 Welcome to the two-wheel revolution on thinktankhawai.com where we talk about personal mobility. We talk about bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards, and the personal mobility original walking. And I'm your host Peter Rossig. Thank you for joining us. Stick around because I think it's going to be a very interesting half hour. And at the end of it, we're going to have a micro-mobility moment, which I hope will be fun and amusing. So recently a very nice thing happened. The Engineering Advisory, Engineers Advisory Council of the Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association donated money and helped to put together 60 new bikes for the Hawaii Bicycling League's bike education program. And we have, we're going to talk to a member of the Engineering Advisory Council today, Harzali Hashim, and he's a complex director of engineering for the Kyoya hotels and resorts. So, and we're going to talk to one of the bicycle educators for the Hawaii Bicycling League, Malia Harunaga. So I have Harzali welcome and thanks for joining us. No problem. Thank you, Peter. All right, because I have a kind of an unusual name, I'm always curious about names. So can I ask you about what kind of name is Harzali Hashim? You can. It's actually from Malaysia. My parents were born raised in Malaysia, immigrated to Australia and had me over there. And HR are actually my dad's initials. So it's kind of a bit of a made up name. So a little bit original. You sound like an Australian though. So that's, I can sometimes tell Australians from New Zealanders, but not always. So tell us briefly about your job. What do you do for Kyoya for Sheraton? Well, I'm the complex director of engineering here for the Kyoya hotels and resorts. So that takes encompasses the four hotels here in Waikiki, which is the Sheraton Waikiki, the Royal Hawaiian, the Moana Surf Rata, and the Princess Kailani hotels. It also includes the Sheraton Maui and the Palace in San Francisco. So I help and support the directors of engineering at each of those hotels in order to maintain the facilities and any kind of sustainability efforts that they. I used to work for Hawaiian Electric and I know Sheraton here in Hawaii, especially but has a very strong reputation for environment sustainability ecological management. I'm guessing that comes down to you. Yeah, correct. When we were started previously and now we would have been brought over by Marriott's. Both of those organizations have very robust sustainability plans in place where we have certain goals that we need to meet each year and then end goal for Marriott is in 2050. Okay, so tell us about the engineer's advisory council. I'm guessing most people have heard of the Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association, which is led by Mufi Hanaman, but I don't think many people probably realize there's your anything about your council. So can you tell us briefly about that. Our engineers advisory council is kind of an offshoot part of the Hawaii Lodging Tourism Association, but kind of an offshoot where we specialize more in the facilities engineers. So it's a group of engineers from all of the hotels here on Oahu each island has their own membership, but engineers advisory council is just specific to Oahu. Members membership again consists of engineers from the different hotels, both in Waikiki as well as out in Colena or even the North Shore in Turtle Bay. In 2018 we did encompass and allied members which take encompass our vendors and contractors as well to boost that membership. Right, so how did your group decide to donate a pretty substantial amount of money and your own time and an energy to the Hawaii Bicycling League. Well, every year we like to do some kind of community service event. In the past we had installed AC units at Jefferson Elementary and also built a stage for Kaiser High School. So we were looking for something to do that was centered around sustainability, something that would would be kind of a quick head where we could instantly see the fruits of our labor. So we thought my donation would have been was was good and we were going to do it just one school. But when one of our members found the Hawaii Bicycling League and invited we thought what better way to just spread the wealth to many kids rather than just one school. Right while you're talking about it we have some pictures we can show you you had a big turnout at the last it's very recent last Saturday as we speak and that people seem to be having a good time. Was it fun. It was fun. I mean, nobody likes eating up early on a Saturday don't get me wrong. But it was fun. We had about 30 to 35 people out there and everybody was there just because they wanted to be there for a good cause and put together some bikes and get some kids that don't know how to ride or don't have access to a bike on on on two wheels. Yeah, we kept it fun and interesting we get away raffles we fed people so everybody was fully engaged. That last picture was kind of the group at the end and everybody seemed to be glad glad to be done so. And I should say that the at the end, after the assembly, the, they didn't just throw away the, the other bikes, the, the old bikes that were have been part of the education program were donated to what's called K vibe here's a picture of the organization to Kali he Valley instructional bike exchange where they teach kids to actually fix and assemble bikes and repair bikes, and to the Hawaii Boys and Girls Club so all together. You've touched a lot of people with this and, and also there were helmets provided courtesy of the Hawaii State Department of Health. You know, I personally want to congratulate you guys and I'm sure you've been thanked but I think we should thank you again. And thank you for for coming out to to talk to us about it. Okay. Welcome again to Harsalee Hashem from