 Aloha, welcome to Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Epichella, your host. Today we take a break from discussions about rail, rail funding, rail ridership, rail construction, and the use of my favorite words, rail boondoggle. This week we get to talk about something much more fun and we look at the new Bike Share program that has been an operation around major cities in the world and now here in Honolulu. Bike Share Hawaii will soon be placing a thousand new bikes at 100 self-service stations from Chinatown to Diamondhead. I sometimes hear people say that they would love to ride a bike, but because of the cost or bike storage or safety issues, they stand in the way of riding. So here to talk about this new program and to address obstacles to riding in town is Lori McCarney, CEO of Bike Share Hawaii. Lori, thank you so much for coming on the program. Very much appreciated. Thank you for having me. It sounds like you have a great, you're in charge of a great program and I want to hear all about it. So without further ado, tell me about Bike Share Hawaii. So Bike Share Hawaii, we're going to be branding it Beaky. We wanted to have a name that was easy for people to remember and use and that also suggested it was quick and easy and fun because that's one of the things we want it to be. It is a major transportation system and I think that's one of the interesting things. We've seen it transform cities as people use it to get around town and not use their car and not worry about parking and some of those other things. And as we've studied it, studied it in different places, we've really seen the impact that it's had on cities. One of the places that hit me the most was Manhattan. Manhattan I visited many times and I couldn't imagine that there would ever be bikes on the road because I think of the sidewalks are crowded, the streets are crowded, there's taxis that pull over to the side, everybody's in a hurry. There's street metadors. There's a naked cowboy. There's all these different things and I thought, boy, that just seems like a place where I wouldn't imagine that Bike Share could be successful. But it is. It is amazing and people will choose to take bikes and use Bike Share over the subway and the city bike system there has over a million rides every month. Wow. How many bikes in New York? They're up to about 6,000 bikes. So, but they started, you know, it's like there's some key things that you need to do in a Bike Share system and they did a lot of things right and that was including density, having enough stations. Sometimes people think, well, if we just put a few stations out, we'll see how it goes. Right. But if you don't have enough to have any benefit and the network's not dense enough for people to use it, you know, really well, then they don't work very well. So we're taking that approach. As a warning, we're going to talk about Seattle's program. Okay, good. No, that's fine. But we'll get to that a little bit later. I'm from Seattle, so anyway. Oh, perfect. Yeah. So, okay, well, we'll talk about Seattle a little bit later. But what is in this marketplace, in the Honolulu marketplace, what is your primary goal? I mean, is there a ridership percentage that you're trying to attain and what might be those goals? I'd say that the major goal is that right now, so few people bike at all or see that as an option for transportation, that it's really increasing the penetration of people who use bikes, not that they use it all the time, but that they say, you know, if they're replacing even one or two trips a month, then we're actually starting to have an impact and on people not having so much dependence on a car. People tell me, but everybody uses a car here and I say, well, what's their option? Right. You know, if there's not a good option, I can only walk like three or four blocks before my feet hurt and I'm sweating, so I'll drive a short distance. But if I had an option where I could get there, instead of walking 20 minutes, get there in five minutes, be able to wear my work clothes, be able to take my stuff, and it was not the hassle of parking and driving, I might choose it sometime. So is the primary objective of bike share, is it one of pollution reduction or is it reduced traffic or is it physical, you know, help the community with more physical fitness or is it all the above? Yes, it's all of those things. And I didn't get that off your website. No, I know. That was really good. Thank you. It's such a simple thing to think of what a bike can do, but a bike's actually been, it's done a lot of things in its lifetime. You know, when I was first created, it was part of the emancipation process for women, as women saw that as a way for more freedom of getting around and what have you. But it really has all of these benefits. It doesn't solve everything, but it touches a lot of things and helps make them a little bit better. From a health side, if you choose to take a bike instead of take your car, that's something that's a