 and welcome to Stand the Endage Band on another really beautiful day here in Hawaii. I'm Stan Osterman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies, part of the State of Hawaii's D-Bid, and our state business opportunity and development program. So I'm on my lunch hour, so I don't charge just my state job, so just stick with me. I can only be here a half hour, so pay attention. I'd like to start off with, I got some information this week from a friend on the Big Island who has a professor friend on the mainland who did a great video series about how energy blind we are. And it really struck home, because most of us don't really think about how much energy we consume every day. You know, we turn on lights, we turn off lights, we jump in our car, we move around, but we don't really take into consideration what it took to get the food to the grocery store, what it took to get the gasoline to the gas station, what it took to, you know, basically produce the electricity that runs in your house. And we really are kind of, not kind of, we're spoiled rotten with the amount of energy that we use to get things done. I mean, as a really quick example, I live on the windward side of Oahu and it takes me like 15 minutes to drive over here in the morning because I leave kind of early. But if I had to walk over here, it'd be three or four hours. And if I got to ride a bike over here, it'd probably be an hour, you know, if I'd have to pedal uphill for a while, then I could post downhill. But the relationship is important because, you know, if you think about the definition of energy, it's neither created or destroyed, it just changes forms, you have all kinds of energy. Solar, you know, visual spectrum, you have sound, you have muscle movement, you have kinetic energy, you have heat energy, you have all kinds of energy, and it just changes forms. And we just take all this stuff for granted. So really, we all want to start being more conscious about energy. I'll share with you a quick illustration that this guy had in a graphic form. He had a picture of himself on his farm, and he's standing in front of his horse, and his horse has behind it a quad, and behind the quad is his truck. And he says, I am one-tenth horsepower, and my horse is one horsepower, and my quad is 40 horsepower, and my truck is like 260 horsepower. And what he's telling you is, I can only do one-tenth of the work of my horse, you know, in terms of amount of work done in a limited amount of, in a certain amount of time. But all the way up to his truck, that's doing 260 times what his horse can do. So comparing him to his truck is a huge gap in capability, and how much energy that you need to have to do the work of a human being compared to the typical vehicle that we take for granted. So one of the ways that you handle conserving energy, and trying to be cleaner and greener, is to be efficient in your personal transportation. And here in Hawaii, we have a great opportunity in downtown Honolulu, called Biki, or Bike Share Hawaii. And they do a great job of putting bikes out there for people like me who got my bike stolen, and need to get around town. And a bicycle is probably one of the most, if not the most efficient way to get around. In terms of speed and amount of energy you have to put in human power, it's extremely efficient. So we have with us today, Justine and Todd from Bike Share Hawaii, Biki. And they're gonna kind of get us up to date on what's been going on in your world. So welcome, and if we could start off with, I'll start off with Justine, just a little bit about how you got into Biki, and then Todd, and then we'll get into some more in-depth discussion. Yeah, sure. So Biki was launched in 2017, but really the concept of bringing Bike Share into Honolulu started back in 2008, 2010. There was a pilot system in Kailua. It was just a two-station system just to kind of really introduce Hawaii to the concept. That was there for a couple years, and as that was happening, the kind of those larger scale systems were kind of popping up all over the US. And so Honolulu was actually one of the last cities to get kind of a larger scale system, but it was great. So we were piloting one, but then we still got all the lessons learned and got to do a lot of research of systems that really kicked it off. And I've been a part of the team doing some grant writing. We are a non-profit, so we did the fundraising and the planning and the branding, which took a lot of outreach initially to really introduce that concept into the community, get folks ready for it, and then as soon as we launched, we were lucky enough to also be, because of our partnership with the Department of Transportation Services, we had access to federal app funding, transportation, alternative program funding. So that funding allowed us to expand really just about a year and a half later, expand our system by 30%, which is super exciting. And one of the things that I love to emphasize about Honolulu and our system, kind of the original leadership, it was really important to them when we launched the system, it had to have that ultimate utility. So we didn't wanna do, okay, let's start with 30 stations and see how it goes and go to 50 stations. It was really important, like we gotta go big and it's gotta have that ultimate utility. And so it was 100 stations, which sometimes I think it was hard for some folks that didn't, we couldn't reach everyone in terms of keeping people really informed about what this was, how this was gonna go, but it allowed us to have the utility that means in our first year, in the first calendar year, 2018, I believe we had a million and 7,000 trips, a little bit over a million trips and 65% of those were Hawaii residents using it, which is really