4
DEEP FOCUS
BANGALORE THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2013
Subir Ghosh ● BANGALORE
In 2000, a 40-year-old entrepreneur was increasingly horrified by the pollution and traffic congestion all around, besides his own contribution to the debilitating process with his car. Then, he came across an article about a dentist in Pune who cycled 50km to and from work every day. That moment, GV Dasarathi, or Das as he is popularly known, decided that if the dentist could do 50, he could definitely cycle 26 km. Close to 13 years later, Das is fitter, has cut down his carbon footprint to a bare minimum, and is a motivating factor for many in the city who are choosing to look at cycling both as a fitness measure as well as a sustainable alternative of transport. Numbers usually tell their own story. Darshan Bildekar, for instance, commutes 45km daily. Travelling by car would take him nothing less than 100-120 mins, but while cycling Bildekar cuts down his commuting cycle by 50 mins. Rohan Kini, when he started, would traverse the distance between Jayanagar and Indiranagar in 50 mins that would otherwise gobble up 70 mins. Apart from the traffic woes, of course. The vehicular population of the city is a staggering 1.5 million, and growing at a disconcerting rate of 10 per cent by the year. Roads run roughly 1.5 times their capacity, the traffic morass sucks everyone in. Is there no way out? There probably is -- the experiences of Das, Bildekar and Kini need to be looked at more closely. They live a fitter life in a city where the air quality has been dipping by the day. And while doing all this, they save out on precious time and needless headaches. What, with the average Banglorean losing out close to 240 hours of their life to traffic jams every year. That's not a wild guestimate by an ignorant - the number was arrived at by the city's Comprehensive Traffic and Transportation plan (CTTP). After tomes of studies having been done on sustainable transport, cycling as a mode in Bangalore is yet to take off in a big way. The much-hyped Jayanagar cycle track has been a virtual nonstarter; cycling is only paid lip service in strategy and status reports from officialdom; and the city is far off from emulating Colombia's capital, Bogotá. Many initiatives either remain in a limbo or are caught in a bind. When the ambitious Jayanagar cycle track was opened in September 2012, news about the venture was painted red the town over. The Rs2.59-crore project, touted as a model for other such initiatives in the city, has today come a cropper. There are innumerable reasons for its abject failure, prime among them being the impracticality of it all. The Jayanagar track, announced with much fanfare in November 2011, had sought to provide a separate lane on existing roads for cyclists, especially students. Three months later, people know that the pitch has been queered. Vehicles are brazenly parked on the cycle tracks, the few signposts there are turned a blind eye to. And not without reason. Parking alternatives are few and far between on the 40km stretch. There aren't enough police personnel to monitor the track either. If safety of cyclists was to have been an underlying concern for the tracks, elements dissuading cyclists abound today. It might be, however, too early to write off the project altogether. Then, there's the question of the roads too. Das, who commutes from Sadashivanagar to his office in Jayanagar 13 km away, finds it dangerous to cycle on the broader roads where traffic moves at high speed (the so-called signal-free corridors that BBMP is so fond of). "All the widening in recent years has made the roads unsafe for cyclists like me, and the tree-cutting has deprived me of the shade that I need as a cyclist," he rues. The primary reason why cycling has not taken off in a big way, urban strategist Ashwin Mahesh believes, is that the government has not seriously looked at the issue.
epaper.dnaindia.com l www.dnaindia.com l facebook.com/dnaindia l twitter.com/dna l dnaindia.com/mobile
The vehicular population of Bangalore stands at a staggering 1.5 million, and grows uncomfortably at 10% every year. The roads are filled to the brim, running at 1.5 times their capacity. The explosive growth of the city has made it burst at its seams. As urban experts and policymakers grapple with sustainable alternatives out of this morass, this week DNA looks at one of them — cycling.
ROADBLOCK CASE STUDY: Ciclovía
Most of the people are weekend cyclists, cycling for fun. A minority (maybe 25%) could be cycling for environmental reasons. Most of them, in fact, sadly do not participate in events to promote cycling or facilities for cycling.
