Protected bike lanes are key to a more livable city

Sorry to burst the bubble of so many here, but we no longer live in the glorious past when Honolulu streets were reserved for single-occupant cars and everyone else, including pedestrians and cyclists, could beat it.

As recently as 2011, developers who asked the city Department of Planning and Permitting for permission to build “complete streets” with wider sidewalks and bike lanes were told to get lost.

In the prior two generations, Honolulu was in the grip of an auto-centric mindset that damaged not only the urban experience, but the beauty of the entire island.

Most residential development was pushed into sterile suburbs, ironically, built on our most fertile agricultural lands, while intense commercial development in Waikiki and Downtown gave us more high-rises than San Francisco or Dallas and the fourth-densest metro population in America — all connected by one of the nation’s most congested freeways.

Meanwhile, both suburbs and high-rise residential areas like Salt Lake were built on the “Euclidian code,” which segregates residential from commercial activity.

This development pattern killed foot traffic and eviscerated mom-and-pop stores whose customers chose instead to drive to the Big Boxes.

All of which left large parts of town remarkably devoid of street life.

That’s why, until now, motorists had been able to zip merrily along King Street — one of the few relics of the Honolulu of yesteryear.

But what happens next?

We’ve reached a turning point. Our population grows by roughly 10,000 a year. Estimates of the number of new housing units needed in the next 25 years start at 100,000. Where to put them? How will their occupants move around? How should Honolulu evolve, to benefit both the city and the island as a whole?

If we don’t want yet more suburbs spilling outside the urban growth boundary into the central plain, up the Waianae coast or into Waimanalo, we have to focus development back in the urban core — especially in places we’ve already built, such as the King Street-Beretania corridor, Iwilei or Waipahu.

This is the transit-oriented-development rationale for Oahu’s rail system. But that growth model depends on people wanting to live in the city.

Fortunately, car-free urbanity is what the younger generation is seeking. From 2005 to 2013, the ratio of residents aged 15-34 with driver’s licenses fell from 77 percent to 64 percent — a huge drop, especially considering that it occurred before the advent of the cycle track or the rail project. Today, 370,000 Honolulu residents don’t possess a driver’s license.

Nevertheless some still hanker for suburban life. How to convince them to embrace the city? The answer is by making the urban experience more pleasant, with a building code that allows street-level retail stores below residential buildings, wider and leafier sidewalks and cycle tracks, to make walking and biking safer.

Since the King Street bike lane was installed, cycling along the corridor is up 88 percent, while the number of cyclists on the sidewalk has dropped 80 percent — boosting safety for all.

At what cost?

Well, the city has monitored the impact of the bike lane on car traffic and found travel times on King Street between Alapai and Isenberg streets have increased by an average of only 30 seconds.

Come on, now: Is 30 seconds really such a sacrifice for a more livable city?