 We're back, we're live at 10 a.m. on a given Monday morning here on Think Tech talking about bike share. Bike share Hawaii delivers environmental benefits with Todd Boulanger who was the executive director of bike share. Welcome to the show Todd. Aloha and Aloha to your listeners out there around the world I believe. Around the world indeed. Actually we have a video out naming all the countries that we get contributions from and we stream too and it's really you're right all around the world. So Todd you know it's not only bike share that makes for environmental benefits it's biking in general and one big question I have for you is how is biking done in the time of COVID? Well it sits other than some I guess the question is overall I mean people still jump on their bicycles during COVID and actually more people did as you may have read a lot of them pressed from the continent and from other countries a lot of people transition from transit use especially enclosed transit like subways and such to bicycles and other open air options and even such as ride hailing you know ride hailing just definitely saw a drop off there because people were looking for socially distant and kind of open air transportation options are also affordable and convenient and you know bicycling ticked all those boxes. You know the thing about it is you know you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that if you're outdoors you're you're better off so if you're riding a bike and you're in the outdoors how what are the circumstances you're going to be better off furthermore I would say that riding a bike especially like in a peloton you know or well even side by side is going to be relatively safe because you're outdoors and the air is blowing the virus away from you. Am I right about that and do people understand that? I believe so I mean I'm not an aerosol or an air quality scientist but that's though you know as long as you're kept socially distant and you're you know you're healthy is a great choice and I assume you mean small p peloton not the big p peloton now regarding regarding that very regarding that very question we reached out to our members we do a bi-annual excuse me a twice every two-year survey of our membership and back in June 2020 in the depths of COVID we asked our members some COVID related questions and the feedback we got those members that were still riding biki about 79% of them stayed with biki because they felt it was the safest shared option out there you know safer than transit safer than uber lift you know sharing car with their auntie you know they just wanted to get on a bike and we also saw our our average ride time and length go up by about 25 to 30% and a lot of that was they were skipping intermediate trips like a lot of people used to use biki to get transit well when transit cut back and or the choice of being you know outside a lot of people just rode biki for those trips and additionally a lot of people because there weren't a lot of legal recreation options back last summer you know you couldn't go to parks and such people were riding bikis for their mental health and now we got a lot of feedback that people were just very happy to have that option to get out of the house you know if you're if you're if you're working and living among the same bubble for so long for months or weeks getting out on a bike and just seeing the town especially why could keep when it was less crowded was was great mental medicine isn't that true you know biking is always mental medicine the good times the bad times and certainly these times to ride around get a little air get a little exercise get a little space you know the thing about it is a lot of people just stay home these days and you know you can get claustrophobic after a while there was an article about that in Lee Cataluna's column the civil beat a couple of days ago so I thought what's interesting is you know that personal worlds are changing and one of the reasons personal worlds are changing is that our you know we were limited we're contained we don't get out we stay at home and we have you know after a while you have a different view of the world and biking can help you in your you know your whole perspective but you mentioned you know that a lot of people riding riding more these days especially on beaky where you have you have the the stats you have the electronic data so tell me what kind of you know system you have that you could tell us that it's 20% more rides or rather more distance and tell us how you can determine these stats from your existing system which I've always felt was was pretty high tech where you know where every bike is and so forth how does that work Todd so you know so the beaky system the equipment is provided by the international bikeshare company pbsc and they're out of montreal canada and so our stations are our smart stations and so we know when the bikes are at the station we know what station they start at what station they end at and so from those minute by minute stats we can you know drill down and look at you know what type of rider are you a are you a member a comma I'm a member are you a visitor are you new to the system so we we can kind of drill down and we and report on those stats and and that's how we developed the ride times and the ride distances and how those changed over the years and that was part of our I guess impetus to releasing this recent news release on the environmental benefits of beaky now that we have four years under our belt and we're now in our fifth but we haven't reported on the most recent stats and so we wanted to share that with the community showing that in addition to being an essential mobility service during the pandemic beaky has also been delivering year by year environmental benefits you know everyone always thinks that beaky is a you know is a just a transportation or dts kind of benefit but we also want to show that other city departments and agencies and even state agencies have draw benefits from bike share out in the field so that's why we reached out to our friends at the climate office to get their you know input and reflection on some of our environmental stats very interesting and important because you know you are or in years to come you will be an important factor in getting around the city