Working with, and on behalf of, the Community of East Maui; Advocating for more responsible tourism management. Encouraging responsive government intervention, and visitor industry collaboration.

We promote the most pertinent Hana Hwy. traveler information as an effort to improve road safety.

ORGANIZATION INITIATIVES

Hana Highway Regulation was formed by East Maui residents in 2016 as a means to expedite highway data collection and stakeholder input processes. This was done to help local government and visitor industry leaders more efficiently address tourism impacts that have dramatically amplified over the last decade. Much of the rhetoric behind the ongoing lack of resolution for this problem was based on the inability to identify community consensus which led the Hana Highway Regulation to self-initiate, and self-fund, a tour community meetings from 2016-2020. These comment opportunities were held in small towns from Paia to Hana, and through to Kula, which is considered to be the entire Road to Hana activity route. We have conducted traffic surveys, interviews with lineal descendants and local residents, visitor questionnaires and commercial operator compliance reviews. The information we collected over the last eight years has provided us with a depth of comprehension on the core problems and potential solutions which we have articulated by way of summary reports, presentations and proposals for the community, commercial operators, local government and visitor industry.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS ALONG THE ROAD TO HANA

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE HANA HIGHWAY (EAST MAUI)

Hana Highway along the Eastern edge of Maui has become internationally renowned for the access it provides to this scenic and wondrous place. In recognition of this, President Bill Clinton designated Hana Highway as Hana Millenium Legacy Trail in 2000 and in 2001 listed on the National Register of Historical Places. Not coincidentally, the drama evidenced by the landscape also creates the greatest challenges for maintaining a reliable roadway. This coastline is best characterized by the Ko’olau Mountains and Haleakala Volcano. Hana Highway clings to the side of steep slopes, traverses broad coastal terraces and spans deep valleys leading to the sea. Prone to landsliding, Hana Highway undergoes continual repairs. With virtually no detours available, the highway is also a lifeline to communities and businesses. The region of East Maui is home to clusters of aboriginal Hawaiian villages with generational tenants who continue to exercise their culture that relies on natural resources ranging from the mountain to the sea. This subsistence lifestyle, and their ability to practice it, is the core of their community’s health and well-being.

NEED FOR VISITOR MANAGEMENT

Increased pressures which are complicating our ability to maintain reliable access has prompted this initiative and civil volunteer organization. Residents actively survey the highway to support development of a regionally curated visitor management plan. The Hana Highway Regulation focuses on the entire North to South route, towns of Paia to Hana and through to Kula.

In 2017, we established the Hana Highway code of conduct and promoted these critical information points and safety guidelines through a series of press tours and embarking on visitor industry outreach with resorts, rental car companies and tour operators. Through our research, advocacy and work with the public utilities commission, we did substantially decrease the amount of unlicensed tour operators which were contributing to a once thriving black market offering of Road to Hana tours without the adequate permits and licenses to be conducting such activities. Our web surveillance committee monitors social media channels for content that offends community policy, including photos or videos that influence trespassing on private property and the exploitation or monetization of cultural sites. These volunteers provide communication support, making formal inquiry with the content curator, requesting that the content be removed. We have engaged with large platforms, social media influencers and corporate creators - asking they remove media pieces that entice visitors to seek out dangerous locations that culprit emergency rescue needs. This work to clean up the web of misleading information and content is done as an effort to reduce visitor injuries and fatalities. 

Hana Highway Regulation is currently working to garner Destination Management Action Plan support from Maui Visitor and Convention Bureau and Hawaii Tourism Authority in order to implement our Hana Highway Information project (highway personnel service concept) which has proven a 96% efficacy rate in preventing illegal parking and trespassing on private property which subsequently decreases emergency rescue needs, injuries and fatalities. Without such a service, traffic hazards and delays are inflicted upon our community and first responders that rely on this rural, often one lane highway. Without such a service, visitor are left with no reliable on-site information and therefore subjected to risk and danger. We are rallying for the visitor industry to back real time, on the ground information exchange solutions that have proven outcomes of effectiveness. We cannot rely on failed mechanisms of the past that are solely based on promotional marketing techniques. We consider visitor messaging alone to be unacceptably ineffective in the scope of "improving road safety for residents and visitors" which was outlined as an objective by the State of Hawaii Senate and House of Representatives through House Concurrent Resolution. No. 29, passed in the 2022 legislative session, naming Hana Highway Regulation as a stakeholder that the Department of Transportation is encouraged to work with to develop a holistic management plan for Hana Highway. 

Communities across Hawai‘i need to take the initiative of organizing and gathering their own impact and capacity data. The generational residents whose communities are enduring visitor impacts should be at the helm of destination management decisions for their areas. Only place-specific intelligence is capable of producing the most effective solutions possible. 

Po Box 81511 Haiku, HI 96708 Admin@HanaHighwayRegulation.com