Saluting an invisible population

May 27th, 2010  |  Published in Cycling, Living  |  29 Comments

In Delhi, I met a lady called Anita, who had sold her car around 10 years ago and now cycles around instead. She told me that with her work­place and home not too far from each other, she man­ages on two wheels most of the time. And this too, in Delhi!

She said some­thing else that struck a chord: “Do you notice that a large pop­u­la­tion of any city is on cycles. You just don’t notice them.”

And this is so true. When I wasn’t cycling (and didn’t know how to!), cyclists never reg­is­tered in my vision – at least con­sciously. But there’s a huge lower and mid­dle class pop­u­la­tion that relies totally on cycles. If you start look­ing, they’re every­where. On the road, they’re a bunch of folks who come to your notice only if you hap­pen to be behind them at a traf­fic sig­nal and in your way. Oth­er­wise, they’re a largely anony­mous lot, who are either in front or behind the traf­fic, or on the side of the road. Some­times, they’re also on the pavement :-)

When I began cycling, I real­ized that it is not easy being a cyclist. That cyclists def­i­nitely deserve much more respect on the roads. In fact, even when I drive now, I am more mind­ful of cyclists because I have new found respect for what they go through every­day to sur­vive on the roads. Roads filled honk­ing and incon­sid­er­ate dri­vers. And a lot of rude, idi­otic peo­ple in a big hurry to get… god only knows where.

Under these con­di­tions, cyclists need to device their own ways of being safe on the roads and get­ting through traf­fic (some­times they’re faster than you in a four wheeler).

The haz­ards of being a cyclist:
1) The honk­ing: Every­one honks. And most of the time, you’re at the receiv­ing end because dri­vers per­ceive that they’re in a big­ger vehi­cle and there­fore have a higher claim on the road. Honk­ing is also the past time of Indian dri­vers. Whether there’s some­one in the way or not – they will honk. As a show of anger, irri­ta­tion, impa­tience (any emo­tion, actu­ally) – this is all con­veyed by one con­stant fin­ger on the horn. In fact, I sus­pect that a large per­cent­age of our dri­vers were born with a horn stuck to their fingers.

2) Get­ting bul­lied by big­ger vehi­cles. And every­one is big­ger. I have had vans, trucks, jeeps and even city buses get­ting really close for com­fort. There’s a huge big road that I’ve left for them (I’m the extreme left cor­ner) and yet they only see the exact posi­tion right next to me so that they can just about brush me as they go past.

3) You are per­ceived as an incon­ve­nience on the roads. Wake up peo­ple, I want to scream. A cyclist take up around 1/10 of the space you do in a gas guz­zler. It’s not only the most eco-friendly machine, the per­son is doing your city, your town and your envi­ron­ment a big favour — so respect that!

If you need any more con­vinc­ing, look at this visual…

So they next time you’re on the road:
1) Respect oth­ers, espe­cially cyclists
2) Take your hand off your horn. Give your­self a chal­lenge to go an hour with­out honk­ing. It’s not as hard as you think.
3) Espe­cially don’t honk at peo­ple (and cyclists!) at a red sig­nal (they can’t fly).

They’re cut­ting down trees, bring­ing down build­ings in an effort to build wider roads. But when will our city plan­ners real­ize that these mea­sures will never solve a city’s traf­fic cri­sis? What hap­pens when there are no more trees to cut down, and no more cars that will fit onto these already widened roads? What then?

I think it will be too late by the time we as a city come to the real­iza­tion that alter­na­tive mea­sures to pub­lic trans­port, improv­ing the cur­rent road net­works and encour­ag­ing means like cycling are the best ways to tackle the traf­fic prob­lem. What about just mak­ing our city bus dri­vers and our jeep dri­vers more aware of how to drive on roads (and not to honk con­stantly). To respect oth­ers on the road – all com­pa­nies and the state trans­port folks should have some kind of train­ing for their dri­vers. They are the ones who are a men­ace on roads. If not for them, a lot more peo­ple would take on cycling.

