 welcome. This is the two-wheel revolution here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host Peter Rossig. We talk about personal mobility, sometimes called micro-mobility, which is bikes and e-bikes, scooters and e-scooters, skateboards, including electric ones, and eventually we'll be talking about motorized wheelchairs and of course the original personal mobility, which is walking. I hope you'll stick around for this half hour, both because I think it'll be very interesting and because at the end we'll have an M&M moment, a micro-mobility moment from the weird and wonderful world of micro-mobility. But I guess today we're very fortunate to have Todd Boulanger, who is the Executive Director of BIKI, our Honolulu bike share system. Welcome Todd and thank you for joining us. Well, thank you Peter and Aloha to your viewers online around the world. Both of them, yeah. So anyway, you've done this before I know and I appreciate you taking the time to do it again. You know the basic question is what's the status of BIKI and where are things going? So why don't you just take the wheel and grab the handlebars and tell us what's going on? Definitely, I'll pedal away. So again, thank you Peter. So BIKI, for those viewers who are not local, BIKI is the docked based public bike share system in Honolulu and we have been in service in operations for, this is our sixth year of providing the public with basically a pedal bicycle system. Our hard work comes from PBSC, the Canadian company, so it's Canadian and American built. We started on this journey, the community started on this journey about 2012 after an initial pilot, a bike share pilot in Kailua, which had two stations and 10 bikes kind of tested the concept and was decided that when the city looked into it, the city desired to have a public bike share system as kind of an additional mobility option in urban Honolulu. So in 2014, the Department of Planning and Permitting came up with an organizational study and the city decided that in order for the system to be successful and to scale up rapidly, that the city would not start out with a public system. It was a little risky. So they invited a non-profit, which is us, Bike Share White, to then work with the community for two or three years on what should bike share be? Should it be scooters, should be docked bikes, should be dockless, what should the system look like, which hardware manufacturer to implement? And then we did the RFP for the operators, so the folks that answered the phones, that moved the bikes around, that repair them, they were chosen in 2017. And we were lucky enough at that time because there was no major sponsor of the system like Citibank in New York City that the operator invested the initial $5 million into the system, that provided the first thousand bikes and 100 stations. So we are the non-profit, we have a contract with the city to provide the service and then we have a contract with the operator to implement the service. So we're kind of the community's bridge between what the government wants and what the operator feels is necessary to sustainably provide the system. So we're kind of pushing and pulling between the two worlds and often the public face just like in this discussion. So we are a non-profit, we only exist in Honolulu to provide the service. So that's our 100% focus. So this slide you're seeing here is kind of the, that on the typical is the left side and most major top systems in the US are municipal based systems. We are on the right side, we are really the odd man in the system. We're among the top six systems, but we're the only one managed by a non-profit. So our operation model is really more typical to smaller cities in the Midwest or college towns where a non-profit kind of bridges the public and private sector. So maybe I can interrupt and ask a few questions as we go along or if that's okay. So I saw that there are something like four fifths of all the rides in the country are actually in six places. New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and as you say the little outlier here Honolulu, which is kind of amazing considering the difference in these major metropolitan areas in Hawaii. So if we were going to do a more comparison, is there a better place in terms of size and the kind of city we're living in that we can't compare ourselves to New York? Realistically I don't think you can aspire to some of that. Who would you like to compare us to? Well I think if you would ask that question, well I guess Boston. I mean I think Peter in the sense that New York is its own kind of universe for bike share. Part of that's investment, part of it is just the density and the fact that during the pandemic people were really fleeing the subway systems for options in the open air. So I mean Chicago, Boston, the Bay Area, those are systems that are closer to us and you know if you'd ask that question you know three years ago Boston and Beaky were very similar back then. But yeah but I think the big difference and maybe this is Beaky's future, the local governments of the Boston area reinvested in the bike share system, renamed it as Blue Bikes and they quadrupled the system. And so right now back in 2019 compared to now they're much larger and though ride-wise they're only about twice as productive as we are. So part of what Honolulu is we're kind of boxing above our weight limit. We're typically about three rides per bike per day during the good times before the pandemic during the rental car crisis where we stepped up and provided everyone who couldn't rent a car for $500. They came to Beaky and our rides per day went up to five rides per day. You know now in the kind of the seasonal law we're about 2.5 rides per day. So when you look at most systems on the continent they're about one ride per bike per day even systems with e-bikes. So we're still we're still in the game and we're still you know delivering putting butts on seats and you know bikes and so this gets back to why Beaky exists. We're a tool in the city's toolbox so on the far upper right was the initial planning study about what should bike share look like where should it be and so that's county-wide. So there are future plans for bike share in Kailua along the rail corridor, Pearl