HALEAKALA NATIONAL PARK — The "safety stand-down" on commercial downhill bicycle tours at Haleakala National Park will continue until all the impacts of bike tours can be analyzed, the National Park Service announced Tuesday.

But Haleakala park superintendent Marilyn Parris said that although tour operators still cannot have their customers ride bikes in the park, companies that do not already have permits to conduct vehicle tours in the park will be granted permits by next week.

That will allow them to take their customers into the park for a vehicle tour before beginning bike rides outside the park.

Parris called a meeting Tuesday with bike tour companies to discuss her decision to continue the stand-down until further studies — beyond safety issues — are done. Parris' decision comes about six months after she initially ordered a suspension of bike tours in the park in the wake of a fatal crash in September involving a tour bicyclist. The fatality was the second in a year.

Bike tour operators were worried they would not be able to operate in the park again. They insisted their tours are safe.

"They have been been cooperative throughout this," Parris acknowledged. "This is their business, I understand that. They understand the decision, why it was made. ... Now they can bring in their clients into the park and start their tours outside."

Tour operators said they were pleased with Parris' decision.

"I think today was a very positive day. It was a long wait for us to get back into the park with our vans. ... We will continue to work closely with the park to make everything safe as we possibly can," said Richard Goodenough, president of Maui Downhill.

"There has been so much negative press about the tours. I see this tilting a lot more toward safety than it has ever been before. It's all positive for the community, our guests and my company. We will continue to work in that direction. We will continue to make this a win-win for everybody," he added.

Phil Feliciano, owner of Cruiser Phil's Volcano Riders, said: "I'm very pleased they finally made a decision. It feels like a big burden has been lifted off of us. We can formulate our future."

Feliciano said his company can have a "seamless" operation now that he can use his own vans in the park instead of continuing to use contract tour companies. That drove up costs. Only two of the seven downhill bicycle companies at the park had vehicle tour permits there.

A park service team studying the issue since the Oct. 10 suspension of bike tours made recommendations that went beyond safety and included economic factors, such as decreasing tour sizes and eliminating third-party bookings for tours. Parris said she expects it will take from a year to a year and a half to finalize a commercial services policy for the park, along with an environmental impact statement.

Parris noted that noncommercial bike riders have continued to ride in the park during the stand-down, without any accidents.

Parris said bike tours won't operate as they had in the past, but she left open the possibility of a "different kind of bike tours."