permit, it's not a getting-married-wedding issue problem that's generating the traffic," she said. "It's the photography-on-the-beach traffic causing the problem."

Ward said the DLNR has received nine communications about beach weddings since the permit process was implemented in August 2008. Two favored regulating beach wedding permits, six were complaints about beach weddings at Lanikai and one was a complaint about a Wai'alae beach wedding.

SELF-REGULATION

Lanikai was urbanized in the 1950s but retains its rural characteristics, including narrow roads and no sidewalks or gutters. To address increased traffic in the area and improve safety, the city years ago turned the main roads — Mokulua and Aalapapa drives — into one-lane, one-way streets with a wide bike lane. The circular route that serves as the area's primary artery has become popular with joggers, mothers with strollers and walkers.

For decades, the isolated beach has been popular with local residents, and on weekends all the available parking in the community — especially around the beach accesses — is taken.

More recently, residents have begun to complain about weddings that bring brides and grooms to Lanikai in oversized limousines that can barely get through the streets because of their length and turning radius.

Residents, and the neighborhood board, acknowledged that not all limos have parked illegally. Some have made attempts to pull off the road, but lack of shoulder parking space makes it impossible to abide by the law.

Other activities add to the problem.

Tom Cestare, president of the Lanikai Community Association, said a water main replacement project that began in May 2007 has taken away many parking spaces and forced people to park illegally, putting pedestrians and bicyclists in harm's way.

"The whole water main project, which is getting close to two years overdue, has made a third-world road system in Lanikai," he said.

Cestare said in theory there is no parking on Lanikai streets because city laws don't allow parking on unimproved sidewalks, which is the situation in all of Lanikai. But the association doesn't want that strictly enforced because area residents would be hurt.

What the neighborhood board did is understandable, he said, but the community association prefers to take a common sense approach and has asked businesses to self-regulate.

"We recognize that people have businesses to run and we're trying to make sure we're all in this together," Cestare said, adding that the film industry has been very cooperative while the wedding business and kayak rentals don't always comply.

The $2.5 million water main project is scheduled to end Nov. 26 and has not always taken up street parking, said Moani Wright-Van Alst, Board of Water Supply spokeswoman.

The problem is also aggravated by some photography tours, said Dave Miyamoto, president of the Oahu Wedding Association, whose members are told to follow the rules. The tours take the bride and groom to several scenic sites around the island to be photographed.

"(Limousine drivers) figure they're going to be here 15 minutes, so they just park the limo there or right on the bike path," Miyamoto said. "It makes it worse for other photographers that follow the rules. What they're doing is creating problems for everybody."

MULTIPLE VIOLATORS

Richard Hagstrom, a Lanikai resident, said tree planting throughout the community has also eliminated parking.

Then there are the kayak rental businesses that were based out of Kailua Beach Park until the city limited operations there.

"No, it's more than just the wedding people," Hagstrom said. "The biggest violators are the kayakers."

Kayak businesses drop off the equipment for renters and return later in the day to pick them up, and that can take a lot of time when the trailers are partially blocking the road or parked in the bike path, he said.

While the number of wedding permits for Lanikai in the past 13 months totals just 76, hundreds more permits are issued that allow photography and video at dozens of approved sites, including Lanikai. It's unclear how many of those are actually used in Lanikai.

The state Hawaii Film Office annually issues about 1,000 permits statewide, of which 400 are for wedding photography services at about 90 accessible locations in the islands. The other 600 are for film or photography at a wide range of locations not considered accessible, said Kevin Inouye, with the film office. The film office permit for Lanikai is good only for weekdays, Inouye said.

Many people think if they get a wedding permit from the DLNR, they are covered for photography and video, but that's not true, said Donne Dawson, state film commissioner. A separate permit is needed to photograph, film or video on land under state jurisdiction, like the beach or shoreline.

POLICE ENFORCEMENT

The two most sought-after O'ahu spots for beach weddings are Kahala with 467 permits in the past 13 months, and Wai'alae with 221 permits.

Wai'alae-Kahala has been relatively quiet lately as far as wedding complaints are concerned but they do flare up, said Richard Turbin, chairman of the Wai'alae-Kahala Neighborhood Board. The board has never taken a stance against beach weddings, Turbin said.

"We understand that the beaches should be available for weddings," he said. "That is a wonderful attraction that Hawai'i has, but the commercial wedding organizations need to be sensitive to residents' concerns and traffic problems."

Linda Ure, a Kailua board member, voted against the board's motion, saying the issue was parking enforcement, not wedding permits. Police should increase enforcement, Ure said, adding that the board should separately address wedding permits and parking problems. Ure cited Kahala, which dealt with its traffic problems due to weddings by asking for more police citations.

"HPD should be issuing citations to whoever parks illegally in bike lanes, unimproved sidewalks or in front of people's driveways," she said. "(Wai'alae-Kahala) advocated for better enforcement, and they got it. Kailua should do basically the same."