City and such. Now the report on the on the left the yellow copy is the environmental the climate basically the climate plans for how the city's going to react and successfully evolve during this climate crisis and Beaky is one of the the implementation tools that the city has on the ground right now you know other than you know fleet electrification and conversion of street lights to LEDs which is pretty much completed. You know rail you know rail was supposed to be in operations when we started in 2017. Now it's you know 2030 plus in the Kakaako area so really what I've recommended in the past is you know the city should really triple down on Beaky because we can you know get people from the future Chinatown station or the South Street station to to the Alamoana Center and such and so we're here we're ready we can scale up rapidly utilizing a lot of the existing streets the street facilities and any new bikeways. You know I was looking at the Pensacola data so the city added a protected bike like Pensacola during the pandemic back in September 2020 I pulled the data this morning and after after they put that bikeway in our utilization at the station up at Wilder at the top of the hill increased by 16 to 19 percent and you know a month to month conversion so you know part of you know part of the success of Beaky is the city's been rolling out the the planned bikeways. Build it and they and they will ride is that to steal a movie slogan yeah. I mean if you know if you if you provide a safe secure place more people will choose a bike trip for you know their non-commute options so local trips and some commute options and I also got an update on the King Street bikeway so you know that was the first major bikeway that the city's built in 100 years and before it was built in 2015 so back in say sorry it opened in 2014 today it's today is its birthday it's eight years old now they were averaging about 384 bicycles per 12 hour day on the facility before the bikeway in 2015 it went up to six over 600 and then the most recent count they gave me today was 2021 and that was averaging about 1100 bicyclists per day so that's a almost that's you know a magnitude of 300 percent and if you sit along that bikeway you know typically three out of four or or three out of five bicyclists passing by or you know scooter riders are peaky customers. Yeah I'll swear to that okay moving on yeah yeah so this is the this is our current network more or less from Evil A in the Everside all the way to Diamond Head area KCC and then from the ocean to the mountains especially Makiki and Kaimuki in the in the upper lower reaches and so the question I think Peter's asking his mind is what would electrification do to this map so right now we're in kind of a sweet spot we're in the dense relatively flat areas and so that's why we're seeing such high use with a what we call a classic bike you know a bicycle that you that's powered by your lunch or dinner you know so banana powered so going back to that map we would likely see the station spread out on the on the march so you would you would see stations up in Nuwano in the older parts of Nuwano on townside you would see them back in Pololo you start seeing you know inching up into Kaimuki maybe a little further out especially out Cocoa Head of towards Kahala you know so electrification what it does is allow people to ride longer routes faster so instead of 10 miles per hour you might be able to do 15 miles on average and you know for me it is a matter of arriving where I want to go without having to arrive sweaty and disheveled and so in addition to the range it's it's a matter of comfort I think yeah I think it's a bridge vehicle really I think what we'll find long term is a lot of people who aren't pedaled bicycling now will adopt electric bikes but at a certain point they'll get confident enough that they they will they will probably drift back to pedal bicycles for their trip because you know the bike you know my question then is when are we going to see the electrification show me the money so so so for electrification I mean that's a major crossroad and I mean since that's the theme of the discussion the major crossroad for local communities and the operator what you have is typically a 2x 200 additional cost so you know if a classic bike system with solar panels on the stations cost $1 implementing an e-bike station is probably $2 and then when if you set those stations up which is our plan to have them connected to the local power grid that's probably a $3 so it's you've got that magnitude and what I've got $3 here will that help uh yeah I'll send you my budget number what what are we talking about in the aggregate what is the so okay so if we were planning the beaky system today the one we that we we opened in 2017 with the the thousand stations at 100 bikes you know you're probably looking instead of a 12 million dollar cost you're probably looking at a 24 million dollar cost okay okay and the the station what's what's more kind of what's more complicated is the station placement and location because we have to find connection to the power grid and so we're working with our community partners HEI and HECO and private property owners about you know can we place a station in a location that is adjacent to a power line or red power line or a conduit that a shopping center or a business owner might have that we can connect to because we need for recharging recharging beakies for a large station we need access a 208 to 240 kilowatt kb power so the so I'm clear another you're saying in other words that the charging of the batteries will take place in the station not by somebody coming around and switching out the batteries or by rotating your the electric bikes back to some spot to charge them and then putting them back out on the screen that the charging is gonna will all or primarily take place at a station that's got the power to do it so pbsc our hardware provider which is now owned by Lyft their stations are smart so once they're connected to the power grid they manage the the power draw for the bikes so they will always charge bikes that need the most charge and then they'll they'll cap a bike so for example if you if you bring your e-beaky you know someday there'll be an e-beaky