I (bike) Bogota
What an exhilarating day!
I hired Andres of Bogota Bike Tours to give me a tour of the city. He inquired about my interests and then tailored a full-day (by that I mean nine hours!!) tour of Bogota’s ciclorutas (bike routes) all across the city. We rode many miles today.
Andres promised to show me both the good and the bad. The good: the rutas go everywhere and in most cases are off-street. Here’s a picture I took of one from a bridge.
They are well marked and ubiquitous.
The bad: As in Tucson, sometimes they just end. Sometimes they have enormous holes in them. They were created by the stroke of Enrique Penalosa’s pen, and hence don’t have bottom-up support of the bureaucrats or, necessarily, the people. Also, they are often used heavily by pedestrians and amount to no more than a painted line on a sidewalk.
On balance though, they are a good deal more than that. I notice that bikes really do have the right-of-way on these things — pedestrians get out of the way when they see you coming. (Maybe out of fear, maybe out of respect for the bike lane, I don’t know, but anyway they do it!)
I have to say that I expected to be impressed by the commitment Bogota made to these bikeways, and I am. There is no way to come away from them without a real respect for how this city has prioritized the bicycle as a means of transportation.
Often there is some pretty amazing graffiti to be seen along the way, too.
One of the best parts of my tour was a visit to a bona-fide cargo-bike factory!
This was hastily arranged by telephone just when we set out, after Andres and Mike learned that I was particularly interested in cargo bikes. I felt pretty honored to get an inside view of this place. They make all kinds of bikes here, and one worker was making a tandem frame, I assume on custom-order.
You see a lot of what we usually call “pizza delivery” bikes here, with the huge front rack attached directly to the frame. Andres detoured us to the bike shop district of town so we could inquire about prices. They are only $120.00 U.S.! You can really load them up, too. Those bags are full of potatoes!
Here’s some more graffiti. Andres was very careful to assure me that it was not directed at American tourists but at our military, which as you probably know has just been granted access to seven military bases in Colombia, allegedly to fight “narco-terrorism” (our enemies are always called terrorists now) but more likely to intimidate Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Many Colombians are very worried about being used as pawns in a U.S. fight with Chavez.
The ride ended at Bogota Beer Company, a Bogota micro-brewery, where we had a very fine pitcher of ale before heading back through Bogota in the dark, at rush hour.
(We also had a few cups of coffee with Lina, our waitress at the brew pub, after her shift ended, because she wanted to practice her English on me and because she was excited to learn that her country’s ciclovia, which she regularly attends, is so admired by American cyclists.)
What a day! And what a great city! Thank you Andres, Mike, Lina, the hospitable folks at the Aromo cargo bike factory, and Bogota Bike Tours!
–Erik Ryberg
November 6th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Wow those bike lanes look good to me.
Erik, you are the number one cargo bike fan in the world!
November 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am
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