little bit healthier. If you replace one car trip with a bike trip, you've saved gas emissions and fuel emissions. If you go to a local store that you hadn't gone to, because you didn't even know it was there because when you drove by, you didn't even see it, then you're helping local business. There's just a lot of different things that it helps. And actually, even from a health side, I've seen where it helps. I've seen studies about depression and stress. One of the things I really appreciate is when we've had people just sit on a bike, they smile. I have never, I've worked in marketing and business for a long time. I've never had a product that people first interacted with and they smile as soon as they interacted with it. And that kind of feeling sort of tapping into different things. I think it's a non-quantitative type of benefit, but it's definitely real. Right. Well, let's get into the mechanics of how this program is going to work. So, let's talk about what the fair structure is, how someone comes to these bikes and what's the methodology of getting a bike out of the rack. So, let's talk about all that. Yeah, so pricing. So, it would be really simple if everybody was going to use it the same way. We'd have one price. But, you know what? As we did research, we found out, no, people are going to use it different ways. Some people are going to ride it all the time. They're going to ride it to and from here, a place every day. So, for those guys, we have a plan that's $15 a month for unlimited 30-minute rides. So, that means you could use it every day and go to and from and maybe your average, I think the average bike share ride is 22 minutes in the country. You could ride it back and forth. How many miles is that equate to? 17. I would say it's probably about 2.5 miles. About 2.5 miles. Something like that. And then, I usually use about 10 miles an hour for typical bike riding and 2.5 miles an hour for walking just to make a comparison. I'm about slower than that. Sorry. I've tried to see sort of where that would sit. I'm really slower than that. So, $15 a month we're going to use it regularly. A lot of people aren't going to use it regularly. So, how do they pay for it? So, we can see the free spirit pass. The free spirit pass gives you a bank of 300 minutes for $20 and then you get a card and you just use it and we keep track and we tell you how many minutes you have left. So, you use it however you like. If it's a 10-minute trip plus then it's a later, it's a 20-minute trip. At the end of each ride we tell you how many minutes you have left. The minutes don't expire. You get down to 30 minutes. We're going to text you or contact you and ask you if you want to reload 300 more minutes. Are these cards at retail outlets or is it through Bikeshirt Hawaii? So, you'll sign up on our website. That's a resident plan probably. You could also get it at our kiosk and I'll talk about that. But you'll sign up at our website and then at that point then we'll send you a card. Then you'll be able to go right to a bike, insert the card and release a bike. So, just hypothetically, if I'm a tourist and I'm on the street and I said, I should like to ride those. What would be the easiest way? Through a kiosk or? Yeah. So, every single one of the 100 stations will have a kiosk and the kiosk will have a credit card reader. So, you're going to put your credit card in a very short screen. You choose the price that you want. For a visitor, the walk-up price is $350 for a half hour. They could choose that or they can choose the free spirit. So, we thought if somebody's just here and they're just want to use it for a quick trip, don't get them to sign up for something long term. Just let them use the $350 for 30 minutes. If they're going to be here for a while then they might choose the $20 free spirit because then they can use it more in a free way of using it around, using it over time. We had seen that a lot of cities have the 30 minute plan and for a visitor it's stressful and for me it's been stressful because I get the bike, I go through my credit card, I get the bike out, it takes me a few minutes to get it set up, then I start riding and then I start thinking, oh my god, I better find a station quickly before 30 minutes. And so the last 10 minutes I'm stressed out trying to find a station. So we wanted to take that away. That makes sense. That's for the visitor. So they have those two options. That makes a lot of sense. In other cities, now that your bike share is in a lot of other cities, of the percentage of people who ride these bikes, is it more commuters going from workplace to workplace or excuse me, from commuters or is it tourists or is it, what's the highest percentage of users, I guess it depends on the city. It depends on the city and the way that they launched it, like Miami Beach mostly visitors. So we visit it. We visit a lot of different cities. You go to New York, it's almost residents. You go to Chicago, it feels like a wider mix. And so all of