Share road with more bike lanes

As Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration gears up for a second four-year term, it intends to continue creating bicycle lanes in the city’s urban neighborhoods. The ambition to establish a network of protected bikeways shows foresight as cities everywhere strive to be less car-centric.

While Caldwell made clear his goal during this year’s mayoral race, the issue rarely came up as a debate topic. Perhaps that’s because the South King Street bike lane, which touched off a great deal of contentious debate before it opened two years ago, is functioning reasonably well.

The two-way protected lane, which is about 2 miles long, is prompting an increase in bicycle traffic in a climate that’s perfect for pedaling. And while motorists must now navigate South King Street’s intersections and driveways with heightened awareness of surroundings, that’s a positive development as bicycles have always been part of the street’s traffic flow.

Next month, the city’s Department of Transportation Services will replace up to 30 too-tight parking spots on McCully Street between Kapiolani Boulevard and South Beretania Street with striped bike lanes on both sides of the street. The lanes will create a bike route between Waikiki and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It also will put in place the envisioned network’s first mauka-makai spur, connecting with the South King Street lane.

In addition, plans are in the works for a two-way protected bike lane along the Ewa side of South Street, between Pohukaina and South King streets. That lane should benefit from design tweaks spurred by community feedback, which delayed its opening from late 2015 to, likely, next February.

In the case of the McCully Street lanes, the city’s move corrects a dangerous situation. According to national standards, each side of a street must be at least 17 feet wide to fit a traffic lane alongside a parking space. On McCully either side is 15 feet wide.

“They never should have allowed parking there. There just isn’t sufficient space,” acting Transportation Director Mark Garrity said last week. “Striping it for a bike lane is actually the best thing we can do.”

The South Street bike lane would forge a logical second spur, stretching from the existing South King Street lane. A robust bikeways network is a good fit for that area’s Kakaako neighborhood as its fresh batches of businesses and residents embrace a live-work-play vibe.

When the mayor announced plans for the South Street spur, in August 2015, he acknowledged that the South King Street proposal had been met with firm resistance by many motorists. “For us, it was the most controversial thing we touched — maybe even more controversial than rail, or even homelessness,” Caldwell said then. “We had more input and feedback on putting a protected bike lane on King Street than anything else.”

But city officials, to their credit, pushed on. Cycling should be supported as a clean mode of transportation, and the administration must comply with its 2013 Complete Streets ordinance, which aims to balance the needs of all road users — pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists.

Two years ago, when the King Street Protected Bike Lane Pilot Project opened in tandem with the City Lights holiday event, there was grumbling about its uses of on-street parking spaces, an asphalt berm and plastic bollards to create a barrier between motorists and bicyclists. The grumbling is now fading, and the lane is folding into the city’s urban fabric.

One bike in the lane can mean one less car on the road. Dedicated bike lanes remove cyclists from the dangerous jostling of vehicular traffic as well as off pedestrian sidewalks. They are needed visual reminders that Honolulu’s roadways must be shared by all — especially in the city’s reimagined urban core.