A few concluding thoughts on biking in Bogota
A contrast I noticed between two of my days in Bogota best describes my experience there. I spent a Saturday riding by myself through many of the bike paths that my guide Andres had not shown me on the day before.
It was a pretty bad day. I have never seen traffic like what I saw that day, in any city. Nor have I breathed such polluted air. And this is coming from someone who is a frequent visitor to Mexico City! Bogota traffic was considerably worse than anything I have ever seen in Mexico, and the air was worse, too.
The bike paths were nice, but they ran alongside busy streets that were full of cars, buses, and trucks belching out fumes. Many of these vehicles are Chinese-made and appear to have no emissions controls whatsoever.
Also, many of the bike paths went along sidewalks that were so full of pedestrians doing some Saturday shopping that bicycling on them was not really feasible.
At the end of that day I retired to my hotel with stinging eyes and lungs and the strong feeling that it is not bike advocates so much as car advocates who need to visit Bogota. It truly is a pre-apocalyptic technological dystopia there, all because of the damned cars. If someone had asked me on that day if I could live in Bogota, I would have said no . . . f . . . ing . . . way. I would do anything necessary not to live in that city.
But then on Sunday, somewhat demoralized at first, I rode the ciclovia. Whole roadways, some of them many lanes wide, were silent except for the sounds of feet on pavement and chains on cassettes, and the laughter and chatter of people. The air was clear. Police were everywhere ensuring the safety of the riders. Food vendors lined the streets everywhere, and bike mechanics were, it seemed, positioned on nearly every block, ready to keep the bicycles running. Smiling young Ciclovia employees, many with hand-made signs welcoming the riders, were at every intersection helping people decide which direction to go. Dance, yoga, and aerobics classes were teeming with people of all sizes, ages, classes, ethnicities, and styles, and everyone was laughing and having a good time meeting their neighbors.
It was a completely, completely different experience from the day before.
Colombia is a very poor country, quite obviously poorer than Mexico, and Bogota is a city that has many problems relating to poverty, the environment, crime, and of course drug trafficking. But it is also a city with a stunningly visionary and ambitious commitment to bicycle transport and to the physical health of its people.
Should a city care enough about the health of its citizens to close some streets once a week? Is it the responsibility of a city to make its streets safe and available to its citizens for non-motorized transport?
Let me also ask this: What person, anywhere in the world, cannot benefit in body and mind from a Sunday morning stroll? If a person’s entire city is invited to partake of that stroll, who wins and who loses?
I think the only losers are the ones who choose to stay at home. All the rest of us win.
–Erik Ryberg
November 15th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
So, in the end, Erik, could you live
with the six days for the one out of
seven?
Aside from the separation, are their
bikeways better than our bike lanes
on the street? Do their bikeways get
used a lot during the week?
I’ve been riding on Broadway a lot
lately and I really want to know what
people who don’t feel safe riding it
would want done to it so that they would
be comfortable on it. And I wonder how the
riders of Bogota would feel about riding it.
I’ve been wondering, too, how far a city
should go to accommodate daily cycling, which
I feel is far more beneficial than a one-day
event. Does a weekly ’street fair’ lose its
appeal after a while?
November 16th, 2009 at 10:11 am
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November 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
What impressed me when I visited Bogotá to experience the ciclovía was how pedestrian-oriented the city is, rather than bike-oriented. Besides Sundays when many people ride during ciclovía, there didn’t seem to be much cultural cachet in bike commuting, no hipsters, just people biking in utilitarian mode. True Gil Peñalosa oversaw the construction of many miles of ciclorrutas, the bike paths you mention that follow along congested streets, but many people who ride in the city do so on overloaded cargo bikes that do not fit between the bollards marking the ciclorrutas every so often. And according to one young woman professional I spoke with when I was there, people don’t want to take a long, sweaty ride to work; it’s a big city. The city has done a lot to accommodate a walking/transit culture, with restrictions on when you can drive, the TransMilenio BRT system, and campaigns to encourage people to follow traffic laws, but I didn’t see a bike-’splosion there like I’ve seen in other cities. Maybe the people who end up biking in the U.S. ride motorbikes in Bogotá.
November 16th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Thinking about the difference between Saturday and Sunday in Bogota, how do livable streets and environmental protection advocates get the Sunday attitudes translated to the other days of the week? “Active neighborhoods and great air quality doesn’t have to be just one day per week.”
P.S. In the third paragraph, what is the significance of describing the automobiles as “Chinese-made”? Are you trying to correlate the vehicle’s manufacturing origin with the lack of emissions controls? If not, it would be less confusing if you separated these two points into separate sentences.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Steven–
Obviously, there is a long way to go. The Sunday thing is for recreation, not transportation, and I agree that transportation is the step that has to be made to clean the air on the other days. But these things are accomplished step by step, not all at once.
As for the Chinese-made four-wheel drives, that comes from my personal experience riding around Bogota. The cheaper the vehicle, the more fumes it seemed to emit. The Russian Ladas were pretty bad, too. The Japanese and American models didn’t seem as bad. So yes, I guess I am correlating the vehicle’s emission controls with its country of origin.