We have a great city in terms of both cli­mate and ter­rain and it’s actu­ally per­fect for cycling. Prab­hakar Rao (aka GoGreen Rao because of his green efforts) is doing some great work with the Go Green Go Cycling ini­tia­tive. These are rides to basi­cally show that cycling is a very fea­si­ble alter­na­tive way of trav­el­ling. And in Ban­ga­lore, the traf­fic should be a rea­son to cycle (and not a rea­son not to). The group organ­ises reg­u­lar cam­paign rides on week­ends to cre­ate bicy­cling aware­ness – do join in!

Here’s the TV cov­er­age of a recent ride:

When peo­ple ask whether it’s safe to cycle in Ban­ga­lore, I ask them to check the sta­tis­tics. What is safe nowa­days? You could be hit on the road, while cross­ing it. You could be hit while dri­ving in your car. You could even crash when you’re fly­ing. How safe is cycling then? I would say, as safe as it can get in today’s times. And there are no guar­an­tees. If you’re on the road, you take all nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to keep your­self safe. But apart from that, fig­ures also say that there are more pedes­trian deaths in Ban­ga­lore than… cyclists. That should be a good enough statistics.

Ridea­cy­cle Foun­da­tion is doing some great work to increase aware­ness about cycling, espe­cially at cor­po­rates and we recently organ­ised a bike work­shop in my com­pany. If you want to get this done at your work­place, do get in touch with the folks at Rideacycle.

This is a video I saw recently that is pretty amaz­ing. It also brings home the fact that we really make excuses because we can and we have so many of them (it’s unsafe, my wife/mother won’t let me, i don’t know how etc).

Let me leave you with this per­fect place in Nether­lands. Many coun­tries in Europe have long since dis­cov­ered how impor­tant cycling is and take it really seri­ously. And Nether­lands is no excep­tion.

I can’t but help think­ing that one day, if we can do this in Ban­ga­lore, it will be the most per­fect place!

Where to get a cycle in Ban­ga­lore

RR Cycles, Madi­vala
BOTS
Decathlon Sports Store, Sar­japur Road

Cycling Groups
Go Green Go Cycling
Ban­ga­lore Bik­ers Club
BikesZone

Responses

1. Ramesh Subramanian says:
   

   May 27th, 2010 at 7:22 pm (#)

   Came through your arti­cle when brows­ing thru Blogchai. Nice write up and a lot of insights. Next time i will think twice before press­ing the mid­dle of my steer­ing wheel. Thanks for the knock on my head!

   Ramesh fm Chennai

2. Jayadeep Purushothaman says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 9:14 am (#)

   Yes, there are sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cycles on the road — I was wor­ried about cycling in traf­fic, but then I observed that there were many of them on the road who were far less cov­ered than myself if some­thing hap­pens. So I started cycling a year back and find it far more safer than it is per­ceived to be.

3. Shantanu Singh says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 10:43 am (#)

   I though about this dur­ing my ride to office. Actu­ally the dri­vers and the motor­bik­ers should be thank­ful to us. It is because of we cyclists that they can drive on the road, there is one less car on that red light, their kids will be breath­ing less car­bon monox­ide. Just imag­ine if 30% peo­ple on any ran­dom red­light hop on to the sad­dle, it would change the world. I think we are doing it, mak­ing our mark slowly but steadily. There are more num­ber of cyclists on the roads of Ban­ga­lore and Pune now. .…

4. Sathish says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 11:09 am (#)

   1. Did you know that dri­vers & motor­bike rid­ers get angry when you ask them why they are honk­ing.
   2. Learn the slang in local lan­guage, its required to sur­vive in the mad traf­fic and when other vehi­cles bully you.
   3. If you want your space on the road you got to be aggres­sive.
   4. Keep a mobile phone always and have the police con­tact num­bers. I have seen cops at junc­tions who are very curi­ous and happy to have a con­ver­sa­tion with a cyclist. They can never get a con­ver­sa­tion with other vehi­cle dri­vers other than issu­ing challan.