these systems are pretty new. They're all these different places, but there's still a brand new industry when you think about it. I think the oldest one is like seven years old. So there's a lot. It's a new industry. It's new in this generation. There were different kinds of bike sharing schemes, including the very first one where I remember reading about this. I think it was in Amsterdam where they painted a bunch of bikes yellow, put them out so people could use them, but the bikes all disappeared. Oops. Yeah, so that didn't work. But Velib in Paris was sort of seen as the first, one of the very early ones, that what's this latest generation of bike sharing, where you have a smart dock that keeps track of the bikes. And of course, we're going to look at some pictures. And we're going to look at not only the bike, but your bike docks or your bike station. So without further ado, let's see what we have here. Okay, there we are. Yeah. This is a rendering of what a station might look like in Waikiki. So you can see, well, you can't really see this, but the way that the stations work and the way that they're installed is that they're ballast weighted, which is the fancy way to say they just get held down by their own weight. The stations are really heavy and then they connect together. So once they're connected together, then they stay put. So we don't have to bolt them into the ground or do anything like that. And then they're also solar powered. And so from a, so there's no wires running to them. So they're very clean that way. So does your cart unlock some kind of hinge that then you can pull them out of the station Yeah. The very front of the bike, you'll see a little hook and then you slide into that dock. You can see right there. So you slide it, push it in there. You'll hear it lock. You'll feel it lock and you'll see a green light go on. And once the green light goes on, then that means it's secure and you're done. You don't have to worry about it anymore. The only time that you're ever responsible for the bike is when you're riding it, right? You know, and but the one of the beauties of the bike share, at least for me, who would like to ride a bike around town, and I don't that much, is it's a hassle to go find a place to park it and then come out and is all or all the pieces going to be there or whatever you want to come back out. And so with this, you can just dock it and then be on your way. Well, since bike share, whether it be in Copenhagen or Manhattan or programs, not your program, but other programs in Seattle, it's this is a new industry. So here in Honolulu, you know, you've had some successes around the world and you've had some failures, not you or your company, but the industry's had some failures. What particular challenges here in Honolulu? Did you have to look at and say, if we're going to make a go of this, we're going to have to address these specific issues? Tell me about that. Yeah, no city is perfect when bike share starts, because you never, you know, one of the questions I had is, do we have enough bike infrastructure to start bike share? And the answer is, we could definitely use more. And we're really glad that the city's putting that in. But can we get more bike infrastructure without bike share? I don't know. Because unless you get enough people using bikes or seeing bikes as an alternative for transportation, you're never going to get to the point where people say, I support the idea because they're sitting in worse and worse traffic. And all they can think of the only solution they can see is more lanes of traffic. And we're constrained in town in adding that. So you can't do it. So you start to give people an alternative. So anyway, I think bike infrastructure is one thing that we're really happy that the city is putting more in. And we're very supportive of that. And we think that the people that use bike share will also then appreciate how that can help make their commutes and their getting around town easier. We actually have a lot of the things that a lot of cities don't have. We have 365 days of good weather, maybe 363. Some of those really boggy days, you know. But we have good weather most of the time. Actually in Montreal, they bring in their system on October 15th or maybe it's November 15th and then take it out April 15th. So they have six months or more. They're not even in operation. They have all that capital they're sitting on. Yeah, just sitting there. Just sitting there. And we have flat terrain. Right. That makes a big difference. We'll talk about that in Seattle and why Seattle program probably didn't go as well as it could have. Could have been. We're going to get back to all that just when we come back from our break here. So I'm Tim Apachev. This is Moving Hawaii Forward. We'll be right back. I'm Carol Mon-Lee and I want to welcome you to our newest series called Education Matters, where we will explore education-related topics that touch everyone, not just formal programs in K-12 and higher