Passenger Trains > Does Hawaii's LK&P Have A Questionable Future?

A friend of mine recently rode Hawaii's Lahaina Kaanapali & Pacific tourist railroad and filed the following trip report. It doesn't appear that it's all good news.

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My wife and I had the opportunity to ride the Lahaina, Kaanapali, and Pacific Railroad [LKP] yesterday. Our impression was that the LKP was an operation that did not know where it was going, and was just holding on.

Currently there are four departures per day, Monday through Friday only. We arrived at our hotel in Lahaina, Maui, Wednesday night after traveling for 23 hours. Our plan was that Thursday would be a rest and recovery day, and we would ride the LKP on Friday. However, we had a surprising amount of energy on Thursday, so we walked to the Lahaina station to take the 2:30 round-trip, the last round-trip from the south end. We were informed that the steam locomotive had had a mechanical problem, and there would be no more operations on Thursday. The gift shop / station person said she would call my cell the following morning after she got to the station to let me know if the train was operating on Friday. (I did not stick around to find out how she would handle the group of 20 that was due.)
Friday we were up early, and after a very good crepe breakfast, and a stroll through a local artist fair underneath a huge Banyan tree, decided that we should start the three-quarter mile walk to the station. Close to 10 o’clock, not having received a call, we called the LKP’s number and left a message on the answering machine. A bit later, we tried again with the same results. Finally almost as we were arriving at the station, we received a call back saying train would run today, but with a diesel. We bought a one-way ticket to Kaanapali, which entitled us to ride to the north end of the line and get off at the intermediate station of Kaanapali. At Kaanapali, we planned to walk the beach and take the local public transit back to our hotel.

Shortly before 11:00 am, the ex–Oahu Railway Plymouth arrived with four cars in tow. The Plymouth cut off from its train and was turned on the turntable at the end of track. The scheduled departure of 11:05 am was not met as passengers from the north end were buying shave ice and bottled water from the small concession stand that opened on arrival. But eventually we departed. On the Lahaina end the railroad is hemmed in by a light industrial area. The railroad proceeds along the highway with highway signs limiting clearance. The railroad then climbs away into former sugarcane fields now being converted into golf courses. I looked for a route into the curved trestle for a possible photograph later, but didn’t see any unless I was permitted onto the golf course.

Track was adequate, for the 6 mph average speed, but not for much more. The open-air equipment was pleasant. The wooden seats would have been uncomfortable for a much longer ride. There was some narration, and some recorded music, but neither added much to the trip.

At the north end the train pulled past the station, stopped, the locomotives cut off, ran around the wye, and recoupled. The wye was just beyond shops and to locomotives and additional passenger cars were visible, but no one was seen working on the locomotives. The train pulled into the station where passengers disembarked and embarked. A little bit late, the train proceeded on its second southbound run of the day. A few minutes later the train arrived at the Kaanapali station where Phyllis and I and four others got off, and none got on. The station was unmanned. It appeared to be set up so that picnics could be held there. There was an interesting diorama on the history of the LKP. The station was a significant walk from the beach and resort hotels.

Ridership is way down from the boom years of Japanese tourism in the 80’s when the LKP was the tourist line with the highest patronage in the US. Then patronage was in the hundreds of thousands. According to FRA data patronage in 2012 was under 50,000.

Most sources give the mileage of the LKP as 6 miles in length. The 2012 FRA statistics give passenger miles per passenger as 12. But I can find no evidence that the railroad is longer than approximately 4.5 miles. The MapQuest distance on the parallel highway between the two and stations is barely over 4 miles.

Four people worked on the train, two in the cab, a conductor, and a ticket collector. FRA data indicated 15,000 employee hours in 2012, the equivalent of 7 1/2 full-time employees. Even with the round-trip fare of close to $24, it appears unlikely that this railroad can support the required capital investment for long-term continued operation.
Among the noise of the other attractions in this resort area it is difficult to get any information about the LKP unless you know it’s there. Its brochures can not be found in the racks. The vendors who sell the submarine, parasailing, helicopter rides do not mention the LKP.

The many changes in ownership cannot have helped, from Kyle, to States Rail, but not to RailAmerica. It may have had a couple of owners since then.

My advice is if you are in the area, ride it if you can. It may not be around if you wait too long.

Yeah, I measured the entire line from turntable to north end of wye track and it is exactly 4.50 miles. Seems they are slipping in an extra 1.5 miles in there. Very strange indeed.

Have you figured in the mileage from the furthest yard stub track to the furthest wye stub?

I had an opportunity to ride the line in 1996 and then 2006 as well. In the 10 years things had noticeably changed.

To begin, the pineapple fields it went through had turned into housing making the line less scenic. Additionally, there was live music on board in 1996 and in 2006 all that was gone. There were fewer personnel as your friend mentioned as well.

I think the railroad has cut back on things, but people don't really want to travel through subdivisions either. Both of these must be hurting the bottom line.

Daniel Quiat