   The above are from my per­sonal expe­ri­ences of rid­ing around in a city on a cycle.

   While “Ride A Foun­da­tion” is doing an awe­some job attract­ing cor­po­rate employ­ees to take up to cycling. I would be happy to see them targetting/attracting col­lege goers to cycling. For instance, when I pass through CMRIT there are so many motor­bikes enter­ing the cam­pus. If these guys take up to cycling tomor­row there is always a pos­si­bil­ity that they would con­tinue it (though money can divert).

5. keshav says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 12:14 pm (#)

   The visual was awe­some. I was in Ams­ter­dam for a week and saw first hand their way of travelling.

   The rush hour video is a future I want to see for India.

   Thanks!

6. Paavani says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 1:53 pm (#)

   well writ­ten and a con­cerned blog post. Wish, peo­ple learn eti­quette before blam­ing gov­er­ment for bad road and path for cycle. Even if we get seper­ate lane, I am sure other vehi­cles will enter in that zne too.

7. Salute an invisible population… | Subramoney says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 2:12 pm (#)

   […] http://www.anitabora.com/blog/2010/05/27/saluting-an-invisible-population/ […]

8. Sachin Bharadwaj says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 3:32 pm (#)

   I per­fectly agree with you Anita. Even though I’m not a cyclist, I have deep rev­er­ence to cyclists and I make sure that I never ever honk at them. They don’t con­tribute to either air or noise pol­lu­tion & they occupy less space! Hats off to all cyclists!

9. Ravi Chella says:
   

   May 28th, 2010 at 3:32 pm (#)

   Yes..as you rightly said the cyclists dont con­tribute any­thing to the global warm­ing but it is the rich car peo­ple who do it. Infact when our fathers used to cycle their way to work the city was much greener and health­ier a place to live in. I am not against peo­ple who drive big cars but it is the arro­gance which has crept in which is result­ing in scant respect to the pedes­tri­ans as well as cyclists.
   The most sim­plest thing is to cut down trees but trans­plant­ing them to another place or plant­ing saplings in place of them ..we wont do it , we are too busy for that.

10. Shrinidhi Hande says:
    

    May 28th, 2010 at 5:36 pm (#)

    This is an infor­ma­tive post. Fully agree

11. anita says:
    

    May 28th, 2010 at 6:01 pm (#)

    @ ramesh: thanks! and yes, just being a lit­tle sen­si­tive on the road goes a very long way. and once you do it, some­one else will also learn from it!

    @ jayadeep: totally! it is def­i­nitely much safer than it’s per­ceived to be. there are a lot of “close encoun­ters” but i guess it’s always a haz­ard on our roads in what­ever mode of trans­porta­tion we’re using!

    @ shan­tanu: absolutely, which is why i really love the last video — it shows how things can actu­ally be if we made an effort! and, yes you’re right — there are many more join­ing in the population!

    @ sathish: i think the work­force is the area that is needed in terms of aware­ness. col­lege kids will nat­u­rally grav­i­tate towards motor­bikes because they need a taste of it. later, they will come back to cycles (hope­fully)! it’s only when you’re slightly older and wiser when you see sense in these things.

    @ keshav: wow, lucky! i’d love to visit some­day and maybe cycle around too :-)

    @ paa­vani: sep­a­rate lanes won’t work here sim­ply because peo­ple have to first learn basic man­ners! even if we can get across that hur­dle, it will be a bless­ing :0)

    @ sachin: awe­some! i know every­one can’t start cycling, but at least dri­vers should become more aware on the roads — even that is such a good feel­ing. i had a guy who waited behind me with­out honk­ing when i had to get off the cycle and get on again and i felt like thank­ing him for being patient! because its such a rarity.

