 Aloha, I am your host Winston Welch and I am delighted that you are joining us again today for this session of Out and About, a show where we explore a variety of topics, organizations and events with the people who fuel them in our city, state, country and world. As a disclaimer, any views or opinions expressed by me are strictly my own and not connected with any organization. Today, I am making a special dedication to my dear friend, Baby Joe Jacobs. You may call him Joe. He is an avid bicyclist and physical fitness champion. He is an all-around renaissance man and a general good guy and he watches my show. So that is even more important, but it is good to give your pals a shout out, especially when it is in a topic that is interesting for them, which this one is because today joining me in the studio today is another all-around great guy, Daniel Alexander. He is the co-executive director of the Hawaii Bicycling League. Talk about the benefits of bicycling, how we can add bicycling to our lives, what resources are available to help us do so and what current projects and programs are currently planned to make cycling safer and more accessible, how we can support these bicycle-friendly actions and the century ride that is coming up this weekend. So welcome to the show today and thanks so much for being my guest. Hey Winston, thank you so much for having me. Well, it is a pleasure to have you here and you know bicycling, this is a perfect city for bicycling. I think I wore flat, everything is pretty close in, but it is not always perfect even though it is a perfect city for it, so your organization helps with that. Yeah, so it is a great place for bicycling and a lot of people do choose to bike, but many more could if we have the right ingredients in place. That is a combination of changes to the roads, but it is also changes to behavior. It is empowering people to feel safe and confident cycling, to know how they would say commute to work, how they deal with wardrobe, et cetera, and it is education to drivers so that they are sharing the road as safely as possible and it is encouraging activities like rides, so my organization is doing all those sorts of things to try to get more people out cycling and appreciating this wonderful mode that is healthy for you, it is healthy for your pocketbook, it is better for the environment, it reduces congestion, it means you do not have to deal with parking headaches, just so many benefits to it, and when you, so your organization deals with advocacy, education, events, you got a ton of resources on your website, let's get that out there right there in case people want to follow along. Yeah, so HawaiiBicyclingHBL.org. HBismboyL.org, yeah okay, so people can go there, find a ton of information that we're gonna cover today, but so part of this, tell us about the organization itself, are you a volunteer, are you staff, paid staff, how many folks are there and how long you've been around? Yeah, so HawaiiBicyclingL.org founded in 1975, so before I was born, but now I get to share the co-executive dresser ship with Malia Harunaga, and so we have five full-time paid staff, and then we're benefited by tons of volunteers, so for example the 100th century ride coming up, we'll have 340 people help us in some capacity. So our work, whether it's in our events or in education advocacy, it's multiplied by our volunteers and then our members, so we're a member-based organization, those members pay an annual due and they get some benefits like discounts at local bike shops, but most of all they get to be part of what we're doing, they get to be our constituents as we go and we try to push for positive changes, so we have about 1,800 members and they're primarily here on Oahu, but also statewide, and yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell what the organization is. You mentioned our three pillars, that's education, advocacy, and events, and really those are the areas that we're working and we're trying to push the needle and make it where it's safer and we get more people cycling. And inside of Honolulu, we've got about, let's just focus on Honolulu for a second, we've got about a million people here. What percentage of them actually have a bike or ride a bike and how does that compare with other cities in the country or let's go the world, let's go Denmark is probably the gold standard or the platinum standard, and how are we in Honolulu? So the data that we do have is around commute. We don't have data about, so the kids riding to school, people doing recreational rides, people riding to the store, all those trips that are not work-related. So at a work level, the whole island of Oahu, that million people, it's about one and a half percent of people that are using a bike is their primary way of getting around. So as you said, it's a significant number, but we do know there are many more that are using it for those other things I was talking about, getting to school, going to the store, going to the beach, just going out on a recreational ride. So it's many thousands that are riding, but if you compare us just on the commute level to some other peer places, so in Portland, about eight percent of people commute by bike is their primary commute mode. You go to Copenhagen, which is like I said, the gold standard, and it's 50 percent. Over half of all people are using a bike as their primary way of getting to and from work. Is Portland the highest city in America? So for a large city it is. There are some smaller cities like Boulder, Colorado, or Davis, Sacramento that have 20 percent of all their work trips are occurring by bike. So we've got a lot of room for growth for folks that want to hop on a bike and get out there. And to that end, you have a plethora of resources on your really well-designed website. And part of that I wanted to talk about is the presentations