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has been yelled at, slapped on the helmet, nearly run over, even sworn at by a convertible full of tourists.

But that hasn’t stopped the 44-year-old architect and photographer from Hawaii Kai from riding his Cannondale R700 several days a week. (His girlfriend hung up her road bike, though, after being taunted and threatened by a car full of teenagers on Lunalilo Home Road.)

Yet this avid road biker, who can rack up close to 200 miles a week on his bike, wouldn’t consider Honolulu bicycle-friendly. Well, aside from the weather.

“There are not enough bike lanes, but what detracts from the friendliness even more are the attitudes toward bikers from others sharing the road,” said Maximilian, who’s been bicycling for more than 20 years but seriously since 2005. “Blatant aggression toward bikers has occurred to almost every biker I know. And it has occurred multiple times.”

Despite an ideal climate for bicyclists — consistently nice weather, a dense urban center on flat terrain and an extensive public bus system equipped with bike racks — Honolulu has struggled to create a bike-friendly environment. Funding issues, geography, and a lack of strong lawmaker support and steady advocacy have resulted in Honolulu falling behind other large cities on the mainland such as Portland and Chicago.

But plans are in motion at both the city and state levels to improve bicycling facilities and better connect existing bike lanes and paths. Bicyclists and advocates are cautiously optimistic.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” said Chad Taniguchi, executive director of the and bike commuter from Kailua. “Other cities have groups of people who consistently ride bicycles and push government to constantly improve facilities. And they ultimately have advocates within government who think this is important, too. The cooperation between inside and outside really transforms communities. We still gotta push.”

Honolulu Doesn’t Earn High Rank as Bike City

The , and the each list their picks for best cities for bicyclists — and Honolulu has never made the cut.

And yet, the city has made strides in recent years to improve conditions for bicyclists, from adding bike lanes to increasing funding for bicycle-related projects. Every bus in the city’s public transit fleet is equipped with bicycle racks — there are about 30,000 loadings a month — and the city has installed about 500 bicycle parking racks throughout the city with more added every year.

The effort has produced results: According to the , Honolulu had the 13th highest mode share for bicycle commuting among the 70 largest cities in the United States in 2008, higher than the national average. From 2000 to 2008, there was a 23 percent increase in bicycle commuting. And though Honolulu wasn’t awarded a status designation by LAB’s Bicycle Friendly Community Campaign, Hawaii did rank 30th out of 50 states in terms of meeting certain standards in terms of legislation, policies, education, infrastructure and enforcement. However its grades wouldn’t make many students smile, with two Fs (legislation and enforcement), one D (infrastructure), one C (policies and programs), a B (evaluation and planning) and an A (education and encouragement).

There are plans in the works — the city’s Oahu Bike Plan and the state’s Bike Plan Hawaii — to add and improve bicycling facilities and connect existing lanes and paths. One project is to connect the Pearl Harbor bike path to other bikeways heading toward Nanakuli. Another is to outfit existing roadways with shared lane markings, called sharrows, which indicate where bicyclists should travel in the lane. (This reduces confusion, particularly on the part of motorists.)

The goal of these plans is to catapult Honolulu into the ranks of such bike-friendly cities as Seattle, Denver and Minneapolis but in a feasible, affordable way.

The change won’t come quickly.

“We’re looking at how we can get this done sooner rather than later,” said Wayne Yoshioka, director of the city’s Department of Transportation Services. “But we have to make sure it’s safe and up to standard but also affordable and doable.”

Safety is No. 1 Concern

Safety is one of the biggest concerns for bicyclists, many of whom have stories about road crashes, near-accidents, broken collarbones, skinned knees and irate motorists.

“That’s the No. 1 issue,” said Chris Sayers, the city’s bicycle coordinator who commutes to downtown from Kaimuki on bike. “People want to feel safe.”

Bicyclists can feel safer on their own, Sayers said, by taking bike safety classes, joining bicycling groups and riding more often. The city gives $150,000 every year to the Hawaii Bicycling League’s program, which teaches bicycle safety to fourth graders.

Taniguchi, who commutes by bike to Kaimuki from Kailua several times a week, said Honolulu roads are safer than most non-bicyclists think, but they’re still not safe enough.

“I remember I used to see this guy biking on the Pali (Highway) and I thought, “He’s crazy,’” Taniguchi said. “And now I’m doing it. I feel comfortable enough and confident enough and I take precautions … The more people bike, the safer it will be. Once drivers get used to seeing more bicyclists, then that becomes part of their drive.”