    @ ravi: true. but unless we redis­cover some of these ways soon, we’ll never regain the earth back. also, trans­plant­ing doesn’t really work on a larger level. a lot of these old trees when replanted suf­fer from shock and it’s actu­ally not so easy for them to grow in the new loca­tion. the other prob­lem is that even when you’re plant­ing trees, they will take at least another 10–12 years to grow (and if it’s looked after), so you’ve actu­ally lost out on many years. addi­tion­ally, there’s no use plant­ing the wrong kind of trees just to make up for the fact that you’ve cut down others.

    @ srinidhi: thanks!

12. Young says:
    

    May 28th, 2010 at 6:29 pm (#)

    Good arti­cle… thank you. Our traf­fic prob­lems will reduce by 60 — 70% if we learn how to respect oth­ers, thinks every­one has right on the road/rail/infrastructure. polite to oth­ers (of course you’ll get it back).… we should know how to share.…

13. Armchair Guy says:
    

    May 29th, 2010 at 8:29 am (#)

    I think cycling is really good for the envi­ron­ment, also for per­sonal health (assum­ing the cyclist takes pre­cau­tions not to breathe the pol­luted air).

    But how safe is it really? If some­one runs down a cyclist in Europe, the chance that the law with track down and pun­ish them is very high. This makes them more care­ful. I doubt that this is so in India. If an Indian dri­ver ran down a cyclist, s/he would flee and it’s fairly unlikely s/he would be caught. This makes dri­vers less likely to care. (Per­haps this is why they get “too close for comfort”.)

14. Saluting an invisible population at Blogbharti says:
    

    May 31st, 2010 at 12:11 am (#)

    […] met a lady called Anita, who had sold her car around 10 years ago and now cycles around instead says Anita Bora Linked by Pattu. Join Blogb­harti facebook […]

15. Somesh says:
    

    May 31st, 2010 at 12:09 pm (#)

    very true.. i real­ized same when I started cycling… Nicely writ­ten. thanks!

16. anita says:
    

    June 1st, 2010 at 12:22 pm (#)

    @ young: so true! maybe we’ll get there some day!

    @ arm­chair guy: true, i think dri­vers gen­er­ally think they can get away with “any­thing” actu­ally — till some­thing hap­pens. but safety — as i men­tioned before — the num­bers indi­cate that it’s as safe as any­thing else on the roads…

17. anita says:
    

    June 1st, 2010 at 12:56 pm (#)

    @ somesh: thanks!

18. Indian Homemaker says:
    

    June 2nd, 2010 at 4:25 pm (#)

    Landed here through Blogb­harti. You are right — cycling is not just eco friendly, it is also great for exer­cise! I wish city traf­fic was made a lit­tle safer for cyclists though I guess you are right, cycling is not as unsafe as one is made to feel it is!

    If stu­dents are encour­aged to start cycling, like a com­menter sug­gested above, it might just become a life long habit…

19. Indian Homemaker says:
    

    June 2nd, 2010 at 4:31 pm (#)

    I checked the video of cycling on a rainy day and read this in the descrip­tion,
    …What makes the inter­sec­tion really safe are the sep­a­rate cycle traf­fic lights with sep­a­rate green phases for cyclists.

    Utrecht is the 4th largest city in the Nether­lands with a pop­u­la­tion 300,000 and 33% of all trips in the city are made on a bicycle.

    I wish we in India also made cycling a con­ve­nient option for more and more people.

20. Kanupriya says:
    

    June 2nd, 2010 at 5:59 pm (#)

    Very very nice post. I wish your post about cycling or honk­ing is read by those who unnec­es­sar­ily honk. It is just so damn irri­tat­ing to hear honk­ing on jam­packed Ban­ga­lore roads, no idea if peo­ple think that by honk­ing some vir­tual fly­over will come up and they can fly over that!!!
    Great to know about all these cycling ini­tia­tives in Bangalore.

