As gas prices and environmental awareness push people to consider alternatives to driving, the city is updating its bike plan to make commuting by bicycle easier and to better connect bike routes with bus and rail lines.

The new plan will outline how the city and state can nearly triple the miles of bike-friendly routes on O'ahu — from 123 to 346 miles — and pinpoint community priorities for improving bikeways.

The city this week kicks off the yearlong process of updating its 1999 bike plan with the first series of islandwide meetings to hear from residents. The meetings start tonight in Kapolei, then move to Kane'ohe and Honolulu.

While the 1999 plan only looked at bike paths from Kahala to Pearl City, the updated plan will address bike paths islandwide and put emphasis on linking bikeways for commutes.

"We really think the approach to transportation has to be multi-modal," said Wayne Yoshioka, city Department of Transportation Services director. "You can't really focus just on cars. All those facilities need to work together for a good ... system."

City officials and biking advocates are hoping — with all the emphasis on alternative transportation methods and the high price of gas — that the bicycle plan gets more attention from new cyclists or those thinking about bicycling to work. They also want to translate that interest into action, by pushing for more funding to improve bike routes and safety.

The city has already put $1 million in the fiscal year 2009 budget for bikeway improvements on Young Street, near the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and Kapi'olani Community College, and in Kahala and Mililani. Chris Sayers, city bicycle coordinator, said the funding is slightly up from previous years and there also is hope of getting specific capital improvements funding for other priorities outlined in the new bike plan.

The cost of updating the plan, set to be released in mid-2009, is $370,000.

The new plan comes as more people are turning to bikes for their commutes and recreation. Bike shop owners are reporting 10 percent to 15 percent increases in sales, and the Hawaii Bicycling League has gotten 80 new members in the past several months.

Bicyclists also are punching into the headlines with the start of a mass bicycle ride through Honolulu, called Critical Mass, to urge drivers to share the road. The loosely knit effort, which has attracted upward of 50 cyclists on rides, has been holding events about once a month — usually right around the afternoon drive time — to get their message across.

EDUCATION IS A MUST

Hawaii Bicycling League executive director Mitchell Nakagawa said he supports the intent of the project, and does see the need for more driver education about bicycles. He said safety is one of many barriers that prevent people from taking up biking to work.

Another issue is the lack of connections between bike routes.

BikeFactory owner Wally Parcels agreed, saying the city should also be concentrating on making sure the major recommendations in the plan become a reality. He said bicycling is getting more and more popular — especially as one of several options people can use to get around (rather than their only mode of transportation).

"We're anticipating this next six months will be the busiest we've ever seen in the industry," Parcels said, adding he has seen a 15 percent to 25 percent increase in the number of bikes heading out the door this year. Business is so good, Parcels is planning to open a second BikeFactory shop in Waipi'o this summer to meet demand outside Honolulu.

CITY CITES PROGRESS

Though the progress of adding bike routes — including dedicated bike lanes on thoroughfares and bike paths away from the road — is slower than enthusiasts would like, officials say they've made strides to make sure bicyclists have space to ride.

In 1994, according to a state Transportation Department study, there were 38 miles of city- and state-owned bikeways on O'ahu. That figure has jumped to 123 miles, including 42.5 miles of bike lanes. And Sayers, of the city, said that about 60 percent of the "priority one" projects in the city's 1999 plan have either been completed or will start up soon.

Yoshioka, who is also overseeing the city's massive rail transit project as head of the Transportation Department, said much of the frustration among bicyclists over the years has been that bikeways are put in, but fail to connect with other routes to ensure a safe commute.

"Bike plans don't get implemented all at once — they get implemented in pieces and oftentimes these pieces get implemented in a random way," Yoshioka said. "What we'd like to do this time around is prioritize the areas we think are really important."

Nakagawa and others say the city's pledge to look at connecting bike routes for commutes, and linking bikeways with bus lines and proposed rail transit stations, is a major step forward and could help persuade people to give up their cars and try biking to work.

ONLY 2,500 DO IT

Despite a favorable climate and relative proximity of residents to the urban center, commuting by bike has never really taken off in the Islands. In 2006, only about 1.4 percent of workers 16 and up commuted by bike on O'ahu, according to the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. That translates to about 2,500 cyclists.

Still, the percentage puts Honolulu ninth in a ranking of 50 cities.

Portland, Ore., ranked first, with 3.5 percent of commuters traveling by bike.

Richard Sullivan, an architect and a longtime biking commuter, would like to see the number of people getting to work on bikes double. "This is probably potentially the most bike-friendly climate one could ever ask for," he said. But to get people on bikes, he said, the city has to make biking safer.

"Our bike facilities are way behind" other cities, he said.

Sullivan, 66, lives in St. Louis Heights and works Downtown.

He said one of the best perks about biking to work is that parking is never an issue.