education, but also broader issues and information that affect our community. My name is Calvin Griffin, host of Military in Hawaii, which airs here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 11 a.m. Please join us. We'll be talking about issues concerning our military, veterans community, and other related issues that concern all of us. Aloha, I'm Dave Stevens, the host of the Cyber Underground on Think Tech Hawaii. This is my co-host Andrew Lanning, the security guy. Every week at 5 p.m. we'll be discussing cybersecurity, the things to look out for, and the things to do to keep yourself safe. Check us out on Think Tech Hawaii 5 o'clock Fridays. Thank you. Hi, welcome back. This is Moving Hawaii Forward, and I'm here with Lori McCarney, CEO of Bikeshare Hawaii. And Lori, before the break, we were talking about the unique aspects of Honolulu Market and those challenges in the marketplace and what Bikeshare Hawaii is going to do to try to address those and become a successful program. Because I want to see this succeed. I really do. The time is right, and I really would love to see Bikeshare Hawaii move forward. Great. So we talked about flat weather. We talked about flat terrain. Also, density of businesses, residences, and attractions. When you think about it in some of the more sprawling type of areas, I was recently in Tucson, and I know they were looking to put in Bikeshare, and I thought, but everything's so far away, far apart. Here, everything's pretty close. So there's a tight urban market, not a suburban... Yes, yes. So Bikeshare can't work everywhere, I don't think, but it can work here. Also, the weather, the visitor market. Visitors have a different price elasticity than residents, which is another reason why we have different pricing structures. If you're a visitor and you say 350 to ride 30 minutes, you go, oh, that sounds pretty reasonable compared to everything else. If you're a resident, you go, that's really expensive. And so when we try to then target the pricing to the different uses and different people, visitors help support the residents almost underwriting it. So you have an extensive... I've looked at your bio. You have an extensive marketing background. And so you're no stranger to focus groups. Right. So how many focus groups did you guys hold before you kind of dipped your toes in this marketplace? Well, we did focus groups, and then there was work done before with a planning company, Nelson Nygaard. We did, actually did quantitative research instead of focus groups around the pricing piece. And we did intercept interviews in our service area because we wanted to reach people in the service area. We wanted to share the different pricing with them, but we also had to educate them about what Bikeshare was. So we had to have a way. So we had people from anthology marketing or anthology research that then went out and with iPads and went and intercepted people. Really? Yeah, it was a very good way to go because it gave us the opportunity to catch the people who would be out on the street and then interact with them on a very one-to-one basis. So was that... I'm sorry, was that just particular to the pricing structure or was that to any reluctance for riding bikes? So we had pricing structure, but of course it was likelihood to use and what are the barriers to use it and all of that. And the barriers are the same things that are barriers everywhere. It's like, will I feel safe? I haven't ridden a bike in a long time. I don't know if it's going to work for me. But as you talked about being a veteran, I was around introducing ATMs and a lot of those ATM issues were exactly the same. The same. Interesting. You're from the banking industry as well, so good for you. I did my time. Did you? Yes, I did. I did my time. Let's talk about the Seattle program because you're from Seattle, I'm from Seattle and their program was called Pronto. And the mayor, Ed McMurray, he just pulled the plug as of March 31st on Pronto's program. Now there was a lot of money behind that too, a lot of money. But the cited as the reasons was the terrain was kind of tough. And something you mentioned was, I believe, there wasn't enough stations densely packed within their service area. And I think last but not least is Washington State or certainly Seattle has a helmet lock. Yes. So I want to talk about all those things and how that translates to the Honolulu market. Sure. So the hills, as we move out into other areas, one of the things we did was get a lighter bike, a smaller bike here than in the other cities, even though it's made by the same company as stood behind, it has the same kind of dependability and structural capacity and everything. We wanted a little bit lighter bike so it would be easier to handle, which then will flatten some hills. It's a three-speed bike. We don't have the same hill challenge in the urban core that Seattle has. The other thing, the density, I know I was in Seattle and they were rolling it out. And I said, where's the