cool. Most cities see something more like 80% visitors, 20% of residents. And I really think that was the key of launching with that utility. So it's been awesome to have that launch and then continue to grow with the resources and the partnerships. So like, Deacon, it's a good advantage of your experience prior to coming over to be in Kailua. Yeah, I feel, I really, I inserted myself, I was doing that program and then I was like, I was like, yeah, stopping, that's exactly what I was like writing grants and I was like, Ben and Laurie, I wrote you a grant. They're like, ah, we'll keep this little girl around. So I just like inserted myself and then right before we launched, I got this full-time position of grants and programs. How about you, Tata, what got you into it? Actually, Bikki brought me back. I had been shipped right here after the Peace Corps in the Philippines, ended up going to UH, Department of Urban Revenue, planning the 90s and then got frustrated with where bicycling and green transportation was in the 90s in Honolulu. So I left Honolulu to do car sharing and traffic calming and pedestrian black spot studies in the Pacific Northwest and bike parking throughout the nation and went to Abu Dhabi with Alta. And then I was brought back by Bikki based on my transportation skills in the public and private side. And because a lot of what we do is, you know, is in the public realm, you know, talking to people about putting stations in parking spaces, in parking lots, other locations where you need to be savvy, but also on the public sector and private. Right, yeah, you have to do it smart. And I appreciate the time it took to pull all this together because, you know, I watched it as it was maturing. And as you went through all the planning and coordinating with the city and where you're gonna put the bikes and where you're gonna put the racks. And the community too. Yeah, and coordinating, I mean, you take up parking stalls in front of the business, they're not real happy. You know, so you have to coordinate all that and make sure it's done right. And it's a lot of work. Permitting, studies, you know, a lot of business and legislature to make sure people understand what you're doing. I think most people don't realize that for every peaky station that's out there, we probably went through at least 10 locations before that one was approved. Well, Justine, why don't we get started with a couple of images that you brought and talk to them. So if we could bring up the first graph and talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so this one's exciting to just really show our growth. Again, because we had that large system size, we really kicked it off. I think at launch, we already had the rides per bike per day kind of industry standard about, I think it's like two points, about two trips. One point seven. One point seven is the standard. So we were already exceeded that as soon as we launched. And it kind of felt like, okay, this is maybe just excitement, people trying it out, but it has just continued to grow. And it's, I think everyone's blown away by that utility. In 2018, it was announced that for the last calendar year, even though Beakie had only been in existence for six months at the time, but the utilization ranked Beakie as the eighth most heavily used bike share system in the country. So it's definitely like getting attention across the nation, which is really cool. And as you can see, that just continues to grow. I think we still have record months, obviously with the increase in the system size, but if you look at October, 2017, we had about 60,000 trips, and October of 2018, we had about 100,000 trips. So that's like a 60% increase and similar for December. So that growth has just been exponential and really exciting. I mean, I think what Beakie is showing, we're taking a million, we're adding a million bicycle trips to the Urban Street Grid and we're taking off vehicle trips. So I think the key takeaway for that is, we're converting people that can have a choice. If you live in Cacaaco and only need to go a mile for a quart of milk, while you're converting your car trip to a Beakie trip, then you're freeing up that parking stall in that street space for someone from the Windward side or the Kapolei side to come into town. One thing I like to talk about too, in terms of, you have your service area, so it's like, here's where the people who use it, you know the people that live here and work here, but what's been unique about our system is in terms of our membership options, we have the monthly plan for folks that are, could maybe use it every day or live by it or work by it, but we have also what we call the Free Spirit Plan, which is a bank of 300 minutes that you can use in any increment. And I think that's what's also allowed folks that live on the North Shore, on the West Side, over in Hawaii, they have that plan that gives them that flexibility. So even if they use it only once a month or just for work errands, it gives them a way to do that, you know, without having to commit to a monthly plan or the single, so I'm happy that we have that flexibility. Because the minutes don't expire that month. Right. And you can use it, dip into it over a series of a couple months or a year. And you can recharge it too. Yep. Let's throw up that second graphic too and take a peek at that. We can talk about that one. Yeah, so this is some of the demographics we've been able to collect of who our members are. So if you can see that kind of our biggest age grouping there is 18 to 34 and 35 to 49. We do have a great percentage of folks that are over 50. And this is the kind of data that I like to see because as a nonprofit, we also have a really community-driven mission to, you know, deliver on