City urging e-bike riders to ‘please stop’ riding in golf courses

HONOLULU(KHON2) — People tearing up putting greens at golf courses is becoming a problem. According to reports at least half a dozen courses are seeing an uptick in incidents.

“It’s alarming that it’s every single night,” Doug Brown said.

Brown is the superintendent at Coral Creek Golf Course in Ewa Beach.

“This actually happened last night,” he explained pointing to a large oval shaped hole. “We found it this morning. I came in to one of my workers that say, ‘Hey, we got e bike damage again.”

In the three months he’s been at the course, he said he’s had to deal with damaged greens at least six or seven times. They even caught someone riding an e-bike on the course while KHON2 was at the course.

“One of my co-workers was out on number 7,” Brown explained. “We were just at on the green, showing you the damage, and he saw a kid get his bike stuck and he just dumped the bike.”

Brown said it’s frustrating.

“It’s something that shouldn’t be at a golf course,” he added. “It’s a respect thing, I mean.I don’t mind if people are out here just walking around, they shouldn’t be, but it’s okay in my eyes. But to be out here vandalizing it. I would hope they have something better to do.”

He said they are taking steps to block open paths leading to the course.

“I would say we probably cut down 15 to 20 trees.Smaller trees just to disrupt and mitigate the problem and keep those kids from doing this,” he explained.

Mililani and Waikele Golf Course are facing similar problems. And according to Ian Scheuring, a spokespers for the City, said Ewa Villages Golf Course, Ted Makalena Golf Course and Kahuku Golf Course are also dealing with people causing damage riding e-bikes on their putting greens.

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“Anytime a golf course or a putting green is damaged by by a vandal riding on an e-bike on our golf courses, that’s an added expense that the taxpayer ends up having to pay to repair these golf courses to get them back to playing condition,” Scheuring said. “We’re asking all riders, please stop vandalizing city property. Property used by the people to play golf to recreate in our city parks. Please stop damaging them with e-bikes.”