that you give. So if we can go to that slide for presentation, you've got a whole bunch on there. Let's see, we got the beginner's guide to bicycling, biking in Hawaii, infrastructure updates, or they're painting the green stripes. So we, you know, we're out there and we're trying to get the message of why bicycling is a good thing, yeah, and how we can make it as safe as possible. So like the beginner's guide to bicycling, that's one that we can do like a brown bag in a, you have an office, there's 15 of you, and we can sit down with you at lunch and talk about, hey, why would you consider bicycling? And how would you consider bicycling? So there are a lot of things that hold people back from doing it. They're thinking about, okay, what, how am I going to deal with my wardrobe when I arrive to work? Where am I going to lock my bicycle? How am I going to identify a safe route? So we start to walk them through, okay, these are how other people deal with those things, and where we shed those barriers away, where they can really start thinking about as a meaningful part of their life and start to buy school commute, or buy school in any capacity. And people could just go on your website, they can find an interesting presentation, and then there's a drop-down menu that asks to schedule a presentation, and so would that be typical where an office says, could you please come and talk to our workers about this? Yeah, exactly, okay, and then we also, just one other one, I'll point there, is a walk bike drive. So that one is more, it's not just bicycling, it's oriented towards people walking, people biking, and people driving, about how to stay as safe as possible when they're doing those things, and how to keep others safe when they're doing those things. And that was one thing that we were talking about right before the show, was that you have also as part of, I'm guessing it's kind of a city or federal grant on making, maybe it's complete streets, but making the streets more safe for pedestrians as well. So that's kind of expanded your mission a little bit, but it's similar. You want safe streets for bikers and walkers. Yeah, so we're the Hawaii Bicycling League, but we do a lot of pedestrian advocacy stuff, so as I'm sure many viewers are aware, we have a terrible situation of pedestrian safety, and there are most vulnerable people out there, people walking, people bicycling, they don't have airbags, they don't have crumple zones, they really count on keeping themselves as safe as possible, and that the people driving around them are behaving in a way that is yielding to them that essentially is not hitting them. So we do a lot of education around that, trying to get everyone on the same page, so we can just navigate the streets and share the streets as safely as possible. Share the streets, and that's one thing is we saw each other, was it last week or two weeks ago for the presentation from the fellow from Boston and talking about low-speed collisions, people have the chance of surviving, but when you got higher speeds it drastically reduces, and also how people behave in their cars, and it was a really great presentation, what was that one up to? Jeff Speck, he did a talk here, he's an expert on walkability, just one of the things you mentioned, speed is a really important thing, if there's one thing that we could tell anyone that drives out there, is drive slower, because your response time, your break time, your field of vision, and so all those things affect whether you hit someone or not, whether you get in a crash or not, but then the faster you're going, the severity increases exponentially, the relationship is like, if you're going 40, there's like a 1 in 10 chance that someone would survive getting hit, a pedestrian would survive, and if you go down to 20, it goes to 9 in 10 chance, you go down to 10, it's pretty different, and really our streets are so crowded here, you shouldn't be going, I can hardly go faster than 15 most of the time, so it's about increasing awareness for drivers to share the road, share bars, and just educating people on how we have these new bike lanes that are on King Street or wherever they're South Street and wherever they are, and that's part of the education that you do, so we've got another slide up here on this, and I think some of these speak to that, like the protected bike lanes that we've got here, and can you speak to some of these? So you mentioned King Street, the King Street protected bike lane in South Street, so that's something that they've been doing in Denmark, we mentioned Copenhagen, they've been doing that since you know the 1960s, and finally we brought that design to Hawaii in 2014, and it was a new thing at that point, the idea that you have parking, and you then have a bike lane that's physically protected, and then when a motorist is going to make a turn, they need to be looking out in that bike lane and yielding in those intersections, so it was something new, so we did a lot of education to try to build up that awareness, but you know these protected bike lanes, if I could emphasize a little bit, appeals to a broader range of folks, not just you know folks like me that say I love to bike, I'm going to figure out a way to do it, but there are a lot of people that say hey it would be nice to bike, but I don't look out there and I don't feel like I feel safe there, we call them the interested but concerned, and studies, surveys, including here in Hawaii, I've shown about two-thirds of people would like to bicycle at some level, but need a really safe feeling environment to do so, and the protected bike lanes are really key to getting that, so I'm merging from the education to advocacy, but that's part of why we push so hard for these protected bike lanes is because it can really grow the percentage of people that are there are cycling where it includes