Bike Mom Is Steering Hawaii Kai Toward Safe Cycling
By Kerry Miller
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In her desire to make Hawaii more bicycle-friendly, Hawaii Kai’s so-called Bike Mom, Natalie Iwasa, has spearheaded a number of ways to educate the community on bike safety, and her campaign continues just as fast as she can pedal around the neighborhood.
“It’s really not very friendly out there for bicyclists,” said Iwasa, noting that drivers must learn to allow more space for cyclists on the road and be more cautious. Just as important, children need motivation to ride bikes for fitness.
“I’ve been riding a bike for most my life,” said the full-time CPA and mother of two sons, Orion, 9, and Asa, 5, “and up until January of last year they both rode with me. I had a seat hooked up to the handle bars; my youngest son sat in the seat, my oldest was hooked up to the tow bar.
“We rode that way for almost five years until they grew too big to do that. Then I let my oldest son ride separately and the youngest moved to the back.”
On April 18, Iwasa will teach three bicycle safety courses at the YMCA’s Healthy Kids Hawaii Day, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Bishop Museum. Course times are 9:30 a.m., 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. and are included in the cost of admission.
Bike Mom went to the Big Island last month to train as a League Cycling Instructor (LCI), aiming to be certified by the League of American Bicyclists. To complete certification, she needs to learn to do bicycle maintenance and teach two bike-related courses with another instructor.
“There are currently four LCIs in Hawaii. We learned about bicycle safety, how to teach it to others and maneuvers to keep us safe on the roads,” she explained.
Last fall, she participated in the worldwide Walk to School Day at Honolulu Waldorf School with 100 others. Before the Waldorf observance, only one other Hawaii school took part in it.
“I wanted to show it was easy enough to do and promote the aspects. We had fewer people driving; the kids loved it and the parents loved it,” she recalled. “It was also our official kickoff of Bike School Bus.”
Anyone can “hitch a ride,” so to speak, on Bike School Bus, she said.
The group has certain times they ride in a line of two adults, with one in front and one in back, and children pedal their bikes in the middle. Anyone can join the group at various points. Kind of like a bus, they ride along a route and meet at certain points to ride together to school. Currently, the Iwasa trio rides together Monday, Wednesday and Friday - a trip of 5-and-a-half miles one way.
She got her “Bike Mom” nickname from a local police officer who would see her at the neighborhood board meetings. “He would call me the ‘Bike Lady.’ I changed it to ‘Bike Mom.’ It said more of who I was.”
She also promoted biking in the Hawaii Kai Christmas Parade.
On a larger scale, Iwasa is in the Bike Alliance, which draws together bike groups from all the Islands to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. The alliance collaborates with People’s Advocacy for Trails in Hawaii and One Voice for Livable Islands, which is affiliated with American Red Cross and the state Department of Health. Through One Voice, Iwasa is helping craft a package of changes to state laws.
She’s also worked hard to get 30 of Oahu’s 33 neighborhood boards to either adopt or support a bike-safety resolution.
The Hawaii Kai board was the first to do so, asking the city to make pedestrian and bicycle safety a priority, develop new bike paths, routes and/or bikeways in accordance with the East Honolulu Sustainable Community Development Plan, maintain and improve all possible existing bike lanes and routes in East Honolulu, place bike racks in all city and state parks, etc.
The city adopted a similar resolution, with additional calls to support the Hawaii Bicycling League’s Bike Ed program and implement Bike and Walk “School Buses.”
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