21. Shilpa Hejmadi says:
    

    June 2nd, 2010 at 6:11 pm (#)

    Stum­bled on your blog when I was look­ing for a list­ing for top indian blogs. Looks like you started with some­thing on those lines but haven’t been able to update it.

    ‘Salut­ing an invis­i­ble pop­u­la­tion’ is such an insight­ful arti­cle. Got the feel­ing that you have said all that I would have wanted to!

    I totally agree with you when you say ‘a large per­cent­age of our dri­vers were born with a horns stuck to their fin­gers’. It is the great­est irri­tant on the roads. And peo­ple are so insen­si­tive, they seem to delib­er­ately use horns with high deci­bel lev­els which not only grates on your nerves, but may have the poten­tial to dam­age ear drums.

    Cycling is such a great option, but many of us can’t seem to gar­ner the courage to use one on Mum­bai / Ban­ga­lore roads. I wish the gov­ern­ment would do more to cre­ate ded­i­cated lanes for cyclists. As of now, all cyclists cer­tainly deserve our salute!

    Thanks for this article.

22. Anita says:
    

    June 3rd, 2010 at 3:11 pm (#)

    @ indian home­maker: undoubt­edly! i know a hand­ful of folks who have lost oodles of weight. and become much fitter.

    @ kanupriya: i know — i don’t know how i can make those idiots read this! some­times i think i’ll carry a huge plac­ard say­ing: “IN A HURRY? TAKE A PLANE!”

    @ shilpa: that’s a very OLD list started way back… i had to stop updat­ing it since I was doing it man­u­ally and there were new blogs every­day :-) nowa­days there are more effi­cient tech­nol­ogy enabled lists so i gave up!

    about drum­ming up the “courage” — all i can say is that once you do it once or twice it gets much eas­ier. and your sur­vival skills come into play so you get smarter on the road too!

23. angshu says:
    

    June 8th, 2010 at 5:08 pm (#)

    wow! I remem­ber the pic­tures of you try­ing to learn cycling not very long ago. :) Now that you on ban­ga­lore road, you must be a pro.
    I always thought that the CBD (cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict) of MG road and around should be made vehi­cle free zone. Only with spe­cific access, can one drive through these areas in car, motor­cy­cle etc. There should be cycle rentouts, where I can rent a cycle and then drop it within the CBD. Am I dreaming!

    Any­way, take care

24. Thejesh GN says:
    

    June 10th, 2010 at 11:49 am (#)

    So true. Until you start rid­ing you wont notice them.

25. V Ganapathy says:
    

    June 28th, 2010 at 3:49 pm (#)

    Hi, have been read­ing all the com­ments on road traf­fic in Bangalore.I am also impressed with the good response that you seem to have got as far as cycling is concerned.But we need to observe the fol­low­ing facts :
    1.The pro­lif­er­a­tion of IT indus­try in Ban­ga­lore has increased employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties but has also brought in arrogance.It is this arro­gance of the so-called IT crowd that has resulted in so many cars zip­ping in and around the city.
    2.Is there no way the erring auto dri­vers will be brought to book ? Today, the arro­gance of these auto dri­vers is being attrib­uted to the arro­gance of the IT crowd.Indira Nagar to K R Puram — Take this 500Rs and keep the change !I have wit­nessed such conversations.So, the auto fel­lows never come when you need them or ask for exor­bi­tant charges.Many auto dri­vers have fixed the min­i­mum of Rs 20 on their own.….I dream of a time in Ban­ga­lore when auto dri­vers will be cry­ing for pas­sen­gers to come and hop onto the auto.…
    3.Isn’t it sad that no one ever thought of improv­ing the trans­port infra­struc­ture in a city for more than 50 years after inde­pen­dence.… I fer­vently hope that Metro brings in some relief.
    4.Metro + Cycling + an effi­cient pub­lic trans­port is what is going to rewrite the future of this city.…

