 Welcome to the two-wheel revolution here on ThinkTechHawaii.com. I'm your host Peter Rossig. This is a show where we talk about what's sometimes called micromobility or personal mobility. Essentially, that means e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards. If you want, you can even buy electric inline skates, but I don't recommend it. And this is all about getting around with out of car, either for your daily commute or for the last mile or so. And I will encourage you to spend the whole half hour with us. We're starting something new today. It's going to be either called the micromobility moment or bike bits or something I haven't decided, but at the very end I hope to give you a little interesting tidbit for, thank you for watching. And we're very fortunate today to have with us Senator Chris Lee. He is the senator who represents Kailua, Waimanala, Hawaii. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 and then served six terms there. When he was first elected, he was the youngest legislator. I'm sure he took some ribbing about that, maybe still does. And he was very well known there for his very strong advocacy of civil rights for, especially for people of all sexual orientations and persuasions. He was also a very strong advocate for progressive policies around climate, environment and energy, which is where I first got to know him while I was the Hawaiian electric and we were, I think we all had the same goals, but we might have occasionally had different opinions about how to get there. So Chris has now made the transition to the state Senate. His last job in the house was his judiciary chair, chair of the judiciary committee, pretty influential role. He's now come over to the Senate where he's chair of the Committee on Transportation, also a very important thing to do. Chris, Senator Lee, welcome and thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. Great to be here. Oh, thanks. So you've made this transition now and can you tell us a little bit about it, the difference, the two secret differences between the house and the Senate, the difference between judiciary and transportation. How's it going for you? Yeah, you know, I find first things first in the Senate, people tend to call you back a lot faster when you reach out to the department. But you know, I mean, I think my role actually before judiciary, when I was chairman of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee in the house, there was a lot of overlap with what is today transportation. And we're at a point where I think those two sectors of the economy, transportation and energy are now so inextricably linked that you really can't treat them as separate anymore, especially as we go from traditional gas cars to electric forms of transportation, all of it from its funding streams and the way that people interact with it and all that is changing rapidly. And I'd argue, I think behind energy, which is probably the single fastest changing part of our economy, transportation is not only second, but is quickly catching up and will soon be the place of most disruption and most change in the years to come. And I don't think most people realize that transportation is a bigger source of climate change gases that impacts even then that electricity, at least here in Hawaii, certainly. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, go ahead. Well, I was going to ask you about what you see as the main challenges in transportation coming up in the next next session, which we'll start pretty soon or in the next few years ahead as we try to grapple with climate change. You know, it's actually a set of really good or we have some fortunate circumstances, you know, the federal government and our congressional delegation and president have passed the Infrastructure and Jobs Act and now the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which have a tremendous amount of money for transportation and energy and climate and all these things that all kind of meld together and really give us a huge set of new resources and tools to significantly change the way that our infrastructures laid out and the way that people commute. But I think the biggest thing is that that money and that this moment in time where we have this opportunity can't be just pushed through the traditional silos of we're going to do things kind of the way we've been doing them and maybe just double down on that. What we've seen in Hawaii, and this is true in many other places around the country as well, is a generational change. When I graduated from high school in 1999, 99% of my age group had driver's licenses here in Hawaii. Today, that is down almost 60%. You know, it is a market generational shift. And part of that is, of course, you know, climate and just people want to do things more conveniently live closer to where they work and so forth. But a huge part of it, too, is cost. And you're in Hawaii where cost of living is tremendous. Everything we can do to reduce that is important. And when you think about transportation, for example, the average resident in the European Union pays about 8% of their annual income for transportation. Here in the United States, it's basically twice that. In Hawaii, it's even higher. So there's a huge place where we can really make some progress. And I think if we can get cheaper ways to commute out there and empower people that way, that's going to have a significant impact. And I think that's really going to be the big focus for this coming year and how we rethink the way that we spend our transportation dollars, especially now that federal money hanging out there. So let's go down a little further. What would you like to do with that federal money if they were entirely up to you? Well, you know, I think there's a lot. I think the obvious stuff that everyone's