Most of a shared-use path on Date Street is smooth, a part of Honolulu’s touted but incomplete “Lei of Parks” concept that connects urban parks for bikers and walkers. But underground roots have created steep bumps on the path mauka of the Ala Wai Golf Course that send riders on a bouncy ride.
Ciara Peña lives in the Nuʻuanu-Punchbowl neighborhood and gets around with her bike. She’s gotten used to the bumps on the Date Street path, she said. But when she rode over them about a year ago, an açaí bowl flew out of her basket and “went everywhere,” she said. “It was pretty embarrassing.”
In the most rugged section — where the bumps make bike rides feel more like bull rides — riders swerve off the pavement entirely, carving out a new path in the dirt.
Rebus Bonning was biking back to Mōʻiliʻili after a morning surfing session at Diamond Head when he rumbled over the roots. “It’s terrible to ride your bike over,” said Bonning, a staff member at the nearby ʻIolani School. “I swerve off into the little dirt path that’s on the side. But it’s pretty muddy right now after the rain.”
Bonning and Peña are two of about a thousand people who use the path daily, either on bike or foot, according to city data. Path users began to notice the cracks in about 2018…