folks that are less experienced, children, etc. And I think Mr. Speck spoke to that, what was his Ted Talk that he mentioned, just in case people didn't do that? Just Google Jeff Speck, I guess he was recently also entertaining, but in there he did talk about these, we call them protected bike lanes, and he showed us a picture of one before where they had just the bike lane, but it was right next to traffic, and he said the one thing he wished that he had done more of or knew better was to put that parking lane, and then the bike lane, and then the sidewalk, because it does create, and it also helps pedestrians feel safe too, because you have a row of cars that are parked that act as the barrier, so that's the protection you're alluding to. I saw in Vancouver they have those concrete barriers, which not as attractive, but I guess they have more, maybe it was a space consideration there, but we're all learning I guess, and how it works, the best practices around the world. So in some of your, in some of your also your events that you got, you got Hawaii bicycling laws, so you're teaching the bicyclists also how to be a good bicyclist and a safe bicyclist, and just pay attention to the rules of the road as well from that perspective. So we have education starting from Keiki all the way up to Capona, so our largest single program is our bike ed program, so it's oriented at fourth graders, so we have two box trucks that go around the island and they teach in schools, spend a week with fourth graders, teaching them the basics of, it's essentially road safety, it's focused on bikes, but knowing how to yield to look before you cross the street to signal your intentions, to know your place to go with the direction of traffic. So it's a lot of really fundamentals on bike safety, but also traffic safety in general, and then we have several classes for adults. We actually have this on the next site here. No, no, it's okay, we've got some cycling workshops here, so you were talking about the learning to ride, and so I thought that's, because maybe some people don't know how to ride a bike, is that? Yeah, or they haven't ridden in many years. So the old saying that it's like learning to ride, it's like biking again, or you don't forget how to ride a bike or something like that. You don't, but sometimes you need the welcoming, positive environment where you feel safe and comfortable to do it. So our adult learned to ride, so it's never too late to learn, tell you that much. We've had people that are very elder learn to ride with us. You take a day, take a two days with us. We do it in this nice protected environment where you don't have to worry about traffic or really anyone else. And you just, you give it your best, and most people will come away after one or two days, and they'll know how to ride. And do you have, I want to call them adult tricycles that are available as well for people? So our senior cycling program, which we go all the way to the Capona. I think we got a picture of that one up here. Maybe right after that with senior cycling, which is maybe the, there they are. Oh, I see. Oh, so those are, so these are recumbent, tricycles, recumbent tricycles. So if you have a balance issue, or if you've never ridden a bike, and you don't feel you're up to learning how to get the balance down, you can ride one of these. If you have a basic level of physical fitness, we'll work with you. We have different levels. We have three different levels, the introductory level, and all the way to an advanced. And there for folks we'll call 50 and better. And you can join a workshop with us. People love them. You know, the feedback we get. You know, there's a beauty to riding a bicycle, moving yourself, and having the wind pass by as you glide through. It really is a beautiful thing. Oh, it is. And to get, like you said, it lets you get out and go different places and see things at a different experience level than being in a car where you're very contained. It's the same for walking. You see so much more and experience things how it's meant to be. So these classes are offered around the islands. So we do them in two bike baths. So the Pearl Harbor Bike Bath. So we only do it on a bike path, which a bike path is when it's totally separated from the road. Like what we have in Pearl Harbor and Alamona Beach Park. So those are the two places we do them. Alamona Beach Park and Pearl Harbor Bike. And there's probably regular scheduled information on your website. Absolutely. Okay. And the last one, before we take a break, there's a picture of your bike ed program just to finish off this idea. And there's some Kiki's that were happy to do this. And when they finish this, do they get a helmet, right? When they complete the course? They can buy a helmet for a very low price. We pass it along at cost. Okay. They do get a certificate. So they take a pledge at the end that basically I'm going to be a very safe bike because I'm always going to wear a helmet as part of it. I'm always going to look before I go out. I'm always going to ride with the flow of traffic. So 8,000 kids every year go through this program. So that's awesome. And they take the pledge. And they take the pledge. And they have to wear a helmet under the law. Under 18? Under the age of 16, a helmet is required by Hawaii. Everybody should wear a helmet if you're riding a bike. Everyone should. Everyone should. So as you can see, we have a wonderful show today. We have to take a short break. I'm Winston Welch on the out and about show here on the Think Tech Livestreaming Network series. We are with the great Alexander, Daniel Alexander of the Hawaii Bicycling League talking about this organization, all things bicycling related in our state and our city. We'll be back in a minute. So stay tuned for more of the story. Hi, guys. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3pm. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health, regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you. And Aloha. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at one o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Jampel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about. Human stories about law and life. Aloha. Hey, we're back and we're live. I'm Winston Welton. This is out and about on the Think Tech Live streaming network series talking with Daniel Alexander of the Hawaii Bicycling League. We are talking about this great organization and the fabulous people he works with and all things bicycling related in our city and state. So welcome back again and to the show and talking about this. A lot of important issues because we're dealing with safety, dealing with the road, we're dealing with people learning new activities, ways to get around, all kinds of stuff. And part of what your organization does is advocacy. So we talked about some of the educational component that you have. You got classes for kids and for seniors and how to follow the laws. And then we got the advocacy here. So we got some things up here on the screen here and you've got bike boat, a minimum grid, the bike parking and vision zero and safe passing. So tell us and protected bike lanes. Tell us a little bit about these guys. Yeah. So bicycling, it's a fun activity. It's in a way really simple. It's been around for a long time now, but it can help us with a lot of the problems we're facing. We like to keep it fun, but we also like to emphasize that we're facing global warming. I mean, I just read the civil beat article about we've had like the hottest since April, we've set a record almost every day for heat here in Hawaii. And I think everyone cares about that when they go outside or if they don't have AC about the experience they're starting to feel and they could get much worse to be honest. We have health epidemics around obesity, people not getting enough physical activity. So there are a lot of problems that bicycling can be part of the solution for. And the problem is that our world is not all built in a way that is going to encourage and drive people towards bicycling. So what we really need some of the keys to get there are safe infrastructure. That's safe places for people to ride. That's bike paths, protected bike lanes, bike lanes. It's where people can leave their house and they can be there on a low traffic street or one of those bike ways and they can get to meaningful places. And then we know from experiences elsewhere from Copenhagen, from Portland, from Davis, California. If you build that world, there are a lot of people that will bicycle and they'll get all those wonderful benefits we were talking about and broader social benefits that come with it. So a big part of our work is advocacy. It's trying to build the constituents and build the support for bikeways. So one of the things that you mentioned are walk, bike, vote. So every two years when we have elections, we do a candidate questionnaire where it covers both walking and bicycling issues. Because frankly walking, all the things I just mentioned for bicycling, they're the same for walking. It's great for you. It's great for the environment. But the infrastructure is not really well suited for it at this point. And safety behooves us to do something about it beyond all those things we mentioned, beyond all the benefits that we can rate from it. So we do this questionnaire and it's basically, hey, these are meaningful things that we think are important, political issues that they need to be acted on. And we ask people that are running for governor, city council, state rep, et cetera, what do you think on these issues? And we simply make those responses available for people to read. And for them to say, hey, amongst the things that I care about in the world, here I can read for these candidates positions on these issues. And one of those might be the Minimum Grid Honolulu. Tell us about that. Yeah. So Minimum Grid Honolulu is our campaign to get a protected bikeway, either a bike path or a protected bike lane within a mile or a half mile of everyone on Oahu. And we think that that would be really instrumental in getting more people cycling, because that's what I was saying earlier, to get the interested but concerned majority of people cycling, we need those safer facilities where they're more separated from traffic. And has this all been, I'm guessing that it has all been mapped out pretty well, because we have a graphic of it coming up, but how is the city coming along on that? Well, the city is making progress. It's certainly not as fast as we'd like to see, but there is meaningful progress being made. King Street, which we talked about, has kind of created a spine through Honolulu. And we're starting to build on that more and more. And in addition to the city, it's not just the city, it's the state, because we have a lot of our transportation facilities here on Oahu and on the other islands that are the jurisdiction of the state. Right. Because on the big island, you got on this circle island road and obviously, but they've made it pretty wide in most spaces so that you can get a bike more easily, but you're more intrepid over there, because just the distances are farther between things. So one of these things you got here is the Vision Zero Hawaii, which is no pedestrian or bicycle fatalities. Or driver. Or driver. Yeah, right. And when we're calming the streets for everyone, everyone is safer as well. So one of those things is that you have to be three feet for safer streets, something you advocated for and pass. So you have to, when you're passing a bike, you have to give her or him three feet. Yeah, you nailed it. Okay. Yeah. So it's a really meaningful, if you're driving, the most meaningful things you can do towards