State's bike-path plan lacks financial backing

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

A new state plan recommends increasing bicycle pathways and other facilities 550 percent in coming years. Even the plan's staunchest supporters, however, admit that's unlikely to happen.

There's no requirement, however, that the state build all the facilities suggested in the report.

"It's a great plan, but where's the funding going to come from?" asked Jeff Mikulina, head of Sierra Club Hawai'i. "Planning is easy. It's the implementation that creates challenges."

Three years in the making, the plan meets federal requirements that state planners give bicycling equal consideration with automobiles, mass transit and other transportation.

The plan, released by the state Transportation Department this month, gives the most detailed look ever at who Hawai'i bicyclists are and where they want to ride in the future. It covers riders from Hanalei to Hilo and all types of cycling, ranging from serious bicycle commuters to kids wheeling around their suburban neighborhoods.

All told, it suggests hundreds of projects to improve bicycling convenience and safety costing well over $100 million.

Vince Llorin, the Transportation Department's pedestrian and bicycling coordinator, said ultimately the money will have to come from the Legislature. He and others acknowledge that there is little regular support for new bicycling expenditures at the Legislature or the county council level.

"They don't see bicycling as a transportation solution," said John Goody, a director of the Hawaii Bicycling League and its community affairs chairman. "It's just a frill to them. They don't see how improving bicycling helps everyone including drivers."

Mikulina said the bicycling community needs to build its support in the community and at the Legislature.

"There are some advocates out there in the community, but nobody is knocking down the door for bicycling," he said. "We need a bigger constituency to get something done."

The report, however, suggests that there are hundreds of thousands of part-time bicyclists in Hawai'i who would support more money:

• More than 228,000 bicycles have been registered in the state since 1999, when a new law required a one-time registration of newly purchased bicycles.
• More than 35,000 people on O'ahu each month use the free bike racks provided on city buses.
• A 2001 survey of bicycle users found that more than 40 percent rode at least several times a week. Another 24 percent said they use their bicycles several times a month. By far, the survey found, bicycle owners ride for recreation and consider bicycling an important activity within their household.

"If you add all the uses up — commuters, recreational riders, children going to school — it's a pretty large group," said Llorin, who drives a car to work in Kapolei but bicycles around his 'Ewa neighborhood after work and on weekends.

Despite all the riders and a climate that seems ideal for bicycling, Hawai'i still doesn't make the national bicycling map, Llorin said.

"When it comes to being bicycle-friendly, we're probably somewhere in the middle of the pack," he said.

The new plan proposes a series of aggressive measures that would make bicycling safer and more convenient, two of the concerns raised most often by bicycle users, Llorin said. Survey respondents in every category of bicycle user said they would ride more often if they felt safer.

"One-quarter of all automobile accidents involve pedestrians or bicyclists," Goody said. "Yet you don't see anyone funding programs for pedestrian or bicycling safety at anywhere near that proportion. Someone has to get the message out: We're being whacked."

Topping the list of problems identified in the study are a lack of road space, high traffic volumes and speed, few off-road bicycle paths, poor road maintenance and hostile drivers.

Llorin said the state has made great progress in integrating bicycle planning into all highway projects in recent years, a concept that works better and costs less than developing stand-alone bike projects. However, federal highway money for bicycling has to be used principally for transportation, not recreation.

The next step, Goody said, is getting the Transportation Department to set aside a regular part of its budget for bicycle programs.

"Right now the funding is very haphazard," he said. "If they put aside just 2 or 3 percent every year for bicycling or pedestrian, it would really add up. Over time, everything would get done."

The plan suggests a list of the most pressing bicycle needs on every island, giving top priority to those that could reasonably be finished within 10 years.

Mikulina said that getting a few of the most obvious projects off the ground would spur others.

"It's a chicken-and-egg thing," he said. "The critical mass isn't out there yet demanding more facilities because they're too scared to use the existing ones. If we could get a good, safe cross-town passage from Waikiki or the university to downtown, then you might really start to see other things take off."

Goody, who thinks a Leeward commuter route is equally important, agreed that bicyclists would be happy to see even a few of the projects in the plan get off the ground.

"It doesn't have to be a huge amount of money all at once," he said. "All we want is just an acknowledgement on a regular basis that bicycles and walkers are just as important as those people in cars."

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5460.

Correction: A new state plan for bicycling facilities is still a draft document. A previous version of this story referred to it as completed plan.