Kyoya, who was part of the engineering council. And now we're going to talk to Malia Haranaga, who is one of the bike education people for Hawaii bicycling league. Welcome, Malia. And you tell us a little bit about yourself, how long you've been with the bicycling league things like that. Yeah, I am the director of adult education with the pointy bicycling league. I've been with HPL teaching for them for the past 10 years. And I've been in this position for the past few years. So you started when you were eight. I started right out of college. I was going to UH Manoa and walking seemed to take forever so my dad built me up a bike from a bunch of parts. I zoomed down St. Louis Heights was at class in no time at all, and really fell into love with biking I think from that point on. So let's look at the big picture tell us a little bit about the whole HPL education effort, which includes you and I know we couldn't get your companion Taylor Clark on the show today but we will try for another time. But what's the HPL position on education. Sure. So, why do you incorporate education as one of its pillars so we have advocacy education and events. We know that education is really important, everything from Kiki to Kupuna and so that's who we serve the entire island of Oahu. We have a very popular and I would say well known program that is our bike at Hawaii program that teaches fourth graders across the state and has been going on since 1989 teaches about 8,000 kids each year. And then we have educational programs. These are both funded through grants from the city and county of Plano Lou department of transportation services and they allow us to go out and bring a box truck full of bikes to the different schools around the island. We also have adult education program which is what I manage, and that is everything from teaching adults how to ride a bike for the very first time to those that have a bike but they're not feeling comfortable or, you know, having a good time when they're riding on the street. We get them set up with the skills and the knowledge to make sure that they have an enjoyable ride every time they go out, whether it's using bike infrastructure riding on the street or, you know, even in their residential neighborhoods. We also have maintenance classes, hands on and on bike where we go over how to climb hills and really just making the ride more enjoyable and welcoming for every level of cyclists. We're going to be watching our senior cycling program that features recumbent tricycles and that program will be our Golden Gears program where we actually let folks use our 14 recumbent tricycles to ride on the Pearl Harbor bike path and there's no cars. It's a really great way to explore the island, find something that is fun and social and healthy on the three wheels super stable, and that's going to be really something I'm looking forward to. Okay, can I sign up for that right now. You can. Okay. Put me. Oh, I gotta go to the website. I thought you'd take care of me right here on on think deck. You know, seems to me most people are many people learn to ride bikes when they're kids. And with all the whatever bad habits that brings along so trying to teach adults must be particularly challenging I would think. Um, yeah it's definitely a wonderful skill to have as a child riding a bike you know getting to see your friends going to the park giving your sense that sense of freedom and exploration. And that's one of the reasons that our bike and program that teaches fourth grade is really crucial on it sets them up with those skills, whether they know how to ride or not, and make sure that they know how to ride properly in their neighborhoods. For those that maybe didn't get to experience by dead in their younger years or have never been on a bike in their life, or maybe it's been a long time. And that's where our adult learn to ride program comes in and it's pretty wonderful. We just recently had a class on Sunday, seven participants, and 100% success rate. So folks that had never been on a bike or maybe when they were five and now they're 55, coming out and seeing, okay, Joe, can I balance what is this tape. It just takes an instructor to kind of either to guide them, and also service their personal cheerleader just encouraging them you know, you're here at this workshop you want to learn we're going to we're going to do this. And we use techniques that are really safe and comfortable for novice first time writers, we always were very encouraging and we never push somebody to do something that they don't feel comfortable with. Where would you do something like this where you could be safe and your, your students would feel secure and not have to worry about running into things. Sure. Yeah, definitely if you're learning how to ride you don't want to have anybody else around you, especially cars so we use the all the way prominent, which is multi use bike path. It's kind of a little tucked away gem that I feel like not too many people know about, but it serves for a great learning space. Right. So we should say as you mentioned before, there's a lot of information about both bike ad and adult biking on the website hbl.org and opportunities for people to sign up. I don't know if this I know this isn't your your main area but if I were a teacher, or a parent of a fourth grader how would I get involved with bike ad. Great question. So our bike and calendar is usually full and set a year in advance just because of the high demand we've been going on since 1989 so the schools that have already been in the program they like to keep their certain dates. So it is. It's not impossible to get another school in but we do cover at least 100 schools on the island. So it ultimately comes on to the principal but if you go and just chat with the fourth grade instructor and your parent you can even have the opportunity to come