Ciclovía, a Spanish term
—GV Dasarathi (AKA Das), 52-year-old entrepreneur who cycles 26 km every day to and back from work
"If we simply ring-fenced the lakes in the city with cycling paths, we would get 800km of cycle tracks that would be usable for a lot of local commutes. We just need to decide to do it, and then do it," Mahesh contends, and suggests one way out of the quagmire. He continues, "I would also relook at park designs. If you look at Bangalore parks, there are usually two footpaths at the boundary of each park -- one inside the fence and another outside. It's a bad design. We should instead integrate the two and build cycle tracks into the boundaries of large parks. That would add another 400km of tracks." Woes aside, it is not that the habit of cycling is not catching on at all. The networking group Bangalore Bikers Club has more than 4,000 members. Maybe not enough to turn the tide as yet, but as Kini affirms, more people are taking to the pedals. Das, himself, has been a source of inspiration for many. He says, "Some employees have started cycling, some take the bus more often, and a friend who is the VP of a large company started cycling to work one day in a week after being inspired by me." For his part, Kini gave up his job and started an initiative called BumsOnTheSaddle, with the aim of starting a cycling revolution in the city. "Cycling," as the note on his website states, "was to be a way
out of JamGalore or Jamgalooru." Towards this, TheAlternative.in, which strives to make sustainability an everyday conversation, recently organised an interactive session called Connnect the Dots Commute Smart to talk about jamlessness. The issue, after all, is also of mindsets. Aarti Mohan of TheAlternative.in steps back a bit, and presents the bigger picture, "We all want a better world for ourselves and our children to live in. We are slowly inching — as individuals, as a community, as groups and as society — towards it, through a variety of ways. Like cycling or taking to public transport, eating more wholesome, organic food or supporting fair trade. And soon you find a hundred different ways in which you can make a difference to your life and the society at large." Things, needless to say, have undergone changes. "There is of course far more traffic (it has more than doubled over the past 13 years) and far more pollution. But attitudes have changed too. When I started cycling there was no cycling 'movement', and people only cycled for economical reasons, because they could not afford a bike or car. Nobody cycled out of choice. Today, there are far more people cycling out of choice, although still a tiny minority," points out Das, who does not use his car for more than three days in a month. There are other factors as well.
"We are all point-to-point people. We place too much emphasis on having a minimum displacement between transport methods, our homes and the places we have to get to. If the city sees more people taking to cycles, changes to make it more cycle-friendly will be inevitable, and bound to happen," asserts Mohan. Yet, how many people look at cycling indeed more as a sustainable alternative and less as a recreational fad? Das says, "Most of the people are weekend cyclists, cycling for fun. A minority (maybe 25%) could be cycling for environmental reasons. Most of them, in fact, sadly do not participate in events to promote cycling or facilities for cycling." Kini wonders how many people can persist with cycling if there's no personal angle to it, and cites the instance of Das saying, "Not many people are so altruistic that they give up comforts." Mahesh, however, differs, "The distinction between cycling for fitness and cycling for functional value is unnecessary. People would like to be fitter, and also do their bit for the environment at the same time. But we need policies that enable that. More people would use the cycling option for commutes to work if we built the tracks and designed the streets to be friendly to cyclists." And that may take a while. subir.ghosh@dnaindia.net
which translates as “bike path”, is either a permanently designated bicycle route or the closing of city streets to automobiles for the enjoyment of cyclists and public alike. The concept originated in the 1970s in Bogotá, but soon spread across the world. It is not without reason that Colombia is called the cycling capital of the world.
Each Sunday and on holidays from 7 am to 2 pm, certain main streets of Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, and other Colombian
municipalities are blocked off to cars for the exclusive use of runners, skaters, and cyclists. At the same time, stages are set up in city parks. Aerobics instructors, yoga teachers and musicians lead people through various performances. Bogotá's weekly ciclovías are used by approximately 2 million people (30% of citizens) on over 120 km of car-free streets.
