What makes cyclists recognizable in a crowd, besides their biker garb, are their war stories. Each veteran will regale any willing listener with their tales of near-death experiences on the roadside.

Bart and Beth Cox had one from their ride to Kapahulu that morning. Bart recounted how they, astride their tandem bike, cut hard to the right by the gutter, expecting that the car ahead would continue making a turn.

“And then the car just stops. Just stops!” he said. “And we look at him, and he looks at us, and we’re just going, ‘Well, another adventure with cars and bicycles.’ I mean, the light was green. All he had to do was keep on going.”

Cyclists and motorists, especially in urban Honolulu, have been living in an uneasy relationship. The primary conclusion drawn: Honolulu residents love their cars, and many drivers aren’t accustomed to sharing the road with two-wheeled commuters and pleasure-riders.

Largely, it’s only the experienced bikers who venture out so there’s been little force behind the push for bike lanes, and without better cycling provisions, would-be adventurers are afraid of joining in.

The recent discussion over a bike-sharing program (see story, Page F4), under study for the city by a private consultant, has drawn many of Honolulu’s elected officials and planners to revisit its reputation for bike unfriendliness.

That reputation is confirmed by groups such as the League of American Bicyclists and the Alliance for Biking & Walking: On the organization’s lists of bike-friendly cities, Honolulu has quite never made the cut. Although the city enjoys year-round weather that supports cycling, its lagging network of bike lanes hasn’t helped.

However, there’s been some measured progress on a few fronts, said Chad Taniguchi, executive director of the Hawaii Bicycling League.

“I have a lot of optimism,” Taniguchi said, citing among his reasons a finding in the 2012 American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. In it, Honolulu posted 2.3 percent of its commuters saying that cycling is the primary way they commute; that is the 12th highest ranking in that measure for the 70 largest U.S. cities, he added. Honolulu climbed 10 notches in that particular metric in a year: The 2011 ACS ranked it 22nd.

Taniguchi acknowledged the broken, barely skeletal structure of bike lanes, but observed that “if people are riding nonetheless I feel they’re going to ride a lot more as the facilities go in.

“We’ve got things no other city can buy, great weather,” he said. “We actually have friendly motorists, although some of them don’t know the law.

“They don’t know that the cyclist can take the whole lane when there’s no room on the shoulder. When you tell them that, they understand,” he said. “They’re not going to hit you from behind. They might be mad, they might honk. But they won’t hit you.”

While that may be true as a general rule, Taniguchi and others lobbied for a bill that passed in the 2012 Legislature that strengthened penalties for negligent injury or negligent homicide of “vulnerable users,” a category that includes cyclists and individuals on the side of the road such as construction workers and police.

It’s too soon to say whether the new law, which so far has generated only a couple of pending cases with the stricter penalties, will have a deterrent effect, said Maj. Kurt Kendro, commander of the Honolulu Police Department Traffic Division.

Kendro, who is himself an experienced cyclist riding with HPD bicycle units, said the completion of the bike lane network is essential, but so is basic awareness of road conditions and other travelers.

“Cyclists are partially to blame, motorists are partially to blame,” he said. “On both sides of that coin there needs to be self-policing. That’s the only way it’s going to be better for cyclists and the motoring society.”

Of course, horror stories also bubble up about the scary, unpredictable moves by cyclists, Donna Wong of Kailua was startled by two tourists on rented bikes veering across busy Kuulei Road. Wong, executive director of the environmental group Hawaii’s Thousand Friends, felt shaken enough to write a letter to the Star-Advertiser, calling out two other tourists who rode their bikes through the no-walk sign at a crosswalk.

 “I honked my horn but they went on, oblivious to my being there and having the right-of-way,” she wrote. “I have never hit anyone with my car and I never want to, but it seems that the odds are against me."

Wong said the problem is primarily with newcomers who don’t know the laws; however, in tourist destinations, with so many transients and short-time visitors, that’s a real issue.