which is you know we'll go back to more congestion I'm sure and bikes will become that much more important I'm sure and not only as getting getting to you know where you need to go but also for recreation as you say go ahead you were going to say something to yeah you know a lot of I mean when we were when we were planning beaky back almost almost eight years ago way before the launch you know it was it was going to dovetail in in with the opening of the city's light rail or heart's light rail system but as you know it's that's been postponed and so beaky has been delivering benefits even while the rest of the system is still growing and and developing one of the the major positive outcomes the city has just completed are the war and Pensacola protected bikeways you know myself as a commuter when I used to commute the same route between Malili Ili and Kaka Ako I would have you know zero bike lanes you know if you went back five years there was nothing between those two points other than you know very busy traffic lanes sharing with cars you know maybe you had young street yeah I used to ride to work on young street this is before anybody had any bike lanes right so you would have to stop and stop and start at every major intersection now between those two points between um um Pakua market and Kaka Ako where I work I have 95 percent protected bikeway all the way in it's it's fabulous and um ward is just you know the city is just getting better and better at design as time goes on um I think the one the one important thing that beaky really has changed in the city is that you know Honolulu the citizens of Honolulu never had a shortage of bicycles you know there's there's about two bikes excuse me there's about two one bike for every two cars in Oahu but as you as you I know you know Honolulu is not like Amsterdam you know there's not people riding bikes everywhere and primarily those reasons where you know people don't know people had flat tires and bikes or they didn't have fenders or they didn't have lights so a lot of those bikes just stayed in the garages in dust whereas beaky has brought people you know reduce the barrier to the entry to ride a bike every day or every week or by choice you know when you have a bike that's available next to your office or next to your home and it's there 24-7 you're going to jump on it um well you know you may you raised an interesting point in my mind and that is that you know before beaky that's called um bb bb before beaky you've been you've been operating what four five years now but before beaky you know everybody had that bike in the garage what have you and you're right a lot of people you know had at the garage you didn't take it out much there were you know some racers and some you know dedicated people that rode bike all the time I was for a while before the traffic got too threatening and you know I just wonder about the ultimate result of all this the competition if you will you know you have bike stores still they sell a lot of bikes because the weather is good and people buy bikes and you know those people who really like to have the top of the line bikes and they're going to buy those bikes for thousands and thousands of dollars but at the end of the day Todd looking forward into the development of this this community are we going to see a tilt a tipping point toward beaky type bikes away from privately owned bikes or are privately owned bikes going to always continue in the mix what do you think well if you look at other cities I mean DC's had I used to operate a big parking garage in DC as part of the bike station system it was a coast to coast smart mobility hub system and bike sharing entered DC about 2010 one of the first systems in the nation and in the eight years I was working with that system the sale of private bikes never never dropped off and even rent rental bikes I mean the market for renting bikes is kind of split between bike share which is by the minute and daily rentals you know if you want to go on a full tour of the island long distance many hours you're generally going to rent a bike from one of the fine shops like here in kakaako and or in town the city's plan for bike sharing you know the department of planning permitting back in 2014 did an organizational plan for bike sharing and the city does have future plans for bike share hubs you know sort throughout the island of wahu in the major populated centers now that's going to take time but even with that bike sharing generally doesn't doesn't cannibalize bike sales in as much as it leads more people to adopt cycling it's a low barrier entry you know you pay your four or five or six dollars for that initial trip depending on its length and then once you realize the streets aren't as threatening as they were maybe 10 or 20 years ago then you kind of integrate cycling into your daily life and at some point you'll realize well maybe i want to go faster or maybe i want an electric bike or i want more carrying capacity for my child or my cargo or whatever or i want to bring my child along you know beaky bikes if you're under the age of 16 without you know you're not allowed to ride our bicycles if they're youth so a lot of parents rides you know they'll they'll throw their child's bike into the back of their car and then they'll take that to the park and then the parents will ride a beaky with their child and so in many ways it's kind of a a gateway vehicle to people including bicycling more in their life yeah mix and match now one very interesting thing here is that beaky is connected with the city i don't know if that gives you a lot of clout with the city on the condition of roads for example and potholes and shadows and bike lanes and what have you but i'm sure you speak to them about it what's the connection and and how can how are you helping safety how are you helping the condition of the streets on which not only beaky rides but we all ride so bike share hawaii and beaky is really just one partner in a larger scope of promoting cycling in the city and and traffic safety i would say we bring a lot of citizens and residents and also visitors to the table you know beaky has kind of increased the the mass of consumers of that product you know imagine if you know if this if the city's electrical system you know if he goes