the community benefits that bike share we know in terms of reducing energy and imports of oil, increasing opportunities for physical activity. And I think right now we're still at that piece where the people that kind of get it right away are going to be drawn to it and going to be using it. And that's that age demographic of 18 to 35. How important is the data that you just put up with things like grant writing to make sure that... I mean, that's key for me, you know? A lot of our original grants were about outreach. Let's educate about the concept. And now... The hope. Yeah. And now it's really, okay, here's what we've been able to hit. So here's what's kind of my next step. And so, for example, what I always love to talk about is AARP. So there was an opportunity. They had a grant opportunity. And so we did a number of rides and really targeted outreach for folks over 50. You know, our city has the age-friendly city initiative, making sure people can age in place, the complete streets, making sure these projects, you know, even when we're talking about bike infrastructure that it's for a wide span of people. And so I feel like it's my responsibility to see these initiatives and find these funding opportunities that make sure we can target the folks that aren't naturally drawn to it. You know, with the older folks, I realized some of the initial barriers is the technology, you know? These stations can be kind of intimidating. And so it kind of killed me that, you know, we're so widespread in the fact that some people are looking at these and say, oh, this isn't for me. I don't know how to do this. And so we used some grant funding to partner with AARP to reach that demographic so we could do some really like hands-on tutorials. I mean, I showed them how to download an app and then just getting them back on a bike after they hadn't been on a bike in 20 years or 30 years. And then it's just something they can do either for fun or just get that physical exercise. And just, I think, to feel a part of the community and these things that are happening like complete streets, like more bike infrastructure. Yeah, I tell people, I'm an analog brain in a digital world, so I get that outreach. Well, it's actually, and also it's flipped generationally as Dustin has mentioned, you know, the electronic digital interface for the older generation is the barrier, but not the bicycling. And what we're seeing in some cases, it's the opposite for the youth. They know the digital, but it's the analog. They are not as savvy about cycling. Yeah, and so on that note, if you looked at our demographic span again, we didn't even have, you have to be, you can be 16 and over. So based on that info here, we don't even have 16 on there. So less than 12% definitely between 16 and 18. But to me, that's such a key age. I mean, that's when you're super impressionable. And so we can get that age demographic excited about bike share and just understanding it. And they can, you know, ask for bike share membership instead of a car. I think in terms of that financial burden that gets lifted off of their family and of course that independence. Well, additionally, you know, what the Dutch have found is that drivers, cyclists as drivers are better drivers because they've been vulnerable in the street. And if we can get those skills early on in youth drivers, you know, Juliana, then they'll be a better driver later on. That's a good concept. I'll talk about that when we come back from our break because we need a quick break here for Think Tech to talk about some of their other shows. But I was just down in Australia and they had an interesting concept on this. We'll see you in 60 seconds. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, the host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m., aloha. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Oh, hi, Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii. With Think Tech, Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch, for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay and aloha. Hey, thanks for joining us on Stand the Energy Man, this beautiful Friday in Hawaii and on my lunch hour, if I hadn't mentioned that in class. So we're here with the Biki folks and we were talking about how kids that are educated on bikes in traffic become better drivers when they're adults and I was gonna explain to you that my wife and I went on a vacation down to New Zealand, Australia last year and what they have is they have a little park that are actually set up as regular streets but they're for kids on scooters and stuff and the kids have to follow stop signs and street lights and stop for emergency vehicles. I did it as a child in London. Yeah, and so they actually have kids riding their bikes and their scooters and stuff on these little things when they're just little toddlers to learn the basics of how to ride and I think that's something I haven't seen a lot in the US but it'd be a great thing. There are a few programs in Alaska. It'd be great to have some in Hawaii cause I certainly have some in Hawaii. I do want to make a plug for our partners, Hawaii Bicycling League. So they do bike ed in elementary school, fourth grade. So they are getting in there at that young age to kind of teach them how to ride a bike and get back to exposure. They're on their second generation I think of students. They've done the parents of current bike ed members. Oh, okay, yeah. That's important because I mean, I don't know if we teach drivers that anymore if it's mandatory. It was mandatory when I was growing up here. In school. And I see, I mean, this morning classic example, I had a guy on the H3 past me on the shoulder lane. Oh my God. You know, and we're doing 60 miles an hour almost, you