stations? And you never want to go somewhere and say, where are the stations? And that's one of the reasons here. They had two hubs, right? They had one on Capitol Hill and one... Well, they had stations everywhere, but I never saw them. Oh, I see. And that's one of the things... They were cloaked. They were sort of. Well, sometimes, and that's where siding gets... Station siding is so important is if you think about what you remember, we can show you a map, but you're probably not going to spend a lot of time looking at a map to explore where the stations are. You have to really have them in a place where people will encounter them where they want to go. So our stations will be visible so that when you go along you say, there's one, well, there's one, there's one. And that's really what's going to impact people if they start seeing enough of them. Like, seeing ABC stores, if you're a visitor in Waikiki. You don't know where they are, but you know there's probably one close by. So it's that same kind of thing. The helmet law is interesting. Seattle, or Washington State has a helmet law and Australia has a helmet law. And in both of those places, the bike share systems struggle or fail. And the reason being is that using bike share can be a spontaneous decision. So it can be that, oh, I'm here. This could be an easy way for me to go, oh, I don't have a helmet, so I can't go. Seattle tried to have leased helmets or rent helmets and clean them out and put them back out, but they would get stolen. And it was problematic. I was saying, yeah, the logistics of issuing a helmet and having a return. Plus they spent about $80,000, I think, if I remember the numbers on helmets. Yeah, so it's a little bit of a chunk. It was tough. Yeah. So my initial idea was that we can develop a line of helmets that would be inexpensive for people to buy. And we'll still do that working with bike shops. So for residents, you know, have a line of bike helmets that are inexpensive for people to carry around if they choose to. And then for visitors to talk to one of the retailers in Waikiki, hopefully ABC Store, and have them carry a line of souvenir helmets. I don't know that it's going to, I don't know how it's going to work because I've been watching all the rental bikes going around. And most of the people, if they have a helmet at all, it's in their basket. So it's one of those, it's one of those, you know. That's not the right place for a helmet to be. Right. Right. She's going to have one. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're talking about helmets. So that there's a, there's a transition right into safety issues. Yes. So my understanding is that, you know, by design, these bikes are heavier. Yes. They're not built for speed. Right. You have what, three speeds? Yes, three speeds. See, I'll head seven, but that's because we have hills. Yeah. You know, in there. So I guess bike share programs say there's less crashes with a bike share program versus bikes, bicyclists who are, you know, private individual bicyclists. Right. How is that? Interesting, huh? Yeah. Well, one of the things is as bike share gets out, there's more people on bikes. More people on bikes makes people more aware of bikes. And when you're aware of bikes, you slow down. And so that's one of the, one of the things that you see right away. The other thing is, is that the people who ride bike share aren't experienced cyclists typically. They're not out there. And so people know that. That's an oxymoron, of course. I mean, there's a contrast in terms of inexperienced riders. That would be, yeah, because they, they're more cautious. Okay. And sometimes an experienced cyclist is thinking, oh, I can do this and I can do that and I can make it through here. And I see it with motorcycles. I see with cars. They're not necessarily experienced, but they think they are. But people on a bike are very conscious of their, of safety. So they are more cautious. They'll stop at lights and they will ride to the right. And they, you know, they'll do things that are safer behaviors. Now with the tourist market, we don't, you know, I don't think they're going to get online and look at the, the ordinances about riding bikes in the streets of Honolulu. And so what's to prevent them from riding on the sidewalks? Because they don't, they don't know the law. They're probably not going to know the law. Right. Well, how does, how does that work out for the program? Yeah, it's, it's sort of like, how did the rental cars do it? Right? Because rental cars rent cars to Japanese drivers who are now driving on the off. Have you ever driven, driven in Australia or something? No, you're driving on the other side. On purpose. I chose not to rent a car in Australia. But it is that, it's that same kind of thing. We're renting cars all the time. So we're planning to do, we're planning to include on our baskets, on the inside, the rules. Okay. In Japanese. And so we'll do that. And then through any of our outreach through the tour groups