if you pedal that beaky to a station and below stay 15 capacity the station will not release it you'll you'll bring it back up to a minimum capacity because the last thing we we want to happen to a customer is they rent an electric bike and then it becomes a classic bike because it ran out of that's not a fun I've had that experience so now when I was traveling in Europe we had e-bikes and my wife ran out of power and it was not a fun experience no so I mean our our our e-bike the e-beaky can be pedaled it has gears it's not a single speed and so it can definitely get you to back to another station so but I think the real interesting aspect of the pbsc that the new generation of electric electrified stations is that they can also be co-located with electric car chargers so they have that capability so you could see you could see an e-beaky station and then on each end of it there would be a an e-v car charging um basically stall and so that would expand access for renters like myself you know my part my my garage barely my my garage can barely plug in christmas lights because it's so antiquated not a you know not charge an electric car um and I don't you know also I don't have 500 feet of uh of extension just to go back for one minute uh lift also made a big investment in the new york city bike share system correct so so lift I mean as with any any commercial service or any mobility service you know we saw this happen to street cars and buses in the in the 30s and 40s and then amtrak you know in the the later years there's a market consolidation and so lift purchased motivate and motivate had previously purchased alta bike share and they were the ones that really brought modern bike share to to the us um about uh 2010 I believe after dc had kind of experimented with it interesting but that's very encouraging it seems to me I mean lift has poured a lot of money into the new york system and uh hired a high profile city planner or urban uh transportation planner like yourself to uh to run the system I heard her speak at laura fox I heard her speak at a conference lately and and they are very uh it's really infused a lot of uh electricity and a lot of energy into their system right and and so lifts purchase of pbsc you know they currently lift has about 11 systems 11 bike share systems under its its its umbrella with bringing in pbsc that enlarges it to over 50 worldwide and so really it's going to be about it's going to be a competition between lift and lime I believe in the near in the near future um slash uber um the scooter a lot of the scooter companies if you've been looking at them or even the the docked bike share systems like b-cycle they're kind of falling into a second tier you know they've run through their venture capital investment um it it's it's challenging and and this our our our industry our our shared micro mobility industry is going to be consolidating and you know we've we've many many many have proven that you know people want to get around on shared micro vehicles we just have to kind of find a sustainable path forward now that the easy venture capital money's gone that seems to be true across the micro mobility industry there's consolidation there's been a some rapid growth over a couple of years and now consolidation a few companies going out of business a few companies buying up other businesses we've got about 10 we've got about 10 more minutes and so let's move on and so yeah this is a slide showing kind of where our our utilization is by neighborhood so it makes sense you know the neighborhoods that parking is expensive um the the housing and and job density per acre is very high um and that places you can walk between stations are relatively easy with sidewalks and crosswalks so you know wikikis one of our top locations um coco slash alamuana and then some of the peripheral residential neighborhoods really are are smaller and you know those big areas carry financially carry the weight of those smaller areas this is the demographic so we are well used by all all age groups you know assuming you're allowed to ride bikis so you know we don't have a lot of users under the age of 20 and part of that is because you know if you're under 18 you have to get your parents signature um but you know all ethnicities use the system and we've actually had self-reported um positive public health benefits primarily from native Hawaiians because it is a physical activity cycling around you know they've shown reported the highest weight loss per per ethnic group or um but you know one of the future things since you're asking the crossroads question I would love to work with another sponsor or partner and the city about kind of enlarging the access to biki for folks in high school so it might be an advanced bicycle education course for freshmen in high school because a lot of our stations are near high schools and so now if you're a junior senior you can use biki but you know we want to instill cycling and good road behavior before kids get you know the chance to drive a car so it could be a kind of a parallel system you learn how to be a cyclist but also you learn how to drive a car so you're a better driver as you become an adult and you know it always seems to me when I'm in Europe that the reason that most motorists are very respectful of the bicyclists around them is that they have been bicyclists themselves or and their their grandmothers and their children and every and their wives and and husbands with their kids on the back of the bike they've all they've all been cyclists so when you're in your car and you take on a whole new attitude that you know most American drivers frankly don't have so yeah that would sound like a Department of Health Department of Education we ought to get a who we going here to get every get all those uh those seniors juniors and seniors or per would be perfect that'd be a great way to open things up and most cities have a name for that it's called the 8 to 80 um uh access the cycling and before the pandemic the AARP the local AARP was a great partner of ours we did it we had a silver senior beaky course and so it's another thing to kind of revisit because it's actually easier to get a senior on a bike than a lot of younger folks because the seniors you know