By Former Deputy Director Nick Mason
The bike community lost one of our fiercest friend this February. Hōkan’s contributions to bicycle advocacy in Minneapolis and Minnesota are nearly too many to count. His work shows a man with exceptional tenacity and a big heart.
Like many advocates at the time, Hōkan was a Minneapolis Bike Love user- it was the online space for advocates when there were no advocacy groups in Minnesota. There he really began to connect and plug into the community. In 2006, Hōkan joined the Minneapolis Bicycle Advisory Committee where he strongly supported better biking through policy, design, and infrastructure guidance in Minneapolis for over a decade. As a dedicated early advocate, Hōkan was founding member of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition (now Our Streets) and BikeMN. As an early Midtown Greenway supporter, Hōkan remained an avid trail watch volunteer for many years.
Perhaps, Hōkan’s greatest contribution to Minnesota advocacy were his contributions to bicycle education. In fall of 2007, Hōkan became one of Minnesota’s first League Cycling Instructors (LCIs) through funding from the Federal Non-motorized Transportation Pilot project. He quickly joined BikeMN’s first committee- the Education Committee and began teaching regular and frequent classes, always adjusting and meeting students where they are. No class was too small and he welcomed feedback at every opportunity, adapting and improving his teaching over time. In a very short time, the Coach responsible for training LCIs, Steve Clark, needed assistance for training morning. Hōkan and BikeMN’s Nick Mason signed up to help right away. What began in 2008 for education with that team became historic in national advocacy. The team of three trained every LCI in Minnesota for 5 years before Hōkan and Nick were certified as coaches (only about 15 nationally) in 2013. This group gave the state more coaches per capita anywhere in the US, one of the most robust training programs of its kind, and trained hundreds of LCIs over a decade. The program was so successful that people sometimes flew in from across the country to attend. Hōkan’s team was also the only team to develop two more Coaches in a very short time. Many of these individuals went on to train countless students- both children and adults- and supported the most successful bicycle pedestrian safety education in school program in America- Walk! Bike! Fun!
From Jordan Kocak the Pedestrian and Bicycle Coordinator for Hennepin County and the staff support for the Hennepin County Active Transportation Committee formerly the Hennepin County Bicycle Advisory Committee. Hokan was a member of the Hennepin County Bicycle Advisory Committee from 2014 to 2022. Hokan was an active and engaged committee member and most notably Hokan was the committee member who led the initiative to change the name of the committee from Bicycle Advisory Committee to Active Transportation Committee. He recognized that there was no equivalent Hennepin Pedestrian Advisory Committee and that the Hennepin Bicycle Advisory Committee could fill this gap by expanding their mission. He helped to form and lead a subcommittee that guided the process to change the committee’s name and expand scope of the committee to include a focus on people walking and rolling in addition to people biking. This included rewriting the committee mission and guiding principles and revising the committee membership structure. I admired Hokan’s leadership for identifying this need and leading the effort to make our county advisory committee inclusive of all active transportation modes.
In the coming months, BikeMN will be doing more to honor Hōkan’s legacy. If you have stories you would like to share, please reach out to us at ?- info@bikemn.org . And if you can do one thing for Hōkan, go ride your bike the grocery. Commute to work. Have a social ride with friends to get beer and pizza. Cheers to Hōkan and all he gave us!