Aside from funding — the city gets about $1 million every year for bicycle-related projects in addition to $400,000 to $500,000 from bike registration fees — there are several challenges specific to Honolulu in improving the bicycling environment.

One in particular is the existing city design. Older neighborhoods such as Manoa and Kaimuki were not planned on a grid system like many newer communities or with bicycling facilities. Roads here are narrow and some areas don’t even have sidewalks. Retrofitting these neighborhoods to accommodate bicyclists, Yoshioka said, can be expensive and sometimes impossible.

And while newer communities such as Kapolei and Ewa have better bicycling facilities, the connection from these areas to other, highly desired destinations like Ala Moana Center and the University of Hawaii-Manoa are lacking or unsafe. There are areas along Nimitz Highway and in Waipahu, for example, where bike paths or lanes just don’t exist.

As roadways were improved in the last few decades to accommodate the city’s growing vehicular traffic — with wider roads, better streetlights, improved signage — other modes of transportation, namely bicycling, have been somewhat neglected. And taking away from motorists — such as replacing a driving lane with a bike lane — isn’t always the most popular decision.

“If we had loads of space, we could bike lanes everywhere,” Sayers said. “But something has to give.”

Lessons From Portland

According to the , Portland topped the list of mode share, with 6 percent of its commuting population using bicycles. (Honolulu ranked 13th on the list, with 1.5 percent.)

Portland’s recently completed a lengthy planning effort to create the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 with a goal to make Portland a world-class bicycling city by attracting new riders, strengthening bike policies, forming denser bikeway networks, expanding programs to support bicycling and increasing funding for bicycle facilities.

The city Auditor’s Office reported that, in 2008, 8 percent of Portlanders identified the bicycle as their primary commute vehicle to work, with another 10 percent saying it was their second choice. (Eight years earlier, only 3 percent of Portlanders used the bicycle as their primary mode of transportation to work.) From 2007 to 2008, citywide ridership grew by 28 percent, with the number of bicycle crashes dropping by 8 percent.

On average there are more than 2,100 bicycle-related events every year in Portland and a $100 million dollar bicycle industry that’s only growing. Sixty percent of downtown police officers are on bike

The city’s annual bicycle counts have shown an exponential rise in bicycling over the past three years, with its bridge counts recording double-digit increases. Bicycles now represent 18 percent of all vehicles crossing the Hawthrowe Bridge.

“Portland’s experience has been, ‘Build it and they will come,’” said Denver Igarta, transportation planner for Portland’s Bureau of Transportation. “There is a direct correlation between the expansion of the bikeway network and growth in bicycle ridership. Now we are following the direction of the world’s best cities for cycling to be “built it better, so more will come.’”

Frigid Minneapolis Bests Honolulu For Bikes

The cold-weather city of Minneapolis, ranked No. 1 in ’s list of America’s Best Bike Cities, boasts 43 miles of streets with dedicated lanes and 84 miles of off-street bicycle paths. It also has a bike-sharing program that allows people to rent bicycles from kiosks located in downtown Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota and nearby commercial areas. This year 40 miles of bikeways are scheduled to be built. Census data shows that about 4,500 Minneapolis residents commute to work by bicycle.

California, too, has made efforts to improve its bicycling environment. San Francisco has long been touted as a bike-friendly city with ride-share programs and miles of bike paths and trails. But even in Orange County, there are more than 1,000 miles of bikeways that are clearly marked and well-maintained.

“The beauty of this bike plan is that you could actually ride to destinations outside the county line,” said Richard Yuen, a 49-year-old auditor/analyst and bicyclist who lives in Laguna Niguel, Calif. (He’s originally from Honolulu.) “Most motorists respect cyclists and vice versa. Yes, there are expectations on both sides; however, law enforcement appears to be well-involved with the roadways and the number of incidents are few.”

And that’s what it comes down to, said Taniguchi: engineering, education, enforcement, encouragement of cyclists and evaluation.

Build and improve the facilities, educate the public about laws and courtesy on the roads, enforce the existing laws, provide programs and events like the upcoming to get people on bikes, and take stock of what’s been done in order to improve it more.

“This is one of those cases where the journey is more important than the goal (of being ranked nationally),” Taniguchi said.