Page 2 | Ka Leo | Monday, March 3 2014
Twitter @kaleoohawaii | news@kaleo.org | Noelle Fujii Editor | Fadi Youkhana Associate
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g n i r a h s e k i b s e t u o r s y t u i C p m a c a o n ā M o t A RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF SHARING BIKES The City Council Committee on Transportation approved a resolution in support of the bikeshare at its Feb. 27 meeting, according to Frank Streed, Breene Harimoto’s chief advisor. Harimoto is chairman of the committee. The resolution, titled “Supporting Bike-share in the City and County of Honolulu,” will be forwarded to the full City Council to be heard at its March 12 meeting, where it’s likely it will be formally adopted. “I can’t image that they wouldn’t pass it,” Streed said. The resolution noted that in 2012, a Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative Transportation Vehicle Miles Travel reduction working group and the state Department of Health identified bikeshare as a key strategy for reducing vehicle miles traveled and achieving healthy outcomes.
NOELLE FUJII News Editor At least five or six bike-sharing stations may be placed on campus before the end of 2015 under a city bike-sharing system. According to Shem Lawlor, a transit-oriented development planner for the city Department of Planning and Permitting, the initial phase of the system would span from Chinatown to Waikīkī to UH Mānoa, an area of about five square-miles. The city had a bike-share organizational study conducted in 2013 by Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates Inc. to recommend an organizational structure that would be best for a bikesharing system in Honolulu. “Basically what we hired them to do was take a look at the local conditions, talk to all of the government agencies and nonprofits and business interest and kind of figure out what’s the best type of organizational structure to govern and implement a bike-share system in Honolulu,” Lawlor said. They recommended launching with a system of 180 stations and just under 1,700 bikes – a dense system, according to Lawlor. “There’s a lot of people that could use bicycles for some part of their transportation needs,” UH Mānoa grad Daniel Alexander said. “But because, obviously, when they don’t carry a bicycle around with them, when the opportunity arises, it’s not there. But when there’s bike-share around, that’ll be something that they’ll be able to do.”
SHARING BIKES AROUND THE COUNTRY According to Lawlor, almost every major city in the country either has a bike-share system already, or they’re in the process of planning or implementing one. There are also 30 or 40 different systems already in operation with some being run by city governments and others by nonprofit organizations. Nelson/Nygaard recommended that Honolulu use an administrative nonprofit organizational structure for its bike-share system. This means, according to Lawlor, that the city should establish a nonprofit organization that would administer the program but not operate it. “They would hire a private firm to actually provide the equipment and operate the day-to-day operations,” Lawlor said. On Jan. 2, Bikeshare Hawai‘i was officially founded as a statewide nonprofit organization. “So the idea is we’re going to launch in Honolulu, in urban Honolulu, but then it can expand to other parts of O‘ahu and also to the neighbor islands,” Lawlor said. Bikeshare Hawai‘i is the organization that is going to implement the bike-sharing system, according to Lawlor, but the bikeshare effort is a collaboration between the city, state, different organizations and individuals. Bikeshare Hawai‘i will be governed by an eight-member Board of Directors, who in the next few months are looking to raise startup funding, which will cost $550,000, according to Lawlor. Part of that money will go to hiring an executive director and to community outreach.