Kauai Bus routes, fares, and schedules explained for island riders

Kauai Bus runs fixed-route service and door-to-door paratransit from Hanalei to Kekaha, but Sunday is off the map, so planning around the weekday and Saturday schedule is part of riding here.

How the routes line up with real trips

The route map makes the system easier to use than it first looks. Route 30 serves Kōloa, Route 60 serves Kapahi, and Route 70 serves Līhue. The county also groups the island into longer corridors: Routes 100 and 200 cover the Kekaha-Līhue run, Routes 400 and 500 cover Hanalei-Līhue, Routes 800 through 850 cover Wailua-Līhue, and Routes 900 through 950 cover Waimea-Anahola.

In practice, Līhue is the place where a lot of those cross-island decisions land, while west side riders use the Kekaha-Līhue corridor and north shore riders rely on the Hanalei-Līhue routes. The system serves a rural community, and the county’s FY 2023 report recorded 588,960 fixed-route trips from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2023, up 23% from the year before.

What it costs to ride

The fare table is straightforward once you separate Mainline service from Shuttle service. Mainline rides cost $2.00 per trip, while Shuttle rides cost $0.50. Riders with an ADA Reduced Fare ID card, seniors 65 and older, and youth ages 7 to 18 pay half-price, which brings Mainline down to $1.00 and Shuttle to $0.25. Children 6 and under ride free when they are with a paying passenger.

Passes follow the same split. A one-day pass costs $5 general or $2.50 discounted. A monthly pass costs $50 general or $25 discounted. An annual pass costs $550 general or $275 discounted. Bus passes are for public fixed-route service only, so they do not work on paratransit.

That fare structure traces back to a county ordinance approved in October 2019 and effective January 1, 2020. That policy change introduced one-day passes, set the 50% discount for eligible riders, and raised fixed-route and paratransit fares to help keep pace with higher operating costs.

Where to buy passes and how to pay now

The county’s payment system changed again in January 2025 when it launched a mobile ticketing app powered by Masabi. Riders can use the app to buy single-ride tickets, day passes, monthly passes, and annual passes from a phone, and the app works on Mainline, Shuttle, and Paratransit routes. Tickets can be purchased ahead of time for later use, but tickets that are bought and never activated expire after 180 days.

An activated ticket stays active for 15 minutes, and a valid activated Mainline ticket can be used as a transfer on a Mainline or Shuttle route within 90 minutes. The county recorded $76,997 in bus fares through the electronic fare system and cut down on cash handling.

The app also sits on top of a rider base that was already moving toward digital tools. The county recorded more than 6,100 downloads of the rider app by current and potential Kauai Bus riders during calendar year 2022. For riders who still prefer a physical purchase, passes are sold at Big Save stores in Hanalei, Kapaa, Kōloa, Eleele, and Waimea, plus Times Supermarket in Līhue. Annual passes are sold only at the Kauai Bus Office.

Paratransit is the right tool for door-to-door trips

Paratransit is not a backup version of the fixed-route system. It is the county’s door-to-door service, built for riders who need that kind of access, including elderly riders and people with disabilities. If your trip is a medical appointment or another outing where getting to a stop is the problem, paratransit is the service meant for that job.

The county has also pushed paratransit into the same digital ecosystem as the rest of the bus system. The mobile app can be used on Paratransit routes, and the FY 2023 annual report recorded the web portal growing from 24 registered riders at the start of that fiscal year to 99 by the end of it.

Where riders get tripped up

The biggest surprise is still Sunday. Service reductions tied to staffing constraints led the county to cut Sunday bus service in August 2023, and the FY 2025 annual report recorded 51 full-time drivers as of June 1, 2025, the highest number since that reduction. Sunday service has not been restored.

Another common mistake is assuming every fare product works everywhere. Bus passes do not apply to paratransit, so riders heading to a door-to-door medical trip need to plan payment differently from someone boarding a fixed-route bus in Līhue or Kōloa. Discounted fares also depend on the right qualifying ID or age group, so riders using the reduced-price structure should have that proof ready.