been paying attention to is public transit. And obviously, there's a huge amount of change there. The city and county upon Alulu is, and all our counties are moving toward electric buses and expanding that kind of bus service. The Department of Education we've been working with, they just provided free public transportation for all students, all high school students. We'd like to make sure that continues and give people those cheaper options to get around. But also, there's electrification going on. People are moving from gas cars to EVs, which are cheaper, just generally speaking on the whole. And then, of course, cheaper to maintain and operate because there's way less moving parts. And that's something which is accelerating rapidly. But part of that discussion that we haven't yet had even here in Hawaii is what comes next. And the other piece of that is getting people options to get around without having to rely on public transportation, without having to own a car, and use new forms of micro-mobility to commute in ways that were never possible even a few years ago. And that's really significant because if you think about it, if we just electrify transportation generally, and everybody moves to EVs, it's kind of like putting solar panels on your house without first switching out your incandescent light bulbs to CFLs and reducing your overall load and putting a little bit of efficiency in the system. So we know that based on other places, other cities, other countries, a good portion of the population, especially in dense urban areas, can get around much more efficiently than having to own a car to drive two blocks, fight traffic, pay for parking, find it just to get to work, get to the store a couple blocks away when you could hop on a bike or hop on a scooter or any number of other things. So that's really where I think that third element is that we're starting to take a look at. And that's going to be a big part of the discussion that's coming here. And again, to drill down a little further, what do you think, what form will that discussion take? How will this bringing micro-mobility, I hate the word, but it's kind of worked into the mix. How will that work in practical terms, do you think? I think there's really two big elements to it. The first is, how do you incentivize these new forms of technology, especially avoiding kind of the situation we face with solar panels, for example, where everybody who was adopting solar at the front end tended to be on the wealthier end of the spectrum and those who were not kind of got left out for a while. So we want to try and reverse that and make sure that everybody has access. And that means, for example, we have our $500 rebate, which we created just this past year for electric bikes, electric mopeds, things like that, taking a look at expanding that to figure out what else can we do to get people options to get around far more efficiently and cheaply. The second piece of it is addressing our infrastructure. None of that matters. None of having bikes or mopeds or scooters or anything matters. If you can't safely get around in the first place and our roads are notorious for being dangerous. We unfortunately in Hawaii, other than the highest cost of living in the among the highest cost of transportation per capita in the country, we have some of the most dangerous roads and we have the absolute worst senior citizen pedestrian fatality rate and typical crash rates. They're spiking this year again as we speak, unfortunately, and it doesn't have to be this way. And so question is, how do we use the resources we have, especially that federal money and retool the ways that we have our traditional state funding of our roads so that we build roads and sidewalks and bike lanes and paths that are absolutely safe and separated from each other. So you'll never have a situation where a kid has to get on a bike to get to school and is riding down the street three feet away from cars flying by 40 miles an hour. It's just madness. And it's why we have the tragedies that we face on a daily basis here. So that's going to be a big part of what we do and rethinking that whole infrastructure and the bureaucracy, the state and the counties so that we tweak it so that they can do things more efficiently and build things out differently. That's going to be a big part of where we're going. I think we've had a big push in the last few years on electric vehicles, which is great, and we see more and more of them. But what I don't think we've gotten out, the word hasn't been gotten out sufficiently to say, even if everybody goes to an electric vehicle, that will not get us to net zero. It will not get us clear of climate change. We have to have something else. And as you say, that something else is other forms of transportation that don't involve cars. I mean, electric cars are great. But if the electric vehicle happens to be a Hummer, which is thousands of pounds and very low efficiency, we haven't gotten that much further ahead. So I think it's time to start talking. Obviously, that's why I'm doing this show, so we can start talking about this question of how do we get beyond cars for many, many people. So the question then is, electric vehicles have not been with that conflict, have not been with that controversy. Now you're talking about taking away my lanes, about you're talking about taking away the place where I drive, you're talking about taking away parking spaces. You see there, you fear there's going to be a lot of conflict as we move in this infrastructure and in more micro-mobility, more personal mobility devices. Are you worried about a big culture clash? You know, I think in the context that we've had some of these discussions so far, which is cars versus bikes or cars versus scooters or all of that, we're at a turning