a bicyclist is one to be looking out for them. Of course, that's number one. You need to, you need to see them to avoid them. Yeah. So that means whenever you're making a turn, you're looking in your mirrors, whenever you're, say, making a left turn, you're looking, hey, is there a bicyclist, say, hide it hidden behind that car that's approaching so I make my turn? They might be there. So looking is number one. And then number two is giving plenty of space. So when you're passing someone, six inches is not a safe distance, because frankly, that person could wobble. Frankly, you as the driver, you might not be, your perception of that distance might not be totally accurate. And you might actually veer a little bit further. So three feet is that minimum safe distance. And it's that buffer zone that if either the bicyclist or the driver moves a little bit, they can still pass safely. And this is, I think exemplified that the need for this is you have the Zach Monago bicycle way in memory of a young man that was killed riding his bike. And so his parents have made the tragedy into something where they making a teachable moment and sharing with people, hey, we've got to up our game here and make it safer for folks. So Zach Monago, upstanding kid in every way, in every way a great person, I didn't know him personally, but in every way a great person, 18 years old, going to HPU. And on a bicycle ride, he was hit by a car and he was killed. And one of the, so he was a freshman at HPU. And in that freshman semester, he wrote a paper that said, we need more bike lanes. He said, I ride and I think it's great, but I don't feel safe often on the streets. I feel like I'm in danger. And if there were bike lanes, if there were dedicated space where that's where the bicyclists have a safe place to be, I would feel safer and the other people would feel safer and more people would ride. And so since his death, we've worked with his family, with the Monago family, to try to perpetuate safety to every year we have an event, the Zach Monago ride and paradise. And we always try to get at the word as much as possible about, hey, drivers, look out for bicyclists. This is frankly, this is someone's family member out there. Anyone you pass is someone's family member. And it's real. You may be saving a second because you're going five miles faster than you should be. That has meaningful impacts on people. And it could have a really, really tragic impact. I think those signs do help a lot humanize everything. And so out of this, we've got some protected bike lanes. I think we can see that in the next slide here in Oahu. And as people go online, they can see that the solid lines are super protected. The dotted lines are more bike lanes, share bars and not sure, share, share rows, yes. And and we're looking to get more of these. I think the next one will show that we want to get one on Pensacola. And that's an artist rendering of how that would look. And there's plenty of space on Pensacola for that. And then to get to your last thing, you have, or I'm sorry, we have the leeward bikeway next, which you want to get a bike around a bike path around the leeward side as well. And then an event coming up your big fundraiser of the year is the Honolulu Century Ride. Coming up September 29th, you said you had 350 volunteers helping you. How many people participated in this and how do people get information about it? Yeah, so all those bikeways you mentioned, I mean, that's that's what our work, that that's part of the core of our work is trying to get more bikeways, more safe places for people to ride. Another part is events. It's creating a safe environment. So you mentioned the Honolulu Century Ride and we have our more cakey family, more casual ride oriented Honolulu Fun Ride. Same day. It just occurs slightly later. A little bit shorter. A lot of it's shorter. We got three rides of five, nine and 18 miles. Okay. The day anywhere from five miles to 100 miles. You can participate. We call it the best day to ride. It's Hawaii's largest cycling event. We try to make it as safe as possible. We have HPD out there in numbers. We have lots of signs, course marshals. We have a cone lanes where it's possible. Just trying to make it as safe as possible. To give the opportunity for people to cycle and have fun. But the event is also a critical fundraiser for us. So it ties back into those other work we're doing, our advocacy and our education that need that money to help drive it forward. So the day is about celebrating bicycling and getting people out. It's about perpetuating our work forward. So very important day coming up this Saturday, the 29th. I'm sorry, Sunday, Sunday, the 29th. Thank you. And they can find out more information about this. Register on your website, hbl.org. Yep. That's the one. Well, obviously, I think this is something where we can have a lot more stuff to discuss. I hope you'll come back again and we can talk about other issues and maybe delve more deeply into some of these if you would be so kind. And unfortunately, we are out of time and have to wrap this up. Winston Welch, this is out and about on the ThinkTech Livestreaming Network series. It's been our great pleasure talking with Alexander. I'm sorry, Daniel Alexander. You've got two, you've got everybody who does that. I know. But Daniel is a great guy, co-executive director of the Hawaii Bicycling League. And we've been hoping that you got something out of this. Go to their website, hbl.org. Thank you for tuning in. We welcome your feedback. And thanks to our broadcast engineer, Robert McLean, our floor manager, Hayley E. Kada, and Eric Calander, and to Jay Fidel, our executive producer, who puts it all together. We will see you every other Monday here on ThinkTech for Unabout. Thank you so much for bringing my guests again. Thank you, Winston. Okay. Aloha, everyone.