Adonia — All true. But I saw a fair number of those utilitarian commuters, particularly early in the morning and in the northern part of the city.
Coghauler — I don’t think the Sundays make up for the rest of the week, but they come pretty close. Some of their bike routes are significantly better than ours in Tucson. Most are a little better. Some are way worse.
As for riding on Broadway, something I noticed both in Mexico City and in Bogota is that drivers rarely graze you. I get grazed just about every time I go riding in Tucson (I don’t mean actually hit, just way too close for comfort.) I think there is a cultural driving thing that the people in front of you are your problem, and you need to give them space. But once you are in front of them, you become their problem. Hence the fact that although I was never grazed, drivers right-hooked me pretty often.
As for the weekly street fair, please do not call it that! It is not a street fair! It is a chance to experience life on foot and by bike. It isn’t about buying things, it’s about being healthy and meeting people in your city. It didn’t seem to me like it had lost its appeal. In fact I would think it would need to happen for a while before it fully caught on.
I like the accommodations for daily cycling, too, but people need to start somewhere and if they ride their bikes (or their kids do) on Sundays, maybe they will treat us better the rest of the week when they are behind the wheel.
EBR
November 18th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Car use must be reduced. To me, this is overwhelmingly the key to better cities. And the key to reducing car use? Dis-incentives to driving! Cease and desist increasing car infrastructure! Stop trying to solve congestion! Eliminate the huge subsidies for personal motorized transport. Charge motorists a reasonable facsimile of what their driving really costs society. Efforts to provide for alternatives do little good if we’re still bending over backwards to accommodate everyone who thinks they want to drive a car, whenever they want to drive it.
It’s all old stuff, and policy makers are utterly disingenuous with their talk of improving things, until they are willing to take real steps to REDUCE THE USE OF CARS.
Erik, you ask about cities’ responsibilities? Remember this?
(an excerpt first; full bill follows…)
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution on the protection of pedestrians. Some highlights of the resolution:
The pedestrian has the right to live in a healthy environment and freely to enjoy the amenities offered by public areas under conditions that adequately safeguard his physical and psychological well-being.
The pedestrian has the right to live in urban or village centers tailored to the needs of human beings and not to the needs of the motor car….
Children, the elderly and the disabled have the right to expect towns to be places of easy social contact and not places that aggravate their inherent weakness.
The pedestrian has the right to urban areas which are intended exclusively for his use, are as extensive as possible and are not mere “pedestrian precincts” but in harmony with the overall organization of the town.
The European Charter of Pedestrians’ Rights
(adopted in 1988 by The European Parliament)
I. The pedestrian has the right to live in a healthy environment and freely to enjoy the amenities offered by public areas under conditions that adequately safeguard his physical and psychological well-being.
II. The pedestrian has the right to live in urban or village centres tailored to the needs of human beings and not to the needs of the motor car and to have amenities within walking or cycling distance.
III. Children, the elderly and the disabled have the right to expect towns to be places of easy social contact and not places that aggravate their inherent weakness.
IV. The disabled have the right to specify measures to maximise mobility, such as the elimination of architectural obstacles and the adequate equipping of public means of transport.
V. The pedestrian has the right to urban areas which are intended exclusively for his use, are as extensive as possible and are not mere ‘pedestrian precincts’ but in harmony with the overall organisation of the town.
VI. The pedestrian has a particular right to expect;
a) compliance with chemical and noise emission standards for motor vehicles which scientists consider to be tolerable,
b) the introduction into all public transport systems of vehicles that are not a source of either air or noise pollution,
c) the creation of ‘green lungs’, including the planting of trees in urban areas,
d) the control of speed limits by modifying the layout of roads and junctions (e.g. by incorporating safety islands etc.), so that motorists adjust their speed, as a way of effectively safeguarding pedestrian and bicycle traffic,
e) the banning of advertising which encourages an improper and dangerous use of the motor car,
f) an effective system of road signs whose design also takes into account the needs of the blind and the deaf,
g) the adoption of specific measures to ensure that vehicular and pedestrian traffic has ease of access to, and freedom of movement and the possibility of stopping on, roads and pavements respectively (for example: anti-slip pavement surfaces, ramps at kerbs to compensate for the difference in the levels of pavement and roadway, roads made wide enough for the traffic they have to carry, special arrangements while building work is in progress, adaptation of the urban street infrastructure to protect motor car traffic, provision of parking and rest areas and subways and footbridges),
h) the introduction of the system of risk liability so that the person creating the risk bears the financial consequences thereof (as has been the case in France, for example, since 1985).
VII. The pedestrian has the right to complete and unimpeded mobility, which can be achieved through the integrated use of the means of transport. In particular, he has the right to expect;
a) an extensive and well-equipped public transport service which will meet the needs of all citizens, from the physically fit to the disabled,
b) the provision of bicycle lanes throughout the urban areas,
c) the creation of parking lots which affect neither the mobility of pedestrians nor their ability to enjoy areas of architectural distinction.
VIII. Each Member State must ensure that comprehensive information on the rights of pedestrians is disseminated through the most appropriate channels and is made available to children from the beginning of their school career.