With its unique culture, flat terrain and year-round sun, Todd Roll thought Hawaii was the perfect place to expand his bike tour business.

Roll started Pedal Bike Tours in Portland, Ore., seven years ago, in a place that was voted the most bike-friendly city by Bicycling magazine in 2012. After multiple trips to Hawaii to visit his father-in-law, Curtis Hutchinson, Roll started to explore on bike. It wasn’t long before he realized that bike rental options weren’t plentiful on Oahu. For the next five years, Roll and his wife Lota LaMontagne played with the idea of expanding their business to Hawaii, and in February 2014 they opened Pedal Hawaii in Waikiki.

"I literally just created routes based on what I would be showing people anyway," Roll said. "And so Honolulu is just an extension of what we do in Portland — I just picked the most popular tourist sites and I just created routes that went along the quietest and safest roads and visited all the most popular things to see."

Roll is passionate about history, people and bicycling. When visitors came to Portland he would show them around the city by bike. To start the business was a "slam dunk" that fed all of Roll’s passions and served a need, he said.

"What’s unique to a bicycle as opposed to an automobile or walking is that you’re going slow enough to enjoy the sites but you’re going fast enough that you can actually get somewhere," Roll said.

Pedal Hawaii offers three types of tours, each highlighting an area of Oahu — downtown Honolulu, Waikiki and the North Shore. Tours are open to any fitness level and can accommodate families with various levels of bike-riding ability.

"We’re all about making it easy for people to get on a bike if they haven’t, or if they have just a little bit of experience on a bike making it easy for them to get better at riding, so there’s options," said Seaneen LaMontagne, general manager of Pedal Hawaii.

The two-hour, 8-mile "Bike Waikiki" tour offers views of Diamond Head, Duke’s Lagoon, Kapiolani Park, Queen’s Beach and meanders along the car-free Ala Wai Canal promenade.

As a full-day excursion, the "Explore North Shore" tour highlights the Pali Overlook, scenic windward coast, Sunset Beach, Waimea Bay and Giovanni’s shrimp truck for lunch. This tour ends with a swim and snorkel at a secret beach. Those who don’t want to bike all 13 miles can ride along in a van.

Pedal Hawaii also offers a three-hour, 12-mile "Hidden Honolulu" tour that stops at the Kamehameha statue, ‘Iolani Palace, Kakaako’s urban murals, Point Panic surf spot and winds through Chinatown.

"These aren’t really bike tours, these are sightseeing tours and the bicycle is just how we get around," Roll said.

The tours explore areas that cars can’t get to. For example, the Ala Wai Canal promenade is a path between Kalakaua Avenue and Ala Moana Boulevard along the Ala Wai. Guides also take tour groups along Hotel Street and into the middle of the state capitol building, where cars aren’t allowed. The North Shore tour includes the Sunset Beach bike path.

"It’s very different from doing a tour where you step out of the van, you take photos and you get back in," LaMontagne said. "This is really like immersing yourself in that local culture, which is really what the North Shore is about. It’s about these people; it’s about the surfers running across the street; it’s about hearing the music that they’re playing out of the back of the car — it’s a whole different experience."

On frequent visits to Oahu, Roll studied the culture and history of Hawaii, exploring extensively by car and bike to learn the area. Sisters and co-marketing directors for Pedal Hawaii, Seaneen and Lota LaMontagne, have a rich history on Oahu, where they visited their father, Hutchinson, for more than 30 years.

"We’re big fans of Hawaiian culture — that’s another reason why we brought it here, because it’s such a fascinating place," Roll said.

Pedal Hawaii has become a family business. Hutchinson is now the mechanic who helps repair any bike problems at the shop.

"It just felt right to us because it’s almost like our second home base in Hawaii," Seaneen LaMontagne said. "It just made sense to us."

It was important to Roll to create bicycling opportunities for families. Pedal Hawaii offers a tandem bike for rent, kids bikes, a kids’ trail-a-bike that attaches to an adult bike and a kids’ trailer that seats two small children.

"Pedal Hawaii was brought about in order to offer bike tours year-round, so here in Hawaii we’re lucky that we have that basic 80-degree weather year-round," LaMontagne said. "It doesn’t fluctuate a whole lot so it’s perfect for biking."

Among LaMontagne’s favorite parts of her job is meeting people from around the world.

"I love the fact that we have so many people of different ethnicities and different cultures and different backgrounds all kind of meeting in Hawaii — it’s really cool," LaMontagne said. "I don’t know that there’s another state in America that’s like this in that way."

Tours are intimate, kept to about seven people or less. For larger groups, more guides are present to ensure safety. All guides are CPR-certified and medically insured.

"It’s nice to be in a business and in an industry where I know we’re making a positive difference on this environment," LaMontagne said. "The more people on bikes, the better it is for this island. … And we have a lot of advocates working through Honolulu right now in order to get it going so it’s really nice to see."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, Honolulu was ranked ninth out of the 70 largest bike commuter cities, with 2.4 percent of the population being bike commuters. Portland was No. 1 at 5.9 percent. Honolulu’s percentage of bike commuters represents a 92 percent increase since 1990.

"Coming from Oregon, it leaves a lot to be desired but it’s getting better," LaMontagne said. "I’m seeing more people on bikes every single day so yeah I do think it’s bike friendly and it’s getting better all the time, which is really good for us, really good for the environment, really good for this island — I love it."