The Steamboat Pilot & Today

This was our first trip to Hawaii, and we wanted to do a little of everything — surf, visit Lanai, snorkel and dine out. This required spending a lot of time in Lahaina, the small town that serves as the commercial center of West Maui and that is about 5 miles southeast of Ka'anapali. Lahaina has a population of about 10,000 and is similar to Steamboat in that it is a resort town with a single central main drag — Front Street. Most of the restaurants and shopping are on Front, which parallels the beach.

We quickly learned that parking is hard to come by in Lahaina, particularly free parking. Traffic was always heavy on the two-lane road, and you had to be careful to dodge the surfers on their bicycle cruisers and skateboards. Eventually the trick — paid parking. For $7, you could park your car in a lot a block off Front Street from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. $10 got you parking until 10 p.m. and $20 let you keep your car there for 24 hours.

As a tourist, I had no beef with the $7 parking. It was easy and convenient and a rather simple cost o our trip. Three times we had to go into Lahaina for activities — well worth the $21 we dropped for parking, and less than the $40 we paid for parking (valet) at the Westin and $54 we paid for economy parking at DIA.

Why write about this? I think the Lahaina example could help address some of our downtown traffic woes.

Downtown needs more parking — a multi-level garage in the existing lot behind Cantina, for example. And the time may be here for paid parking. Revenues from paid parking could offset the costs of building and maintaining such a garage and the financial costs might finally encourage downtown workers to use alternative transportation to work such as the transit center.

I don't think such a plan would reduce the number of cars downtown. To the contrary, I think downtown will continue to absorb a maximum number of vehicles, even if they're paying to park. But the number of spaces available to visitors, I believe, would increase significantly and they would not mind the fees.

It seems to work in Lahaina. Of course, I'd love to hear others' thoughts.

Scott Stanford, Editor
sstanford@steamboatpilot.com

(970) 871-4221/(970) 291-9278