…Even When I Ride My Own Bike

I just read the “Our Year In Review” message that Bikeshare Hawaii sent out yesterday and it got me thinking.  We’ve enjoyed the benefits of bikeshare systems in many different cities during our travels and know that it will be a great thing for visitors to Honolulu.  However, what about our residents?  I already have a couple bikes that I use to get around town; is there a benefit to me?  The answer is most definitely yes.

I commute by bike every day and most of the time it’s just to get from point A to point B.  I’m lucky since there is room to store my bike inside at work; I don’t have to worry about it or anything else getting stolen.  However, if I want to stop and pick up a few things on the way, it’s actually a little frustrating.  Sometimes it takes longer to lock my bike and remove anything that could be stolen (e.g. lights, water bottle, pannier) than it does to actually get what I need.  In fact, when running errands from our office downtown, I usually end up walking instead of biking for just this reason.

This is a situation for which bikeshare is perfect.  The bikes are completely self-contained and are safe in their docking stations.  For repeat customers, they’re fast to check out and even faster to check in–perfect for those quick errands.  I’ll still commute on my own bike, but will leave it at the office when I get there.  In the middle of the day when I need to run down to the library or pick something up from the store, I’ll grab a bikeshare bike and actually save a lot of time.

Another reason I’m looking forward to bikeshare is for those times when the local world and the tourist world collide–in other words, when friends or family come to visit.  We only have room for a few bikes at home (not the N+1^* that we need), so we don’t have a lot of spares sitting around for others to use.  This makes it hard to keep to our normal routine when people visit.  It’s horribly painful to have to sit through traffic, let alone try to find someplace to park, when you’re use to zipping down a bike lane.  With bikeshare, it’ll be easy to grab a couple extra bikes and just take off.

While struggles for funding have delayed them in the past, the current plan is for Bikeshare Hawaii to launch in 2017.  As someone looking forward to it with great anticipation, I’m ready to sign up now.  Maybe pre-selling annual subscriptions to enthusiastic residents will help with the startup costs?  Something to think about, Bikeshare Hawaii…

More Information:  Bikeshare Hawaii has a map of proposed stations that cover most of the bases.  The density is greatest where they get the most bang for their buck, such as Downtown and Waikiki.  A cool feature with this map is that you can suggest other places that need stations.  Of course, they’re limited by resources and can’t cover every location, but it’s helpful to let them know where there’s interest.  (I suggested a couple more, one right outside the State Library and one in the Ala Wai harbor parking lot closer to Bowls.)

^*N+1:  The total number of bikes you need, where N is the number of bikes you currently have.