they were free range cyclists as kids whereas it's not available for all children now interesting brand yeah that that sounds I mean the AARP and the I know you're you do a lot with why bicycling league and uh they have a lot of education stuff uh you know regular bikes they're they're getting very young kids uh onto regular bikes so uh just everybody ought to take part and it's also a kind of an intergenerational opportunity to uh for for Kapuna and and Keiki to uh be experiencing the same kind of of things going on so yeah that's that's what we found um a lot of parents will throw their children's bikes in the back of their car and then they'll rent a beaky and ride around kakaako it's you know it's easier to carry a bike than the adult bike in the car so all right we're down to about five minutes so um okay I think what I'd love to do is to kind of end the slideshow there we've talked about a lot of the things I wanted to talk about and maybe let me ask you a couple of questions and then we'll go to the micro mobility moment if that's okay with you so you talk about the city contract and and your contract with pbsc what is the status of those and when uh when will they come up for uh renewal and hopefully some kind of expansion part or yeah our existing contract period ends in 2027 um and with any contract you know there's always a point where it can be amended you know if a new service area comes up or if a new technology comes up and so that's one of the discussions now you know one of the opportunities of the next generation um pbsc um beaky station is that it can also park electric electric foot scooters and so if any of your viewers have been walking around Waikiki and kakaako I mean there are a lot of third-party scooters just kind of laying around the sidewalks and you know I know many communities on the west coast in the US have just struggled with you know what they call scooter crash right some of some are actually banning considering or about to ban uh considering uh banning scooters uh from the city center so uh just the segways were banned in some some places and uh so it seems to me that there's a uh not just the the scooter the shared scooters but there are a lot of privately owned electric scooters scooting around uh that could possibly uh if there's a secure way to hook them up to uh to a charge station would be able to benefit from that yeah that's maybe phase three but um right now I mean if you're you know if you're looking at the law in in sitting County of Honolulu it's illegal for all electric foot scooters to be in operation unless you're scooting on a state highway um so that's one thing procedurally that the city has to work on is finalizing its rules um for how scooters can be implemented now that the state has adopted that there and that's in maybe slowly but moving along somewhere in the in the city government as I understand yep it's moving forward okay so uh uh another when can when can you reopen or is it possible to uh at the at what stage is is the question I guess what stage is possible to reopen discussions with the city to say here's what we can we'd like to do to expand or here's how we have to modify this contract well it's it's always an ongoing question I mean you know the technology is evolving the service area needs are evolving I mean a lot of our expansion in 2019 um into the new areas you know we're undermined by COVID you know if you think about every Zoom meeting you have now a lot of our customers used to have two or three beaky trips to that meet my lunch and then back to their office and so you know it's you know it's it's really um you know in the next year to definitely I mean there's always discussion points to um to start discussing service areas and technology I mean all right Todd I want to stop here we're just about at our half hour mark and I want to thank you very much I want to invite you to come back I know there's some more slides in your uh in your slide deck come back and continue this this discussion but we've got we've got a lot to to look at here uh you've put up the slides but is there some place online where people can see these so go to goby.org and many of your viewers are our members in a lot of this information's been in past newsletters but we're we're in orbit and we survive by donations and sponsorship so become a member and uh become a rider on not necessarily in that order but that's great so if you're willing to come back a few months from now I'd love to finish or carry on this discussion because I think as you said there's some maybe some development so we can we can talk about that I'll come back in like months okay that's perfect and then maybe at the end of the year when you're ready to wrap up 2023 we can talk again I thank you very much for this uh it's been I've learned and I hope our both our viewers have learned quite a bit and there's a lot more to learn but now I'd like to go to our micro mobility moment and that is you know I look around for the the weird and wonderful oddball and interesting hopefully numerous things on the web so we can show the picture of our this is this is micro mobility it is a an electric bike with a boat and they on a camper that goes in one one unit which is pretty much covers feel forgive me for saying so it covers the waterfront for for for immobility and it's made in Latvia it's about $10,000 I don't get any commission on the many sales that I'm sure will be out there but it kind of illustrates to me that there's uh that this area has just a world of opportunities a world you know bicycles have always attracted uh inventors and designers and things like that and and uh there's a lot happening out there and and uh I hope uh that gave some people a chuckle and so we'll be back in a couple of uh we'll actually over a month this is our last show for December uh for this year and we'll re-record and go back to work in early January thank you for watching uh please uh you can find uh us on the website at at the tool of revolution.com there's a page there and we're we're welcome your questions and your comments and thank you very much thanks again Todd and aloha to all thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram and linked in and donate to us at thinktech hawaii.com mahalo