out and volunteer when your child is going through bike and for that five day instruction. Right. And what about the adult bike ad you you said and I know from my own experience that having somebody there to boost your, your confidence and to keep you on, keep you from falling over at the beginning is very important. Is it all HPL folks or do you have volunteers turn out for that as well. Yeah. So all of our cycling workshops are put on by our league cycling instructors, they are certified nationally they've gone through a 23 hour seminar, and have been nationally certified by the League of American bicycles to teach the curriculum to teach the material to lead adults out into traffic safely. So we do employ our LCI. But there's always opportunities you know for people to come by and help out whether or not it's just getting the bikes ready, because we do provide the bikes for the students for the adult land to write program for the golden gears trick program. We're always looking for right. Right. Yeah, so for those that might want to just come out and and assist with the ride make sure everybody's feeling good drinking water that is available as far as ride along helpers that want to volunteer. So, I'm sure you know that from the point of view of people who are not avid cyclists from the point of view of drivers and pedestrians. There's always a certain kind of, you know, nervousness about cyclists, especially, you know, there are people out on their fixies and or you know we don't have a big bike messenger problem here but there's always a concern that people are going to be hot dogging that people are going to ride out from between cars or they're going to, you know, be coming down the street on the sidewalk at gazillion and miles per hour and especially for senior citizens I think there's always, you know, you think about somebody's going to knock me over and especially now with with electric bike so how do you deal with that when you're trying to educate people on on how to ride well. So, that's definitely a big concern we love seeing people writing we want to see more people writing but we need to all play together safely. Folks need to know what the rules of the road are but then they also need to follow them. So having our educational workshops that go over you know what are the the laws that govern cyclists. Why is it so important to follow them is really crucial. One thing that we really emphasize is that, you know, when you're writing a bicycle you are operating a vehicle. So you want to make sure that you're abiding by those same practices or anything that would, you know, motor vehicle operator would be doing so stopping the red lights hopefully stopping and stop signs yielding to pedestrians that's all things that a vehicle operator like a bicycle operator should be doing. Another thing that we like to tell people is that cyclists fare best when they act that are treated as drivers of vehicles. So understanding you know what what you should be doing on the road, giving yourself that space that you deserve that that's crucial to not only having a safe ride but an enjoyable ride for drivers. That's the question. Obviously is, even if all the bicyclists were great which they're not but they're getting there. What do we do about drivers. How do we reach them and give them the, you know, the sense of that will we need for safety for everybody. For drivers, it's really making sure that they know kind of what's going on in the mind of the cyclist so we'll do presentations to different groups or businesses to let them know again what are the laws so that they know, oh, this cyclist is not writing in the middle of the lane to purposely making late for work that that's somewhere that's actually they're doing me a favor by being more visible, making sure that I know where they are they're giving me control as a driver so helping them understand kind of what the mentality might be with somebody writing on a tool a bicycle that's solely human powered, dealing with you know the forces of nature wind, a little bit uphill can really make the going feel a little tough. And that's easy to forget when we're you know in a car with the windows up easy on music on right. Having some compassion, but letting them know that, you know, we're all people right we're all humans. It's this person that's driving parts this person that's driving their bicycle, and it all kind of should boil down to us being humanly and taking care of each other, looking out for each other is really important. Yeah, you know, when I many of us have had the experience of being in Europe in a city like Copenhagen or Amsterdam, and seeing, you know, the interaction of cars and bicycles and it just occurs to me that and it's, you know, and that didn't develop overnight it took those cities many years to become as bike friendly as they are. But it seems to me that every driver has probably been a bicyclist has got parents or siblings or spouses or kids who are bicycling. And so they have based on their own experience and reason to be aware of the of the cyclists around them and it's not perfect they I imagine I in those cities, the drivers are probably even more agitated some days, because there's so many bicycles, but it seems to me that, you know, over time, you know, we need to develop that kind of attitude where everybody respects the cyclists and every cyclist respects their drivers because we're all as you say humans in it together. Totally. Yeah, the more people that are on bicycles the safer and better it will be not only for bicyclists but for everybody. We know that bike infrastructure helps pedestrians. So we're definitely all for getting people out of their cars. Nobody likes sitting in traffic right. And if we were to think about every person that had the bicycle if they also have a car to say forget biking I had too many close