Hawaii County’s bike rental program has more than doubled ridership over the last two years and is poised to double its resources this year.
Hawaii County Mass Transit’s HIBIKE Bikeshare program — wherein users can pay to rent bikes in 30-minute increments — began in 2016 with three stations in Kailua-Kona and 32 bikes. Now, there are 90 bikes on the island and 10 stations — four in Hilo and six in Kona, said Jessica Thompson, executive director of Peoples Advocacy for Trails Hawaii, the nonprofit administering the program.
But County Council members will discuss this week a $726,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration that will more than double the Bikeshare fleet.
If awarded, the grant would allow for the installation of another 15 HIBIKE stations, to be distributed as evenly as possible between Hilo and Kona, Thompson said.
“We’ll be doing needs assessments and community engagement to figure out where the best places for stations are,” Thompson said, adding that the most likely locations will be around Hawaii County Mass Transit hubs.
The 15 new stations also will come with another 105 new bikes, which should bring the total number of bikes on the island to nearly 200.
The boost in resources matches the program’s growth, with ridership tripling between 2019 and 2021. Riders used a HIBIKE bicycle 9,151 times in 2019, with that number exploding to 15,980 the following year and more than doubling again in 2021 to 32,133 bike rides taken, Thompson said.
“We’re starting to level off, so we’ll see what happens,” Thompson said, suggesting that the dropoff might be because the island’s car shortage is beginning to recover, and because there’s only so many people who need bikes at any given time.
Thompson said that there was not a major spike in usage in January after unlimited 30-minute rides were awarded to Hele-On monthly pass holders, but added that she expects the program will continue to expand as Mass Transit makes changes to Hele-On.
Further expansions are planned that would correspond to Hele-On’s transition to a hub-and-spoke model, Thompson said. Eventually, she said, she hopes more HIBIKE stations can be installed in Pahoa and Waimea, where other Hele-On hubs will be located.
Thompson also said she would like to eventually add electric bikes capable of powered-pedaling to HIBIKE, but said that’s probably a long way off.
“The technology’s there. But, A, we can’t afford it, and, B, it would need a lot of charging stations and infrastructure we don’t have,” Thompson said. “But it would be nice, because e-bikes make it easier to bike uphill, and you have to go uphill all the time on this island.”
The federal grant will be discussed Tuesday at the County Council’s Finance Committee hearing.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.