Lāna‘i residents face a question: Should a private company or Maui County run their ferry?

LĀNA‘I CITY — As a public health nurse and mother of a toddler on Lāna‘i, Ciera Eguia knows firsthand what it takes to travel off island for health care. 

“The main concerns for us over here is the lack of services, so trying to get accessibility to the services, such as health care safely for all ages, not just kupuna, not just for handicapped, for everyone, including pregnant women because we have to leave a month prior (to giving birth),” Eguia said Monday. 

The problem isn’t just getting a flight or a ferry ride. It’s also booking a hotel or finding housing for a month, renting a car to get to appointments and dealing with flights that aren’t always on time. 

“A lot of people here have missed appointments because of the delays in the airlines,” Eguia said.

That’s why interisland transportation options are a big deal to Eguia. She was one of about 35 Pineapple Isle residents to attend the first public meeting on the Maui County Ferry Feasibility Study, a Maui County Council-initiated report that is being conducted by the county Department of Transportation as it considers whether to develop a government-run intracounty ferry service from Maui to Lāna‘i and Moloka‘i. 

The study is scheduled to be presented to the council for consideration in February, according to the county.

The $300,000 study was the brainchild of Council Member Gabe Johnson, who holds the Lāna‘i residency seat. Johnson believes that a county-owned ferry system could pursue federal funds that aren’t available to private companies to make the service affordable and feasible. 

“Affordability as far as purchasing the ferry, the county would have to initially put up the funds to purchase the vessel,” Johnson said during a break in the meeting on Monday. “However, if we want to expand a route by running to Moloka‘i we can go to the feds and ask for federal dollars for expansion.” 

The boat harbors at Mānele on Lāna‘i, Kaunakakai on Moloka‘i and Mā‘alaea and Lahaina on Maui are state facilities, and Johnson said the county could work with the state to get federal funds for harbor improvements like parking lots or other infrastructure. 

“And maybe that might help with the Lahaina rebuild, by running out of Lahaina again we could go and get those federal funds,” Johnson said. “One last thing is if we want to electrify our vessels there’s a federal grant that allows us to purchase electric ferries. So, there’s a lot of options on the table if the county owns it. Private companies don’t get to apply for those funds.”

Ferry service between Maui and Moloka‘i ended in 2016 due to declining ridership, competition from federally subsidized airlines and government regulations, the ferry operator said at the time. Moloka‘i previously had multiple airline options but is now serviced only by Mokulele Airlines.

Despite the need, the state itself said in 2018 that reviving the ferry system between Maui and Moloka‘i wasn’t commercially feasible.

Lāna‘i currently has ferry service through Expeditions Maui-Lāna‘i Passenger Ferry, a private company. Expeditions has about 35 employees, approximately 10 of whom are employee-owners — the private company lost one of its six-boat fleet in Lahaina Harbor during the Aug. 8 fire.

Expeditions Six, which as the largest vessel in the fleet can carry 146 passengers, was the boat in use on Monday for the three round-trips per day between Mānele and Mā‘alaea harbors. Two of Expeditions’ boats are much smaller and another is currently in dry dock. 

A few employees of Expeditions stopped by the meeting, but all declined to talk on the record. One employee did say during the meeting that a vessel similar to Expeditions Six would cost between $4 million and $5 million.

Johnson noted in the meeting that Expeditions has been for sale since before the pandemic and believes this study may show that the buyer should be the County of Maui. He estimated that buying Expeditions’ full fleet would cost less than $10 million.

“The model might be the way we do the buses,” Johnson said. “The bus itself is owned by Maui County, but we contract Roberts Hawaii, that big bus company. That driver on that bus is a Roberts Hawaii employee. So in this model we would say the county would own the boat and then we would have Expeditions 2.0, the captains drive the boat through a contract. We’re not the experts in boats, those guys are.”  

RESIDENTS LIKE THE CURRENT FERRY SERVICE 

Neighbor Island residents are used to traveling off island for services. Lāna‘i, for example, does not have on-island facilities where women like Eguia can give birth, a lesson she learned and lived through with the birth of her daughter. Eguia had complications with her labor when Pi‘ilani was born healthy three years ago. 

“If it weren’t for us being on O‘ahu I think I would have had to have a C-section on Maui, so because I was able to be in Kapi‘olani (Medical Center), they have better services over there,” she said. “They can handle more complicated, higher acuity patients. So, I was able to have a normal birth over there. If there was complications to my daughter on Maui we would have had to go to O‘ahu anyway.”

