Honolulu needs to get real about safe bicycling plan

Daniel Bogert, 33, bikes everywhere. He bikes from home to the grocery store, to work, to classes, to run errands, to meet up with friends and on the weekends, he bikes for fun.

He gave up his car two years ago.

"No. 1, rather than go to a gym and pay money to exercise indoors, I’m very much an outdoor type of person," he said, "and No. 2, rather than drive a car, I get exercise and transportation all in one and save money in the process."

When he was a student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, he found bicycling much less expensive than paying for parking.

Being stuck in traffic in a car creates a lot of stress, he said. Being on a bike is the opposite. Sometimes when there’s traffic, he manages to go faster than the cars.

Bogert is likely one of the 5,653 Hawaii bicycle commuters counted by BikeGuard, an online registry that recently produced statistics for each state (www.myassettag.com/state-cycling-statistics#).

About 70 percent of local commuters are male, 30 percent female.

Among the 50 states and the District of Colombia, Hawaii has the ninth highest proportion of bike commuters, according to BikeGuard. Yet the state ranks 34th in terms of money allocated — $1.81 per capita — for cycling and pedestrian projects annually.

Compare that to top-rated Alaska at $10.79 per capita.

Biking is an environmentally responsible way to get around, using muscle power rather than fossil fuels. It’s probably going to help your pocketbook, too, and make parking hassle-free.

Of all places, Honolulu would seem to have the potential to be a bike-friendly city: sunny weather year-round, mostly flat terrain and avid bikers.

How awesome it would be if we had a great network of bike paths, offering an alternative to driving a car.

The city’s long-awaited, updated "Oahu Bike Plan" is finally out after numerous delays. The plan, drafted in 2009, was offered for public review that year and was supposed to be released in February but just came out in September.

It builds on the 1999 Honolulu Bicycle Master Plan, mapping out where new bike lanes should be placed to connect pathways for the entire island.

It’s about time.

Oahu has about 132 miles of on- and off-road bikeways, according to the plan, which calls for an additional 559 miles to be built in the next 20 to 30 years.

The cost for the city’s portion, about 310 miles, is roughly $68 million.

A short-range project, focusing on downtown, Waikiki and the UH-Manoa campus, is budgeted at about $2.7 million, pennies compared to most major construction projects.

Connectivity is one of the main issues for bikers here, according to Bogert, with some paths that just last a block or two and then dump cyclists out into dangerous traffic.

Bike-friendly cities we could look to as examples include San Francisco, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

"We’re hoping they’ll actually start striping the lanes when they do the repaving," said Ambika Subramony, who manages the Hawaii Bicycling League’s ongoing classes for adults.

The free classes, which are open to the public, include "Commuter Cycling 101" and "Walk, Bike, Drive" at UH campuses.

Drivers can do a better job of paying attention and using their turn signals — it’s about sharing the road.

Bogert, who taught classes for the Hawaii Bicycling League, says he’s had some close calls. And he’s not one of the bikers who routinely hog a whole lane (which is actually legal if necessary for the biker’s safety).

"I’ve been hit by cars’ rearview mirrors, and I’ve had people yelling at me, telling me to get off the road," he said.

Consider him lucky — other bikers have had collisions and accidents resulting in serious injuries and death.

Biking the route from Hawaii Kai to Sand Island via Nimitz is one of the more dangerous routes, he said.

Let’s put this plan into action, sooner rather than later.

On the Net:

» Hawaii Bicycling League: www.hbl.org

» Oahu Bike Plan: www1.honolulu.gov/dts/oahu+bike+plan.htm

» www.myassettag.com/state-cycling-statistics#