point, I think, where people understand that commuting isn't just about one form of transportation. In fact, it benefits everybody when you have multiple modes of transportation available to everyone. And right now we spend about 98%, 98% of our state dollars we collect and put back into our highways and roads and everything, on typical traditional lanes for cars and trucks. Yet, everybody is a tax-paying resident in Hawaii. Everybody commutes one way or another and a huge portion, much larger portion, you know, 60%, 70% of people commute in other ways that are not just by car, it's by public transit, it's by bike, it's by all these other things, some are just pedestrians. And we have an obligation to spend that money to benefit everybody. So when you do that, not only is it safer for everyone, but it also gets people, for example, out of cars. If you can provide for a typical family, and you know, in Hawaii, things are expensive. And because everything's been so, has been built the way it has been over the last 100 years, almost every member of a family has to own a car in Hawaii to get around reasonably anywhere. And the challenge is, you know, for parents, you got to drop off kids at school, pick them up, that means either you got to drive, take time off work to do that, or your kids have to have a car too. And each time you have additional car in the family, that's like 10 to $13,000 per year of additional cost. That's like a crazy amount of capital that, you know, our cost of living here just doesn't support. So if you can empower families and change our public infrastructure so that you can let families choose to go from say four cars for four members of the family down to three, or three cars to two, or two cars to one, and give them that option, because now they can get around more cheaply and more efficiently, that not only takes cars off the road, which benefits all drivers, but of course, it makes for better commutes for everybody else as well. So it's kind of a win win. And when you think about your typical street, you don't need to take parking spaces or lanes away or things like that often to do a lot of this. There's a lot of options to do innovative stuff in a space that just hasn't been done in Hawaii, and we just haven't seen yet, that are being piloted in other spaces. So I think some of the work the city and county's been doing, putting in protected bike lanes, for example, has been kind of game changing in a way. Right now, the state's embarking upon a new experiment, just this past year in 2021, we changed the law and I kind of rewrote DOT's mission. And now their mission is not just to build out highways for traditional commuting, but it's also to build out protected networks of bikeways and protected networks for pedestrians to get from community to community, and finally build out those safe modes of transportation so everyone can get around fairly. And that's really from a taxpayer's perspective, finally going to provide some justice for all the people who are out there who either don't own cars or commute by their means and want to see some of their own dollars that they're putting in as tax dollars or paying into the highway fund to go to support infrastructure that's a little bit broader that can support them too. I hear you, but I also hear people, some of the traditional cyclists, for example, will say, you know, we fought for years to get bike lanes, protected bike lanes. Now we're just starting to get them. And then all of a sudden, our space is being invaded by electric bikes, by electric scooters, by these electric skateboards. Do you see some internal conflict there between the various modes of e-transportation, if you will? Yeah, you know, there has been. And I think it's an ongoing discussion. Each time there's a new form of it that comes out, right? And you got electric scooters and one-wheels and all kinds of different stuff going on, all kind of in the same space. But I think we're maturing a little bit in the technology where it's going kind of from what was the early days of kind of wild, wild, wild west where people didn't know what to do. You know, scooters were left on a sidewalk randomly, and then you just pick it up there now to where you have specific designated spaces for these to go. I think the conflicts between, for example, traditional cyclists and people on electric bikes is finally starting to coalesce into kind of a new norm. And that's something which can be helpful for everybody because you kind of, we're basically rewriting the rules of the road as we go as a society to embrace new technology and innovation. But the great thing is I think there's space for everybody. And one great example that I was just in Berlin over the summer meeting with the chancellor, the new chancellor and getting to use their infrastructure. And it was my first time in Berlin. And we had a group of Americans and a group of Germans, and we all split up into teams and we got around the city in different ways. Some were on scooter, some were by train, some were by car and Uber and some were just walking. I was in the electric scooter team. And we got around the city faster. I mean, it's a big city. We got around the city much faster than anybody else did. And there was space built specifically for this kind of transportation around the city. And so we know it can be done well and efficient. And that's something we just have to think about when we're putting money into our infrastructure going forward. So there is a room for voices for all these users of transportation. And as we sort of get our dollars onto the roadways and into the sidewalks and bike lanes, there's going to be space for everyone. So we're not there yet. So that's where the conflict is coming from. But when we get there, it'll be better for everybody. So your scooter