Hawaii has seen several stops and starts — and a few flat-out fumbles — in the rollout of a series of coronavirus-related travel rules, which all started with a statewide general lockdown in March.

Now, following last month’s choppy start of the state’s pre-travel testing program, and a subsequent smoothing of some rough edges, Hawaii’s multi-layered approach to safe travel amid the pandemic is bringing a gradual return of trans-Pacific passengers, along with less-confusing interisland trips.

A welcome addition to the lineup to facilitate travel is a new mobile testing container now situated near Terminal 2 at Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. Once certified, it will serve as a second post-arrival testing option — in addition to the pre-travel testing program that allows trans-Pacific travelers who test negative within 72 hours to bypass a 14-day quarantine.

When up and running — very soon, we expect — this laboratory will be able to daily crank through some 10,000 polymerase chain reaction tests, the gold-standard COVID-19 diagnostic test. Gov. David Ige said this week that such a pace — double the state’s current testing capacity — holds promise to become a “game-changer,” in the effort to more fully revive the state’s tourism sector. Let’s hope he’s right.

With a total turnaround time of three to six hours for the entire process — registration to receipt of test results — a glitch-free lab operation does seem capable of significantly stepping up an orderly flow of air-travel traffic. That’s welcome news for both trans-Pacific arrivals as well as Oahu residents and visitors looking for an option to avoiding mandatory quarantine for interisland travel.

Accessible testing, along with strict adherence to public health directives, such as mask-wearing and physical-distancing, are key to seeing much-needed business rebound throughout the islands.

Funding for the lab is being drawn from federal CARES Act money, including $4 million for the facility itself, and additional funds going toward test kits and lab operations, for a total of about $16 million. Since this pandemic relief source is set to soon dry up, city and state should now be in search of funding streams to help maintain — or even expand — this lab, which is being operated by the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii.

In the push to further open and stimulate Hawaii’s stalled economic sectors, the testing lab would seem to be worth every penny.