The movement has its detractors too. In 2007, a Colombian congressman, José Fernando Castro Caycedo, proposed a law
The ciclovía concept, popularised by Bogotá, has now been adopted by many cities around the world
restricting the hours of ciclovías all over the country to between 5 am and 12 noon, alleging that it caused traffic jams. Ciclovía users protested and received wide support from many
decisionmakers, including members of the city council and Congress. The proposal was defeated, and it were the people who emerged victorious.
Source: Wikipedia
The novel idea of cycle-sharing Students at IISc can register via the website nammacycle.in and receive a registration ID which they can use to rent cycles from four station racks in the campus. The faculty/students and visitors alike can rent cycles to go around the campus. The pilot initiative was launched in August 2012 by Ride A Cycle Foundation (RACF), with 150 cycles sponsored by TI Cycles India. The cost of the project was Rs 30 lakh. Implementing partners include EMBARQ India, a non-profit that helps implement sustainable urban mobility solutions, and the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning (CiSTUP), a centre of advanced research and training in Namma Cycle, a cycle-sharing programme, was launched at the IISc campus last transportation engineering year. Based on its success, the initiative will be extended to other parts of the city based in IISc.
The cycle of intentions and navigating out of the bottlenecks Ashwin
If you look at large bicyclesharing programmes in major cities around the world, or even cities with extensive ownership and usage of bicycles, you’ll notice one thing in common. In all those cases, inspiring political leaders made the decision to promote the use of cycles, and then went through the detailed task of creating a system to achieve that. If Bangalore wants to emulate that, we’ll have to do likewise. We live in a very cycle-able city, for the most part. There are not too many steep hills,
there are many natural bodies around (183 lakes, for example), and several large parks dotted around the city. With a little bit of design improvements we could easily add 1500 kilometres of bicycle tracks in less than two years. But it’s not going to happen without crossing the first threshold — mustering the intention to make the city cyclist-friendly. How does one build a large network quickly? Simple. Take advantage of what already exists. Three years ago, I proposed to the government that we should build bicycle tracks around all the lakes in
the city, starting with the big ones. It’s simply a matter of redesigning the edge of the lake, and the adjoining roads, in a way that creates space for this new mode of transport too. There are dozens of lakes in which this is doable immediately and completely, and dozens more where it can be done partially. Some of these are quite large too, and making bike tracks around them would create hundreds of kilometres of usable pathways immediately. A similar redesign of park boundaries can create hundreds of kilometres more.
Expert opinion Based on this thinking, it was proposed to build the first bicycle track around Madiwala lake, and when
done, this would provide excellent local connectivity in many neighbourhoods adjoining the lake. But the project has been slow to get off the ground. We need to create only one good example, and the logic of that success will follow everywhere. There are also programmes that are ongoing to create bike-friendly lanes in some neighbourhoods, starting with Jayanagar. This is more difficult, and cannot succeed without tighter enforcement of the separate lanes for bicycles. Perhaps the first attempt was over-ambitious, but it is still the right thing to
do. Even today, we could set the errors right, start smaller, and make a success of it. Large campuses can also help, by promoting bicycle use, including sharing, within them. A first pilot of this, called Namma Cycle, was made in IISc, and is showing reasonable improvement in the usage of bicycles within the campus. Such efforts need more support to keep going, strengthen, and turn into models for other places. All of this depends only on two things. First, to focus on doing what is quickly do-able, even if it does not seem complete or perfect. We must
We live in a very cycleable city, for the most part. There are not too many steep hills, there are many natural bodies around (183 lakes, for example), and several large parks dotted around the city never allow the ideal to become the enemy of the good. It will always be difficult to recreate Paris and London here in Bangalore, but that should not stop us from making a better Bangalore itself.
Second, and more important, is to say what we mean, and to mean what we say. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if politicians genuinely want to create a dense cycling network in the city, it can be done within months. Indeed, Bangalore will be a much more livable city, on many counts, if we could win this battle of intentions. Remember that on election day. —The author is a co-founder of the Namma Cycle initiative, and a national steering committee member of Lok Satta.