electrical system with only 10 of the houses used electricity where beaky you know we probably quadrupled the number of the user base that we're frequently using our streets of cyclists and so that you know when questions about you know should there be a bikeway here or should you know certain traffic laws be adjusted for sharing the road or complete streets you know there's more more people in in the dialogue so as you pointed out yes beaky beaky is a partner with the city and it's a unique public private partnership so there's a three-legged kind of partnership beaky is in the middle we hold a contract with the city to provide the public bike share and then we also have a contract with our our operator secure bike share Hawaii and and they're the ones that do a lot of the hard work a and date out moving bikes cleaning bikes repairing bikes and they also own a majority of the fleet they provided the initial five million dollars to get Honolulu a world-class system when the planners at DPP when they came up with the plan the city if it had been a hundred percent community owned or city owned it would have been 10 to 12 million dollars so the public private partnership came in and and built on the initial one million dollar grant the city gave us and the one million dollar grant that the state gave us to organize and pick the pick the the operator and pick the equipment and pick the layout you know should be docked should be dockless smart bikes dumb bikes our kiosks you know we went through all that public process you know Laurie McCartney and Ben Trevino and our board did a lot of hard work between the years of 2015 and 2017 even before the first bike went out into the into the revenue system you mentioned before that you know you have stats and to me that's very very sexy you know back when you know baseball nobody even knew the batting averages now you know everything about everybody and and the announcers are telling you ad infinitum exactly what the stats are and and that makes it sexy and it makes it sexy with bikes too but not only sexy it also helps the city plan for example if you know that you know you're using this new bike lane on Ward Avenue then that's that's an encouragement to the city politically if people are taking certain routes you know then maybe that helps you understand the way traffic in general flows in the city or at least bike traffic so the stats are really important and it also makes you know you know or helps you know what the dynamic is you know we know that 4.3 million bike share rides have happened since you started this um so you know what's the dynamic is it growing is it is it diminishing certain times of the year did COVID affect it up and down or down um you know what do we need to do for planning you have the stats and so I just I wonder what stats you have and where they go in terms of planning a better city a better metropolitan area a better you know what you would call a transportation community um and you could have the best stats of all because you control the bikes you can you know and I know that uh the what is it uh Montreal outfit is the one who developed the software but is it going further than that uh can we assume that in the future there'll be more stats uh what do we got now and where are we going Todd well the the road ahead is very very exciting in the sense that you know if you look you know if you look uh as a playbook other cities you know other cities on the continent and in Europe and in Asia they've integrated bike share with you know public bus systems and you know the new holo card uh opens that possibility so you could have a seamless one ticket ride between um cycling and transit and even car sharing you know other other cities have integrated car sharing and through that you know that that shared mobility fleet um and so that's you know that's one one way of of kind of making the the data even smarter um knowing where you know how people can be portable in their mobility um as you mentioned yes we do have stats and and part of our reporting um through the press this last the month has been you know what does cycling do for the environment and and the great thing about that is it's not a mitigation we're not we're not undoing a damage like you know if if you drive a car and you buy fuel then you know you're a lot of people purchase you know clean air credits by planting trees well cycling generally avoids those emissions and so avoidance is much better than mitigation and and cycling you know think about think tech I mean what bicycling as a technology is very old but what what's made it relevant now is data and that's the key point you bring out data and also electrification you know our next phase with the help of the city and state and our other business partners would be to start electrifying the fleet the stations would recharge the bikes the bikes would be powered so that you know we could have a much broader population area service area you know back up below the valley parts of kai moki parts of new wanu and even kalihi I mean kalihi is just a great untapped market we would want to work with the city on spreading our system towards where more people live and work versus the core where we are now and you know that's the exciting part of this of this job is you anticipated my next question which was okay I've seen the solar cells on the beaky stations right so your essential electronics are being run by solar which means that at least as far as that's concerned if we had extreme weather bikes would be a beaky bikes would be a great way to get out and you know get transportation because it wouldn't lock up in other words I hope this is true that you can still use the beaky bike even if the power went down but you point out that you need the power to charge the bikes and so step two is to use the same solar approach at each station and charge the bikes is that where you're going I think that's that that end points a little further down the road the next phase for recharging the bikes at the stations the stations would have to be tied into the the electricity grid and so we've been talking to our friends at HECO the fleet electrification folks about how best to integrate beaky in that next phase into the power grid what we're what we're thinking about is you know a lot of