team got there ahead of how many other groups? Oh, I think there were like eight different groups or something like that. All right. A security experiment. You know, and I think it's also worth remembering when you do visit places like Berlin, you visit, you go to Copenhagen or you go to Amsterdam and you see this tremendous bike, you know, bike culture. It didn't happen overnight. It happened because some elected leaders primarily said, you know, we can't continue going down the car route. Our city wasn't built for it. And certainly Honolulu qualifies as a city that wasn't built for an infinite number of cars. So we're going to have to do something else. And, you know, it didn't happen overnight. And it took in the cases of some of these cities 30, 40, 50 years. And, you know, we don't happen to have that much time. But on the other hand, things are changing a lot faster in our world than they were back then. So I think it's always a learning experience to go see what other places have done. And I'm glad you're getting out there and coming back here with the inspiration of those kinds of things. So let's talk about the e-bike rebate a little further. That's the main reason I wanted to get you on here. It's really, if my research is correct, there are only about a dozen states that have e-bike rebates of any kind. Some of them are statewide. Some of them are local. But so Hawaii is joining what I consider a prestigious group of progressive states to do this. And I think you're, if not the main mover, one of the main movers behind that happening. So first of all, thank you. And second of all, how did it happen? How did you get this going? You know, this actually came out of a much larger bill, which would have also provided rebates for electric vehicles and a bunch of other stuff. And at the end of the day, we narrowed it down to electric bikes and electric mopeds for two reasons. One, because you get a lot more bang for your buck, right? We're using taxpayer dollars and federal dollars and other things to spend on our infrastructure. We want to make sure that we're doing it most efficiently. A rebate for a car would be, you know, many thousands of dollars, which is a lot fewer cars you can fund out of the same pot than you can electric bikes. And we know that the real opportunity and benefit, especially getting around places like downtown urban Honolulu, for example, is not so much by car, but by these cheaper, more efficient methods, which is why you see all the pizza delivery companies now switching over to electric bikes, getting around. It's just faster. You don't have to worry about parking and all that. So anyway, we want to start there. And that's not to say we're not going to come back to look at, you know, additional rebates for EVs and all kinds of other stuff. But we started with electric bikes and electric mopeds too, because you do have a lot of folks who can't afford cars, you know, for example, university students who need to get around, they tend to buy typical mopeds and you hear them on the highway, sounds like an angry hornet flying by. And we know countries like China and others have done a whole lot of innovation and now switched over completely to electric mopeds. And that's not only improved quality of life in urban areas because it's a lot quieter, but also it's a lot cleaner and it's a lot cheaper because you have to worry about gas and broken and five horsepower engines and all these other things. So it just made a lot of sense. And we hope adoption is proven and you have a lot of people who do subscribe to this. And that's something that I think other places, as you had mentioned, are now in the first, you know, a couple of years of figuring out what those results are looking like. But I think it's safe to say at this point already, just in general around the country, that e-bike adoption has been far exceeding anybody's wildest imagination because it's been so popular, because ultimately you're taking a form of transportation and simply just making it easier for everybody. So if you live in a hilly area, no problem. If you need to go further to get to commute to work and you don't want to get sweaty doing it, no problem. You know, there's a lot of benefits there that opens up cycling and biking as a form of commuting to huge number of people that otherwise couldn't before. I'm sorry. I hope we can put up on the screen the URL for the State Department of Transportation's page on this. Oh, there it is. There's a page. There's a URL. It seems like there's a fairly limited number of people who've been qualified for this. Would you say that's the result of the political process or that was thought out as being the best way to start or why the restrictions? Yeah, you know, the people who can qualify for this right now are folks who are low income. So if you're benefiting from any sort of low income program whatsoever, you'd qualify. If you're a student, you know, in high school or university, you'd qualify if you don't own a car. You also qualify and that's up to $500 off the cost of an electric bike or moped. Those restrictions are, I think, too restrictive. You know, we put them in there as a compromise as part of that political process. But if we want something to be effective and we want to maximize help for people, especially struggling families out there, you know, I think it needs to be broadened and that's part of the discussion that's coming up this coming year. Because if you think about it, we're spending taxpayer dollars to help subsidize transportation, especially for those people with this new innovative means to get around. But if you think about what we're doing right now with our money, we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars adding lanes to highways and doing other huge infrastructure projects that