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JACity Looks At Bike Plan
The City and County of Honolulu Department of Transportation Services is updating the 1999 Honolulu Bicycle Master Plan this year. The new plan, cover the entire island of Oahu, will try to better integrate bicycling into the island’s public transportation system and nearly double the cities 123 miles of bike lanes. The old bike plan only dealt with bike lanes from Pearl City to Kahala while the new plan will look at bikes use island wide.
The city plans to hold public meetings starting tonight in Kapolei, then later to Kaneohe and Honolulu to get resident input about the proposed expansion. Bike advocates are hoping that the meetings highlight the benefits of commuting by bike and lead to improvements and upgrades to existing bike paths. The city has already put aside $1 million for bikeway improvements on Young Street, near the University of Hawaii Manoa and Kapiolani Community College, and in Kahala and Mililani.
Bike use on Oahu remains relatively low for commuters. In 2006, only about 1.4 percent of workers commuted by bike according to survey by the US Census Bureau. That translates to about 2,500 cyclists. While low, Honolulu is still one of the top ten cities in the nation when it comes to commuting by bike. The city hopes to link the proposed routes with older bike lanes to encourage more people to ride bikes to work.