know, going uphill and he must have been doing 80 and the lane on the left side of me is doing a little bit faster than me. He went zipping by three or four of us on the shoulder lane. And if I had just lost my concentration and drift a little bit, he didn't smack into the wall. He had no place to go. And, you know, that kind of stuff, we need to train our drivers better and Beaky helps us. I don't get too far off track now. So tell us a little bit about, you know, maybe where the future is for Beaky. Not just in Honolulu or not just in downtown Honolulu, but as we get out into more of the rural areas or the more like West Oahu where it's kind of a developed community and actually designed for better bike paths like that. Well, definitely, you know, I remember in planning school in the 90s when the second city, Kapolei, was being laid out, there was definitely that hope of providing a ready-built community with transit, bikeways, walkways, you know, some of them, the things we in this city had forgotten to do. So, Beaky is definitely looking to grow and continue to grow, you know, we're looking at phase three, Kainuki area, we're looking at Pohi Palama. And we're also in discussions with the city about heart, you know, because they are laying out with their light rail stations when they're operational, parking spaces, parking areas for Beaky. Now, we do need, you know, Beaky stops, you know, outside the station area too. So, it is our hope that, you know, with the city slowly implementing its bike plan that there would be these on-street facilities, either protected or bike lanes, so that folks can thrive, operate their Beaky from home to the transit station. That is really the hub and spoke and the model of a lot of bike share systems throughout the world. I haven't been to UH very often, so are you guys in UH right now? We have six stations, and we want, and our customers want more. We have them at KCC, there's one station on campus and two on just the joining of the campus. Actually, the one on campus is used quite a bit, more so than some of the UH sites. HPU has been also a great partner. There's stations rounding their downtown campus. And, you know, I was just at the foreign trade zone about a week and a half, two weeks ago, and there's a whole bunch of other bikes just kind of lined up there, and the guy who runs the foreign trade zone was talking to the thing, hey, do you know anybody that wants a bunch of bikes because these guys haven't cleared with the city yet, and they want to just put these bikes out. And I remember the scooter thing we had happened a couple months ago, and that went over like a lead balloon. Okay, bye, maybe you can use them? Yeah, what is, what's, your concept is, you know, you pay to use the bikes, you also maintain them and stuff, and they have docking stations where you go in and out of. How do you guys view those other just kind of drop and go bikes? Well, actually, there's more to it than that. I mean, Justine can speak to this, because in our initial startup, we did a lot of community discussion and customer surveys about what features on the bike they wanted, you know, and the stations, dockless versus docked. Yeah, when we had, I think it was in 2015, we did a demo day at the design center, and we had kind of our four finalists of equipment, and it was two dockless systems and two dock systems, and we had the community come in for a weekend, and they just voted on different features, and PBSC equipment, which is what we went with, was the overall favorite. As we mentioned, Ben and Laurie did a lot of initial research, and those two years from the organization, Forming and Launch, they did a lot of research, they got to travel to a couple different systems, kind of check out how they're doing it. At that time, really, dockless was pretty... Nanoscent, yeah. Yeah, new, you know, the dock was pretty well-established and was showing those benefits in those cities, and I think when we thought about Honolulu and looked at it in terms of the space available, you know, you look at cities, I think like Chicago and New York, and they have these super wide sidewalks, and they have that furniture zone space, and Honolulu just doesn't have that, you know, so it just... Well, we used to, but it got converted into parking lots. Yeah, so it just made, in terms of the pallet for bike share at the time, and the idea of it being organized, we just felt like dock was the way to go, and I think that's been... And a lot of that was trying to avoid being a problem. Yeah. I mean, that's why we spend, often, six to nine months talking to the community before we put icky stops in, because we want to minimize that negative interaction that sometimes dockless has, because with customers, it's like shopping carts. Yeah, definitely. When people leave shopping carts by the bus stop or in the sidewalk, those are daily negative impact. And when we talk about how these systems are being used, we, our membership data, we can see, 50% are using icky to get to work, 50% of our members that responded to our survey are using it to get to work, and so that dependability, when I've tried dockless in other cities in Florence, it was like, okay, I want to use a bike, but okay, I have no idea where it is. You know, it has the app, but if you're with a group of people, just that idea of a dependency, I felt that dock-based systems have been able to provide that. Well, and additionally, because the docks are there, people go to them, either on their foot or on a icky, and then they discover more business. But back to the dockless versus dockless. So the two technology, the two operational models have their advantages. I mean, so for the built, dense, urban form, the dock systems are a better way of managing