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  Edition # 102  
San Francisco, 07-14-2013

Hawaii: Public Access to the Beaches
Figure [1]: Michael is probably one of the oldest surfers at the beach of Honolulu.

Angelika Even on Hawaii, not everything is like it should be in paradise. Cluttering the islands with new construction projects is an ongoing problem. The locals are understandably not happy that it's mostly wealthy individuals buying real estate that they then only use a few times a year as vacation homes. Those houses often have gigantic footprints and are located in close vicinity to the beach, but are uninhabited most of the time.

For this reason, I'm happy that the State of Hawaii passed legislation back in the year 1974 to ensure that all Hawaiian beaches must be accessible by the public.

Figure [2]: Public access trail to a beach on Oahu.

No hotel or property owner can declare a beach to be his private property. In Kailua and Lanikai, where we're usually staying when we're on Oahu, there are usually inconspicuous sandy trails leading from the main road to the beach, passing between privately owned land. A sign at the trail head points out that there is public beach access. People heading for the beach of course then park their cars all over the place next to these trail heads, which the home owners find somewhat annoying, especially when it's tourists parking there. Many property owners try to limit access to the beach for this reason. Some get the nearby streets converted to private roads, on which they prohibit non-residents from parking. That's the end of peaceful Aloha!

But on public streets, which you can discern by the lack of "Private Road" signs, even tourists are allowed to park their cars in good concience. This includes even the nicely trimmed grassy areas in front of fenced-in properties, unless there are official signs saying otherwise.

Greetings from heavily regulated paradise:

Angelika & Michael

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Latest update: 13-Jun-2014