calls I'm going to just drive. Is that a future that we would want. I would think not, you know, health would go down the environment would be heavily impacted. So having people understand that, you know, people are riding bikes, it could be because that's all they could afford. It could be that they're trying to, you know, work on their diabetes or lose weight. Or it could just be, you know, they're conscious about how much pollutants that you know cars put out and this is a small island. We can travel by bicycle we just need to get the bike infrastructure and have people see each other biking out there and you know realize oh that's my favorite on the road I you know just bring everybody together like that. So you're you're a frequent regular bike rider and I'm sure you have seen in the last couple of years first of all the bike infrastructure is improved with more bike lanes. But we also see more different vehicles we see one wheel electric kind of unicycles we see electric bicycles we see three wheelers. There's four wheel skateboards that are or even one wheel skateboards there's a whole variety of different kinds of vehicles, increasing in number some are electric powered some are human powered. And they have different speeds. And so I'm, how are we going to deal with this variety of things and it was one thing when it was just human powered bicycles, or somewhere faster than others but there were certain kind of built in limits but now those limits seem to be going away so how do we deal with this potential conflict. That's a, that's a really good question. I think right now. It's difficult because there's not definitions yet in place there's not policies set by the city upon a little by the state of Hawaii yet. And just recently they incorporated one class of e-bikes class one being under 20 miles per hour one horsepower 750 watts to be considered a bicycle that they need to register just like any other bike that's written here in Honolulu. I think the definitions need to be set first. I think micro mobility is great again, getting people out of cars giving them an option to not have to drive their car to work or to run an errand is is really important and we don't want to lose that. But we do need to make sure that everybody is playing well together, especially if we're all going to be using the bike lines which we know that there's not too many of them so we're all going to be sharing them. So how can we do that best and share them together with Aloha be courteous it doesn't really, you know, matter what wheels you're riding as long as we can ride together and not, you know, crashing into each other and, you know, we should be courteous and we should be sharing that. Hey, at least that's one person in the car. That's exactly right one less person and who might be in a car. So, what does the HPL need. You know, I sometimes ask a blank check question, if I could give you a blank check for whatever you would want to improve the bike education program expand it whatever what would what is HPL looking for to keep this going and to expand it. So, not too much. Yeah, so, you know, any kind of funding would be surely welcome here. Our bike ed program, we just got that wonderful donation of bikes to replace our two pleats of bikes, but we need to replace the vehicle that transport them so we have two box trucks that is a huge, huge thing. Our instructors can't ride all 60 bikes over to all of the schools across the island so we do need a vehicle. That's what we're looking for. As well as looking for some support for the Golden Gears trike program that you know we could get a vehicle to bring them around to different locations. If somebody is not able to get to the full city area. And then just general funding for adult education I mean, I would love to see everybody that came to one of our classes be able to, you know, use a bike that we provide, you know, for no cost because right now they have to bring a bike for most of the workshops and I really think that if you're able to get a driver or somebody who hasn't been on a bike in a while on a bicycle on the streets of Honolulu, it will open their eyes. You know, the challenges that may come about but also the fun that biking brings and hopefully kind of just get them excited to to ride and to be careful looking out for other people on the road because they understand a little bit more. What goes on the road. So that blank checkers in the mail. I don't don't hold your breath but we have a good sense of what HBL which is doing in my mind great work. Maria, thank you very very much. I really appreciate it. I'm going to you're welcome to stay and watch this little little bit here's the, the micro mobility moment that I promised with a picture that I took. Well I didn't take it okay 1886 and copy Lonnie park you can see diamond head in the background. I think park was then a racetrack and here's a guy out on the on his penny far thing which was one of the earliest bikes I just think that's remarkable 1886, but this is not one of the earliest mentions or signs of bicycles in Hawaii. So in the brief verse I'm going to read from the Hawaiian Gazette, July 21 1869, and the verses called philosophy, which is the old name for bicycle velocity. And so I'm going to read this poem. The shades of night were coming down a swiftly racing through the town, a youth whose strength could scare suffice to keep him on that strange device. So, that's the micro mobility moment. Thank you, Malia. Thank you, Harzali. Thanks to you, the listeners for staying with us on the two wheel revolution on think tech Hawaii.com will be back in two weeks with a new show. And you can catch this one again if you have such a good time you can watch this one again or see the old ones on YouTube Vimeo and many other fine platforms. Thank you very much for being with us. And have a great week. Aloha.