the sharing of the public realm. Now dockless works very well in low density areas, maybe resort communities, maybe Kailua may have been a better dockless system, or Apollae, or those areas where you may have, you or users depending on the bike, and more wide open spaces. Have you had any surprises? Good or bad? I mean, what do you find like is a vandalism problem, or is a theft a problem? Actually, that's been a positive surprise. I mean, there's almost daily stories of us getting calls to the call center saying, you know, this bicky shouldn't be here, and people calling in, and I mean, some of that's early adopter syndrome, but it's also, I think the community really has a lot of a low-hopper bicky. Yeah. Yeah, we would get calls in, they saw a blue bike in the back of the truck, headed on the highway, and then we end up sending our guys out to Waipahu, and it's like, nope, it's just a blue bike, but thank you so much for letting us know, yeah. Yeah, my wife has a blue bike, I gotta tell her to be pretty open. She even has a basket on the front too, so. Yes, I mean, it's almost a daily activity. There's people calling them in, and we bring them back sometimes, you know, it's almost like they go on a little holo-holo trip. Have you had any really big surprises? I mean, impressive things where, I know your ridership has actually been probably one of the biggest, but you know, and that's an encouragement. I mean, it seems like, you know, taking from that and the amount of time you take to approaching the community and getting their input makes it successful. Well, I think the biggest surprise, the positive surprise, has been people anecdotally telling us that, you know, they do have a guaranteed car parking stall at work, but they leave their car, when they're at work, they take bicky out for errands, meetings, and powhana trips, because it's just quicker. Yeah, that's what I did with my bike before I was stolen. On that same note, I think one of the talking points I received a lot when I was before Bike Share launched was, we don't need Bike Share in Honolulu, everyone who wants the bike already has a bike. And I think probably over half of our members do have their own bike, and I think what I've been surprised is just the actuality of people using it for just an option, you know, the idea of having it as a one-way possibility, and it's not about getting rid of your car, it's not about getting rid of your other bike, and people get that. Well, I mean, as a bike owner and rider, it's a hassle to bust out a chain, find a pole, I've had security guards in this building, by the way, tell me, oh, you can't park your bike there. You know, I mean, it's a hassle, yeah, where's the bike right after this building? And you need three locks, you need a U-lock, and you need like three of the other ones. Yeah, and when mine was stolen, it had five feet of pretty good chain from Home Depot and a pretty hard padlock, and it was figure-aided through two loops on a bike rack in my building, and they still came out with bolt cutters and it's gone. Well, that's assuming you can even park your bike in your building most, like I live in a 1960s building, the bike room is a nightmare, and yet they won't let us bring our bikes into our apartments unless we, you know, go up nine or 10 stories on the stairs. My neighbor's bike was just stolen yesterday in their parking lot, so. I think that is the key, I mean, not having a bike or the difficulty of maintaining a bike has been a bigger barrier as, and that's what beaky's broken. I mean, if you go out on any downtown street corner during peak morning commute or afternoon commute, sometimes we found it that half the bike's passing by are beaky, and then in the off hours, sometimes we've seen four times as many beaky, so that helps because it's safety numbers. More bikes, more times you see a pedestrian bike in the street, drivers tend to respect them more. Yeah, well, we're down to our last 60 seconds or so. I don't really have time to you folks to close up here with what you think's important or what you'd like to send out as a message to the community. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say in my work, I'm always just looking for partnerships and ideas that can help integrate bike share into the community with other groups. I'm actually really excited. Today was, this week was volunteer week that Kanu was hosting. So we partnered with Meals on Wheels to connect our beaky members to deliver, to be first time volunteers for Meals on Wheels and they're out delivering meals on beakies today. So we did that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and it's just a cool way to help other organizations kind of build their volunteer base and just kind of look for those creative ways to collaborate, so that's all. And I'll pitch for sponsorships. We are always looking for new relationships with Hawaii businesses. We have a new feature coming on our app called Beaky Bites. So if you're in a neighborhood, it'll drive our members to restaurants and other services with appropriate discounts. And additionally, people, especially in the restaurant business and supermarket business, should think of themselves as our fuel depots. Because, you know, Beaky may be hydrogen powered. I say it's banana powered. Okay, well, I still think it's hydrogen powered, but that's a less filling taste, great kind of discussion we'll have later. But thanks for being here. Both of you, I appreciate it. And thanks for joining us on the Stand the Energy Man this week. And just remember, it's either bananas or hydrogen, but Beaky is powered by something and it ain't electricity. So get out there and get a Beaky and do Garao Honolulu with Phoenix Friday on Stand the Energy Man. Hello. Hello.