Eguia said the health care accessibility concerns go beyond human beings.

“We don’t have a veterinarian who is here regularly, so if your animal has an emergency we can take it on the boat, but if the dog has to stay overnight or the animal has to stay overnight, it’s hard — or come home without the animal, that’s horrible, too,” Eguia said. 

Eguia was one of the leaders of the small groups that were asked to write down ideas for discussion among the full gathering during the 90-minute meeting at the Lāna‘i Public Library on Monday. Residents raised questions about maintenance of the boats should the county take over. They wanted to make sure fares would stay affordable and asked about adding a fourth daily round-trip as well as improving amenities at both Mānele and Mā‘alaea.

Eguia was listening intently and hadn’t yet decided how she felt about a government-run ferry. She was supportive of Expeditions’ service and said if anything, she’d be interested in a car-carrying ferry.

Another Lāna‘i resident concerned about the future of the ferry was Mary Lou Kaukeano, a longtime youth and high school basketball coach on the island. She said that the loss of the friendly feelings and local vibe from Expeditions going to a government entity could be the wrong idea.

“I think there’s a lot to it,” she said while standing near her white pickup truck parked near Dole Square. “I mean Expeditions was fantastic — I mean after the Lahaina fire, a lot of those (Expeditions employees) people lost their homes, but they were able to get back up and accommodate us, which was the least of their concerns. I mean, they were fabulous to us.”

Kaukeano, who attended a preliminary meeting on the subject Monday morning, added, “I don’t know if many people know this, but after the fire there was probably not going to be any sports for Lāna‘i because of transportation, we wouldn’t have been able to get there. There was not going to be any planes for us to take. … That was my biggest concern, the kids, how was it going to affect us? … Expeditions accommodates our youth and I would hope that the county would do the same.”

COUNTY FERRY WOULD LIKELY NEED A SUBSIDY

Maui County Deputy Transportation Director Kauanoe Batangan, who ran the meeting with consultants Dan Levy and Brian Mills of DanTec Associates, said the ferry has sparked plenty of interest. 

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm, we have about 30 people in this room now participating in the first public work group and we’ve had about 1,400 responses to our online survey,” Batangan said. “I think we anticipated a lot of enthusiasm, but I don’t think we expected quite like that much.”

Batangan said that restoring ferry service to Moloka‘i is a crucial part of this study and resulting discussions.

“I think it’s an important lifeline to have options and we hear from the community members themselves how important it would be for them,” Batangan said. “So, I’ve got to echo their sentiment and say it would be crucial.”

Batangan said the concern from Lāna‘i residents on any changes to their working ferry system are being heard.

“I have heard people ask if we would be competing with Expeditions or if our proposed public ferry system might put them out of business,” Batangan said. “We hear loud and clear that the community loves Expeditions. They’ve been a great partner for the people of Lāna‘i and they do worry that we would be negatively impacting that business.”

Batangan said that the fact that Expeditions has been for sale for a few years “is a concern as well. We want to make sure that there is continued service regardless whether we are operating alongside them or if we were to create a system that replaces the current model.”

Batangan said that the county DOT has talked to federal transportation agencies “about the three subsidies available for public ferry systems. We are anticipating designing the system so that it could be used in case of emergency. Say West Maui or East Maui were to get cut off because of an accident along the Pali, that would open us up to another source of funding. I don’t have those numbers, but we have had preliminary discussions with the feds.”

Batangan acknowledged that there would have to be financial backing for the government-run ferry system. The cost for travelers was also a major part of the discussion — kupuna travel on Expeditions for $10 per one-way ticket, kama‘āina rates are $25 and general public rides are $30.

“Most public goods are not revenue generating, we would definitely need to be subsidizing these services,” Batangan said. “So, we’ve been talking with our partners in the feds and at the state (level) to try to get as much support as we can.”

Levy is the principal of DanTec Associates and he has consulted on several similar projects, including the Maui bus system.

“I think it is obviously feasible because a private company is doing it now,” Levy said of the Lāna‘i-Maui ferry. “There is no service to Moloka‘i, so that will be a question we have to work out, but obviously I think it’s feasible. It should be sustainable — I don’t have the exact answer at the moment. We’re here to find out what people want so we can put a price on it.”

Meetings on the ferry system continue this week. One was held in Lahaina on Tuesday night, and two others are scheduled from 1:30 to 3 p.m. today at the Kahului Community Center and from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Thursday at the Kualapu‘u Community Center. An online survey on the ferry study will be available through Saturday at bit.ly/mauiferry.