Where bike lanes are concerned, things may be looking up. The city’s bike plan, updated August 2012 by the Department of Transportation Services, calls for 310 miles of additional bikeways to be built at a cost of $68 million.

But while only a little more than $1 million was budgeted this year for the work, officials expect bikeway construction costs to drop significantly because they can be built along with the city’s major initiative to repave streets. Then, they have said, it’s only striping the newly resurfaced roadway, not building a whole new lane.

Most biking enthusiasts point to Portland, Ore., as the American city that has done the most to enhance its bicycling culture. In Portland, according to the most current figures, about 6 percent of the trips to work are taken via bicycle.

Rob Sadowsky, executive director of that city’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance since 2010, said the process was begun about 15 years ago. The first step was to lay the foundation with educational outreach, promoting bike awareness and safety among the elementary school children who now are heading off to jobs every morning, Sadowsky said.

And then the city worked on strengthening its bikeways on downtown streets, arterials into the city and in the bedroom communities, too, he said. What other cities have done is to focus on the major streets, but neglecting neighborhoods is a mistake because that is where people can develop the cycling habit.

People also need to have a familiarity and sense of connection with their home town, as well, so that there are places they want to go close to home and they become accustomed to biking there, Sadowsky added.

“There was a conscious effort on the part of the city, as part of its effort to reduce carbon, to move people to more cycling, walking and transit,” he said.

The educational outreach is still continuing, he said, with mailings to people who move to Portland, informing them about cycling options and ways to seek help. 

Sadowsky said he believes the bike-sharing project could help Honolulu triangulate its way toward a safer biking culture. 

“I don’t buy the argument that you have to have all the other things in place before you can start that,” he said. In other cities where it already exists, “it enters into the fabric of the city.”

“In New York, transit was about the subway and yellow taxis,” he said. “Now you’ve got these blue bikes going around, and now that’s part of the fabric. It changes the way people think about trips. “They think, ‘I can go to lunch seven more blocks away.’”

Beth and Bart Cox hit the bike trails three times weekly, including the Heavy Breathers Ride, one of the weekly events on the bike league’s calendar. Beth Cox is a veteran of some close encounters, but with more bikes and cars sharing the road, she hopes those encounters will get safer and friendlier.

“What’s changing the culture is getting more cyclists on the road,” she said, “because then you educate the cars and you make it normal. And there are more cyclists.”

“People are afraid of cycling,” her husband added. “Now, they’re not afraid of cycling in Portland or in Holland, because the atmosphere there is so different.”

Bike-sharing takes baby steps

While bike-sharing isn’t precisely a new thing on Oahu, it’s in its infancy. 

And it’s a fairly small baby: The Hawaii B-cycle program in Kailua, started with $100,000 from the Tobacco Settlement Fund. It was a pilot project by the state Health Department and landowner Kaneohe Ranch.

Participants can buy a 24-hour pass or memberships for 30-day and annual terms, either online (bcycle.com) or at one of two stations in Kailua.

The day pass costs $5, which includes a 30-minute ride; bringing the bike back late incurs additional fees of $2.50 per half-hour.

Memberships cost $30 for 30 days or $50 annually (a $10 discount for seniors and students applies at each of those levels).

What’s now being proposed is far bigger than this. Compared with 12 bikes at two stations, the program under study by the San Francisco-based Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates would entail up to 1,700 bikes at up to 180 stations.

An organizational assessment issued by the firm identified various models for running the program — in some cities they’re entirely private and commercial, in some they’re nonprofit-run, in others they’re government-operated services.

The initial recommendation for Honolulu is an administrative nonprofit model. Among its characteristics:

>> A nonprofit is  formed to oversee fundraising, purchasing and marketing, but not day-to-day operations.

>> The nonprofit typically contracts with a turnkey private operator to implement the system rollout and operate the system.

>> Strategic decision-making is handled by a board of directors.

Examples of this operating model include Denver B-Cycle and planned projects such as Puget Sound Bikeshare in the Seattle region and Portland Bikeshare.