renters you know Honolulu is filled with a lot of people living in 1960s 70s 50s apartments there's no bike room there's no secure place to park a bike recharge a bike or even recharge electric car you know if we're electrifying our car fleet we have to start thinking about where will people recharge them and so as part of that you know there'll be more and more public EV car chargers and so we're talking to folks about integrating electric bike share charging with those EV charging stations so you know we can share in the utility grid and and other things just to give you an idea but you can recharge about 50 a station of 50 beaky bikes for what the power draw of one EV car charging and again regarding resiliency a lot of a lot of cities plan for more bike use during post hurricane events and earthquake events because you're right our stations are you know our solar power is for the communications and so we can keep running even if the the current electricity grid is down our stations have a memory of members and so if you have a beaky card you could conceivably use this the beaky stations that you've been using if you're on that white list to rent bikes even say if the local cell phone tower went down and such and so I carry a beaky card because you know I can go I can go swimming at the beach and if I drop my card in the sand or the water it still keeps working but my smartphone you know may not work as well so it's my backup you know I think we will have extreme weather and ultimately the question is what happens when you know the grid goes down because of extreme weather and I'm not sure how we're going to handle that because the electric cars won't be able to charge and I guess the bikes won't be able to charge and at that point you better go back to your garage and get your old-fashioned bike and drive it and ride it well it it depends I mean there are you know there are systems where if you have an electric car plugged into the network you could you could draw power from some electric cars so that is kind of the future and and and so there is some resiliency benefit there you know people with power walls and other localized battery yeah that's true yeah yeah so let's go ahead oh but I think additionally getting back to the environmental question you know a lot of us are really kind of are on an island and we can't we can't choose not to fly jets to get around you know if we go to Maui County if we go to visit our friends and family on the west coast we have to use fossil fuels and I think the key thing about bicycling you know and beaky is that you know you can you can kind of maybe bank those fuel hours by cycling more on a walk or your short trips you know to get that quart of milk to go see your friends you know to go to work because you know you have a choice here and you know you can kind of help have fun and and do the do the the climate friendly thing in your daily life because you know you have to dip into that bank when you fly elsewhere and that's and that's I think our point in our in our current news news release well I think it helps reshape the city that the experience the scenario you describe about the quart of milk is I don't I don't want to ride five miles to get that if there's a neighborhood store I'll go to the neighborhood store with my beaky and I may make three trips it's okay because it's a neighborhood store so this this actually I mean we'll see what happens but this actually has the you know the the possibility of redesigning our neighborhoods the city has to follow and allow it from a zoning point of view but you know back in the old day right we had a lot of little neighborhoods and beaky may help re return to that well that builds into what they call is the 15 minute neighborhood and you know beaky helps when I tell my my friends and contacts on the north shore and why and I coasts and other places you know you may not have a beaky station near your home or office currently but your your aunts and uncles and your your nephews going to u.h. and other schools in town are using beaky and beaky has helped get those kakaako and those moe li li and drivers you know off the streets onto a beaky for those short convenience trips so that you know for those that have to drive in for the north shore you know it frees up lane miles and also parking spaces in town when they they have to come into town my car you know that's until rail is finished and until other options exist people in the outer areas of what we have to drive into town if the bus doesn't work for them or they can't carpool and you know with covid it becomes even more important that more people beaky in town to help the folks in the outer areas come into town sure absolutely so we've been touching on the environmental you know benefits of biking and beaky and you you had a study about that and you had an article in the paper recently but i i wonder if i could give you the opportunity to list them for us what are the environmental benefits we should focus on when we consider using beaky well the the avoidance of driving trips you know have allowed with the 10.2 million miles that beaky riders have ridden between 2017 and 2020 that has allowed an avoidance of about over 12 million pounds of carbon dioxide to be released in the air furthermore if you look at those numbers um that's kind of an equivalent to over 1200 passenger vehicles um being driven you know per those emission calculations or um over 1300 homes uh the you know the emissions from electrifying those homes for you know lights and air conditioning and many things that we need now um and so that's that's you know those are the climate climate friendly outcomes of those of those of those activities that are over four million trips on a while would have helped the other thing you know beaky allows you know beaky this data has shown that beaky is both effective but it's also fun i mean there are not a lot of environmentally friendly choices in our life that are actually often more fun than the behavior they're replacing yeah so i think that's i think that's a critical component and you know we're not suggesting that people beaky every day but you know try it once a week and then see how it fits in your life you know we have stations in the kakaako parks um those are really kind of laid back and