we all pay for that really don't benefit a whole lot more people. Traffic doesn't really get much better at the end of the day. You end up with the same amount and so on and so forth. So if instead of spending that much money, we take a little bit of it and actually give people these better options to get around, that takes that many more people off the road and has the same result for a lot less cost to taxpayers. And so it's a win-win both ways. And that's why I think if you expand this, then it's going to be a real game changer and a real win for everybody. Do you think some of that federal money might be pumped into the e-bike rebate program going forward? You know, I think there's totally options for that. There's a couple different pots of federal money that could qualify and I think if this first year of, you know, this program rolling out has some positive results, I think it gives us all the justification to kind of double down and say, all right, we're going to make more support available. So if I read it correctly, any bike that was purchased after I say July of this year could qualify, but it might be early next year before the checks in the mail. Is that about right? Right. The department does need some time to sort of stand the program up and set everything up. But qualifying, if you purchase your electric bike or moped after July 1 of this year of 2022, then you'll be able to file for that rebate when the program is ready to go. I'm counting on the chair of the Transportation Committee in the Senate to keep the department's nose to the grindstone on that one, right? Absolutely. So what about, let's talk for a moment about the Neighbor Islands. We've been talking a lot about the urban core and about downtown Honolulu. That's fine. Where do the Neighbor Islands fit into this whole transportation picture, especially the relationship between cars and these other kinds of transportation? You know, the Neighbor Islands are actually really not a whole lot different in terms of the potential benefit that they can get out of this whole revolution and transportation. Everybody lives in kind of pocket communities, you know, Maui and Big Island and Kauai. So within those communities, being able to get around the same way you would here on Oahu, if you're able to have like a short e-bike trip to go visit a friend or what have you, instead of having to get in your car and then buy traffic and go through that whole nine yards, that's a huge benefit, just the same. Making sure that infrastructure is built out properly that separates cars from people from bikes so everybody has their own safe space, that's going to save lives. And that's a huge part of this whole equation. So the other thing that we're working with with some of the departments of transportation at the county level on our Neighbor Islands, for example, on the Big Island where they're working on a pilot project right now where public transportation is just free, period. Like their version of the bus is free to everybody for the next year or two. That kind of stuff opens up new forms of transportation to folks who otherwise have never experienced it before. And in the same way, we're hoping that we can help assist the counties doing what they're doing from the state. And states typically have been kind of a backseat driver to counties that have done most of the nuts and bolts road building, but there's opportunity here. We have a lot of the federal money that's funneling through the state so we can provide that assistance to counties to help accelerate their goals here too. I've always thought that if the bus were free or much cheaper instead of the incremental increases that we'd see ridership which has fallen off dramatically in the last couple of years, as you know, it would shoot right up and we'd have to have more buses in a hurry. So if that's the way some of this money could be spent, I think it'd be terrific. So we've already talked about one of my last questions about what's in the future next for transportation and the legislature. But if there's anything you want to add, anything else that doesn't have to be about my favorite subject, e-bikes, any scooters, but anything else that you're looking at in the near to mid future in terms of transportation? Yeah, along with everything we've been talking about for micro mobility and new forms of transportation and cheaper ways to get around, just to throw something else into the mix. We've been working with electric aviation companies that are looking at, for example, aerial Uber service from spot to spot that you just call on your phone and the thing comes as basically like a helicopter but it looks like a drone, much safer, almost silent. Come pick you up, take you where you want to go for about the same price per mile as you would take your current ride share. It's incredible. And this stuff is literally around the corner. I was just in California watching the demonstration for one of these take off and fly around and come and pick people up and all that. And Hawaii is perfect for this kind of thing. So not only going from, for example, the west side to downtown Honolulu in a matter of minutes compared to an hour drive or from Oahu to Maui, for example. These kind of opportunities are now real and they're here and it's going to revolutionize the way we get around on the much bigger scale than some of the micro mobility that we've been talking about. But it all fits together in one big package and that is fundamentally what's changing transportation and will ultimately change the way that all of us get around I think for the better. You have a better cheaper way to get around, way less traffic, way less cost, way less pollution, and ultimately a better quality of life. And that's something that I think we all should look forward to and that's