Cycling on verge of extinction in India

congratulations Dr J!! Wiki Article on Factors Influencing Cycling And related issues

Cycling in India is making a comeback, slowly but surely. You can check out http://cycling.bikeszone.com to see the number of people in Bangalore who would like to make a difference over the past few years. BikesZone and the community is trying to increase the number of people who take up cycling as a means of recreation and more importantly a means of commuting. Be it to work, meet friends, shop etc. its always easy to do it on a bicycle.

The century-old, IISc, aka Tata Institute campus is also full of cycles used by the 2000 students as well as the Professors. However, most cyclists of IISc do not venture to cycle outside the campus on the scary Bangalore roads. City Zen

U mentioned Cambridge (university town?) and oxford too (has cycling culture) but you won't find such a culture in non-university towns.. the exception is in Japan where people cycle to office because of parking problem / space constraint! Bangalore is a huge place.. though I would love to cycle to office every day.. the size of the city dissuades me!

wow.. thats cool.. didn't know all that thanks for sharing.. I was planning to buy a bike for my commute.. now u made me think of cycle as an alternative!

Sometime back, I had suggested the following to a group of cycling enthusiasts in the city, with a view to promoting cycling:

• get the government to block off the inner-half of the ring road every Sunday (from 6AM to 6 PM) exclusively for cycling atleast twice a year,
• organise 'tour du Bangalore' race along the ring road, possibly sponsored by TI or Hero.

But, obviously, this pertains to leisure cycling. I am not sure I would want to venture out on a bicycle to the main roads on a working day in today's kind of traffic. But, certainly, this can happen within local neighborhoods, even today, and should be what the city should be targeting eventually.

Muralidhar Rao

I think for cycling specific infrastructure to be available, there needs to be a critical mass of cyclists to make use of it. Its I guess like learning to swim. Without knowing how to swim, people don't get into the water and without getting into the water, you'll never figure out how to swim.

I tend to agree with Murali and Tarle. Cycling-specific infrastructure must first be ready and the critical mass of cyclists can come later. This is because Bangalore roads are too unsafe now. Achieving critical mass may not be that difficult - A few hundred thousands of garment factory workers are there for whom the factories can gift cycles as Diwali bonus in lieu of a cash bonus. Or, maybe the cycle companies can workout with the factory managements for loan options. I once saw a garment factory worker, a new mother, literally running home in the noon sun to feed her child. Nearly a KM distance between her workplace and home. City Zen

You are right, Abhi ! My point only addressed achieving the critical mass needed to justify cycling-specific infrastructure. The bigger and more urgent problem of traffic congestion and reducing fossil fuel consumption needs to be addressed as early as possible. As already commented on these pages earlier, the best way, IMHO, is to raise the taxes for new registrations, introduce exhorbitant congestion tax to existing vehicles and use the tax collection to subsidize public transport by reducing fares and increasing frequency to say every 5 minutes. A small example why raising taxes for new registrations -- a techie who finished studies recently joined Texas Instruments and within a few months bought a new car. It seems TI has a soft-financing policy under which its staff can buy cars which will be registered in the company's name and the company will also provide 50 litres of petrol per month. I don't know if other IT companies too have similar schemes. I understand that every year some 75,000 new IT jobs are taken up, which means that much more congestion. With the release of Tata 1-lakh car, the scenario will certainly worsen even further. - City Zen