Question: How can Hawaii residents cut transportation costs using bike share?
Answer: Using bike share should be the cheapest form of transportation next to walking. You can replace your bus pass with a bike-share membership –which I think for most residents will work out to approximately $20 per month — and save about $480 annually.
If you can replace your car entirely, you can do even better. According to the American Public Transit association, the average Honolulu car commuter spent $12,710 last year owning and operating their car after factoring in fuel, maintenance, repair, insurance and parking. The heaviest bike share users will be spending less than $200 every year (assuming roughly 650 trips a year). In that scenario, using bike share would save a resident over $12,000.
BEN TREVINO
>> Title: President and chief operating officer
>> Company: Bikeshare Hawaii
>> Age: 34
>> Education: Bachelor of Science in computer science from Stanford University and M.B.A. from Shidler School of Business at University of Hawaii
>> Contact: ben@BikeshareHawaii.org |
Q: What is bike share?
A: Bike share is a form of public transit that is used worldwide and becoming popular in the United States’ biggest cities. It consists of a network of publicly accessible bikes that can be rented for short, point-to-point rides. Because you only use the bike for a single point-to-point trip, you don’t have to worry about it after your ride is done.
The most common use of bike share is as a part of a portfolio of transportation options to be used in combination with other forms of transit such as bus, rail, ride share, car share and, of course, personal automobiles.
Q: How could someone with a car benefit?
A: Even people who expect to continue to drive a personal automobile can see significant savings from occasionally using bike share. At an estimated 30 cents per 60 cents per trip, using bike share for most short trips will be cheaper (and more convenient) than parking.
Q: What about someone who uses public transit?
A: One nice feature of bike share is that it is available on demand.
If you miss your bus by a few seconds or if it is running behind schedule, you might opt to hop on a bike to get where you’re going on time. It also helps people travel the "last mile." High-capacity, higher-speed bus routes can move people to popular transit stations and transfer locations, and then bike share can get them the rest of the way quickly and conveniently.