really what this is all about. I saw a presentation recently about Uber Eats working with a company called Neuro that is developing a driverless vehicle. So they've got a little van, it looks like a loaf of bread, of course, and it's marked Uber Eats on the side and they can deliver 30 different meals to different people along the route without a driver. You go out to the vehicle, you tap in your number or you show them your QR code or whatever it is, the door opens and you get your meal and the vehicle goes on and it's a safer driver than any of those pizza delivery guys, even the ones on the bike. So I think we're looking at a lot of changes, which brings me to my last question for you and that is, as you know, California says no new ICE vehicles will be sold in the state after 2035. ICE meaning internal combustion engine gasoline. They're saying no more. You're not going to be able to, you can drive one if you got it. Your old, you know, the Model T you've been fixing up in your garage, that's fine, but no new cars are going to be sold. And where do you, and now other states are looking at that? And I wonder where you think Hawaii is on that trajectory? Yeah, you know, what's exciting is that discussion in California so quickly moved to now New York and like half a dozen other states. This legislative session you're going to see in January of 2023, you're going to see these bills introduced all around the country. But frankly, you know, sort of where California and New York go, the rest of the country goes by default because if you're a car company, you're building cars for, you know, to serve an entire market. And if 40 million people or 60 million people, if you include other states, or even up to, you know, 50% of the country, if all these states do this, go that direction, then the whole company business model and their products are going to change to fit that. So inevitably, we are moving toward sort of the phase out of traditional gas internal combustion engine vehicles faster than I think anyone ever imagined. And that won't, I think at the end be driven by government policy but by simply better technology, innovation, cheaper products, and a public that is demanding better cheaper electric vehicles at rates, you know, 30%, 40% increases each year, year over year. And that's something that the market and the companies in it can't ignore. So I see it as kind of inevitable down the road. The question is, how do we put in the electric charging capacity to make sure that everybody can charge their electric cars? Because obviously if you live in condos or apartment buildings or things like that, you don't always have access. So it comes down to a justice and equity issue because if folks who live in single family homes tend to be in wealthier communities already have EVs, how do you make sure everyone else can access that too so that they can enjoy the cost of cheaper transportation as well? So that's really what part of this focus is with a lot of the federal money that's coming in right now for EV charging and infrastructure. Well, I live in a high rise and although I don't qualify as low income, I feel the lack of charging infrastructure very acutely. I think we may get one in our building finally. On this subject, it always bugged me that some of the coolest looking electric vehicles that were coming out of what we used to call Detroit and not that they were actually made there, but they never could make it to Hawaii because California had already had the air regulations and they could sell all these cars in California and so we could never get our hands on them over here. So we'll have to fix that up along the way here. Make sure we get our fair share. Thank you. I can't thank you enough. It's been a very interesting half hour for everybody else. I hope that it was certainly it was for me. Senator Chris Lee, thank you so much for being with us and all the best good sailing or whatever we call it in the next term of the legislature. And well, I guess there's a little election thing between now and then, but we won't talk about that. But I really want to thank you. I want to close as I promised with a micro mobility moment, a bike bit, and I think we can put it on the screen, but there's an interesting video just along the lines of things we've been talking about infrastructure. If you go to YouTube and you search for HBL, Urban Core, Ride, October 2020, 2022, you will find a two and a half minute video that the group, the advocacy group of the Hawaii Bicycle and League put together where they rode around Alamoana area, we're on Kakaako, we're around Capulani Park, pointing out the small things that could be done to improve the infrastructure by expanding some of the sidewalks or bike lanes by connecting bike paths that are not connected now. It's a very interesting two and a half minutes and I encourage you Senator if you haven't seen it and everybody else to take a look two and a half minutes of your time. HBL, Urban Core, Ride, October 2022. And I will tell you that this has been the two-wheel revolution. We've had a great half-hour with Senator Chris Lee of the Committee on Transportation in the State Senate. In a couple of weeks we're going to have a speaker, Julie Sane, who is with the Rocky Mountain Institute. Her job is urban transformation and she was also the emcee at the recent Micro Mobility America conference. But she was actually talking mostly and that's what we're going to talk to her about about the inequality issue, about making sure that it's not just the rich folks that get the benefits of Micro Mobility. So I hope you'll be with us next week. I want to thank both my viewers. Thank you very much for joining in and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Aloha. Donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.