and, and, and try to underscore those kinds of things. And then we're going to have probably 30 people on the street rebalancing bikes and, and taking care of bikes in the stations. We also can use that as a reminder to educate people to get them off the side. So you're going to have ambassador, bike ambassadors upstairs? Yeah. So they're moving bikes around. One of the main things is making sure that we have bikes where they need to be. So if all the bikes are moving one direction and docks get full, then we need to move the bikes out so that when you arrive with a bike, you have a place to put it. Okay. Let me ask you this because I saw this term and I'm scratching my head. I'm going the term calming traffic. Calming traffic. Yes. Okay. That these bikes will tend to calm traffic. Yeah. Now the cynical part of me says, are you going to slow traffic up? Yes. That's the same calming traffic as the politically correct way to slow traffic. I'm glad we're from Seattle. We know all about the PC here. Yeah. But you know, it's like, when I think about it now, it's people are inattentive and going fast. And I think that's the combination that is that I see more and more as I'm out driving around or riding bike. I ride a bike a lot. I think that as people start to recognize that there's more people using the road, that that can cause them to be more attentive. Nobody wants nobody wants to hurt anybody. That there will be more attentive and yeah, they'll be slow. Will it increase traffic? No. But will it slow traffic make people more aware of other people? Yes. Given our marketplace here, especially if you're going down Kawa Kawa or you know, I don't know that I don't know how that's going to work. Just to be honest with you, because there's people that are frustrated enough trying to get through Waikiki. And the question is, will this create more of a bit of a nightmare for everyone? I don't think so. I would say though that any transition is difficult. When you're trying to do a shift, when you're trying to help people move to something else, there's a period, it doesn't happen overnight. Human behavior doesn't happen that way. But I think as we start to see, if people start to say, oh, you know, traffic's bad, maybe I'll take a beaky. You know, that's what I could see happening. And that's what some of the merchants and small businesses are saying in some places is that people already don't go there because they know traffic's bad. And that's one of the big issues with Waikiki. We don't go there as local people, as residents, because there's no place to park, the traffic's bad and all that. So now maybe we can open up some neighborhoods that have been precluded from having residents go there, because they can get in and out more readily. But yeah, transitions are hard. And this is we're a nonprofit organization. We're, you know, I'm doing this as sort of my passion project, because I want this to be the kind of place where I can grow old and walk around and that my kids will want to live here. But I've said to myself, this is a 10 year look back. This is one, get it going. I'm confident just based on what I've seen in other cities that's going to make a huge impact and faster than you might think. But I'm not going to look back for 10 years, because I think in 10 years, then you'll be able to see the impact of it all. I have a funny feeling you're going to be very successful. I wanted to ask you about another issue that comes up with bike sharing programs. And that is vandalism issues and or theft issues. So how does bike share Hawaii going to proactively work against that? Yeah, isn't that an interesting one? Because that one comes up all the time. People tell me, oh, all your bikes are going to be in the homeless camps. I get that all the time. Well, first of all, when you check out a bike, we know it's you that checked out the bike from the station. So at that point, because we have your credit, whether you've signed up online or used it at the kiosk, you've used a credit card or used something that we have in a connection to you from a financial standpoint. Then at that point, then when you're with it, then you're responsible for it. So you don't want to leave it sitting around for somebody to steal. As soon as you put it in a station, it's pretty secure. You can't get it out. So then it's like, OK, I can't get it out. What can I do to it? So from a graffiti side, we could expect graffiti. We're going to have teams on the street all the time. We're going to be watching at the very beginning and some of the areas we expect that we may have more issues than others. But we're going to be monitoring them all the time. We know that we need to have a clean, pretty, well-maintained system for people to want to use it. Yeah, well, great. I wish you all the success. I think we really want to see this be successful and be out there 10 years from now. So I'm Tim Apachele. That's Moving Hawaii Forward. And we'll see you next couple of weeks from now next Tuesday.