chill places to rediscover cycling um and then you can go to salt or some other places afterwards for a great meal at highway in and and and such um traditionally we've done some um some outreach in the past with the aarp and we found that the the senior set the solar seniors they jump right back on the bikes i mean after an initial wobble they're they're like they're 20 they're like they're 15 or 10 year old again um just enjoying life and and beaky's are really designed for that to lighter they're a low step through um the seats very adjustable and so the they're in many ways it's easier for seniors to adopt cycling than it is for our youth sadly you know a lot of children currently did not grow up cycling throughout their communities you know as you and i did when we were younger um during the last bike boom um and so it's going to take a little bit more work and i think hbl's um bike education course is a great first step and they're great partners with with us and cycling in general and the other benefit that the city seeing is is what's called safety numbers you know when when drivers see more and more cyclists out on the roadway they know to kind of react and what to expect when when traveling around cyclists because you know when cyclists use a roadway they often have to behave differently than a driver does because the roadways still aren't often uh cyclists friendly there may be a pothold or may be um the traffic signal that doesn't work for cyclists you know all these little things that cyclists understand but drivers are beginning to know because more drivers are cycling as beaky customers but also there seem more um riders out there yeah we want we want Honolulu to look like Amsterdam with a million cyclists in every direction and all loving it well i'll i'll take a little bit more sunshine than Amsterdam i love Amsterdam and i've done a lot of my professional studies there um you know Honolulu could be better than Amsterdam in that sense because i agree so you know with the the environmental benefits the personal benefits the community benefits um it's all it's all good and um you mentioned that you you received the grant of five million dollars to buy your existing fleet so um my question is actually to clarify that that was an investment from the operator of the five million okay investment so yeah but the the city of St. Perth go ahead the question is um what's the next tranche uh what's the next uh you know step in terms of buying more bikes or having investors help you buy more bikes in terms of expanding the number of bike stands you know um where is this going you know if if as you as you have said this is attractive to the city to the public even to the moms and pops um where are we going in terms of increases in the future well there's there's multiple levels so right now we're in our fifth year of operation and our operators is starting to set aside funds for some very important upgrades you know the the fleet during COVID because of the lack of rental cars our bikes were being used twice as often so we have to replace parts twice as often this this next year because of the the higher use during COVID um additionally as everyone knows the cell networks are being changed you know we're 3g is going away and so all of our modems and all our stations need upgrading so that's an important upgrade tasks that our operators doing additionally um you know we're in tropical environment and so you know rust is starting to catch up on us so we have to start planning in the next year or two for some uh some painting of stations and you know long long-term maintenance um impacts plus also we have to start looking at the next five to ten years you know as we as we should um with the city's health and the state's health double or triple down on bike share you know we need to add more bikes back into the system and new bikes as we previously mentioned about electric bikes you know that's if that's a path we wish to take you know we'll have definitely more probably 300 more rides because electric bikes are more um accessible to many more riders but it also takes you know an investment of you know two x compared to the conventional or the analog bike that we have now so that's that's what we're currently involved with the city on planning the next five years of the system and the investments it'll take and and additionally as you your listeners may not know um bike share Hawaii the nonprofit you know we don't see any revenue from the system um all of our funds for planning and permitting and you know communicating like this come from our business sponsors and that's you know we're unusual in that we don't have a single city bank or a single system-wide sponsor we've traditionally had a hui of local businesses from um the electric company to hawaii specific health hmsa and such american savings bank they all shipped in to keep to keep our role going as kind of the intermediary between the city and the operator to look at the public benefit side and also to keep the system sustainable so it's called it's called bike share hawaii does that mean it's in every island uh no but good point so the name the name was developed because we do provide outreach to other systems so right now there is not a system on Maui though Maui and kawaii are interested there's only a sister system on the big island so hilo and kona uh through the nonprofit path uh the county there has funded bike share the hawaii county has funded bike share as a transit link and so that's something we would definitely love to talk to the city and county of haulu about similar initiatives here to to better link neighborhoods to transit to in town with bike share we're out of time Todd I am really sorry um but I I like to say I learned a lot about bike share biki today and I'm I'm looking forward to more and more of it because I believe it will transform our city and in some ways uh the whole state um if I can throw out one last point we're always looking for new donations and new business sponsorships so please contact me through our website go biki.org and we'd love to talk to how your business can help uh cycling and and safety and public health on waku thank you Todd Todd Boulin Boulin say the executive director of biki hawaii bike share hawaii thank you so much thank you aloha