    5.Going to a laun­dry .… ? Where is the bike ?
    Buy­ing gro­ceries from Food Bazar ? Take the car ?
    School ? Take the car .
    Movie ? Take the car.
    Going for a walk in the gar­den ? Take the car from home to gar­den or ride a bike.
    Unlike Mum­baikars, the cit­i­zens of this city seem to find it dif­fi­cult to walk on the road, for­get cycling.
    So far so good, but even­tu­ally it will only ben­e­fit the car­di­ol­o­gists in this city,.

    6.Newspaper vendors,milk vendors,roadside per­sons iron­ing your clothes — every­one has a bike or a scooter.The house­keeper who comes to our build­ing comes in a TVS suzuki.
    The guy who runs the news­pa­per rad­dhi shop has a Honda Activa.

    7.Bangalore is the only city where I see 12 and 13 year olds dri­ving a Honda activa or a bike.Does the RTO in Ban­ga­lore give licences to such chil­dren ? I do not know.There are fathers who teach their under­age chil­dren to drive a motor­cy­cle or a car.Brazenly, with­out a care.

    I really feel sorry for this city. So, when some­one takes a green ini­tia­tive, it seems to be a reprieve for a good cause.But will the heady, flashy, flam­boy­ant IT crowd which has spolit all the ser­vice providers in this city allow this green ini­tia­tive to succeed ?

    PS : Last evening, I wit­nessed a cou­ple in a i10 near Kora­man­gala BDA flash­ing a 500 Re note for buy­ing 2 kg apples and gen­er­ously telling the shop­keeper “Change rakh lo”.A crowd such as this may find cycling very down mar­ket, plus what to do with all the lakhs that they earn ?

26. bhanu vashisht says:
    

    August 27th, 2010 at 2:18 pm (#)

    Hi,we also wanted to go all the way till Ladakh…me and one more guy…but the idea is to be pro-planet.…Humans are killing the mountains,while they wish to reserve their romance for them.
    ..
    If we have a com­mon agenda,find me on face­book (d.funct.aztec@gmail.com),thru the group below…My idea is to bring the cycling com­mu­nity together and make it recognised,and make it atleast as large as the SUV and the Tourist community.…Green is the colour /:)…

    http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=193594&id=682457010&fbid=418245187010&ref=mf

27. bhanu vashisht says:
    

    August 27th, 2010 at 2:25 pm (#)

    I agree with Angshu.….infact ‚i wrote to the press that cer­tain areas,(be it in city or Moun­tains) should be made only hiking/cycling zones…what has hap­pened in ladakh is partly because its not able to take the Human load,partly because the topog­a­rphy is not rain-friendly and second,because there are no trees to hold the soil together or con­vert the Car­bon emis­sions to Oxy­gen…
    OS ‚i made a cycling group on FB…its called Ladakh-the ZEN (Zero Emis­sioN) mission,mainly for peo­ple who like to travel to mountains,and also to main­tain them as they are.…no distortions.…hope we become big enough to bring pol­icy changes regards to how tourists travel.…WIth RESPONSIBILITY ..

28. Do you still ride a bike (cycle)? - Page 9 - India Travel Forum, BCMTouring says:
    

    August 31st, 2010 at 7:47 pm (#)

    […] Do you still ride a bike (cycle)? I just read this…some inter­est­ing com­ments… Salut­ing an invis­i­ble pop­u­la­tion :: Just a lit­tle some­thing __________________ […]

29. pranav says:
    

    May 29th, 2011 at 11:48 am (#)

    Very nice and inspir­ing arti­cle Anita !
    I think we all need to take ini­tia­tive to use cycle instead of auto­mated cars and bikes run­ning on expen­sive fuels.
    I liked this arti­cle and com­ments too.
    Book­marked the blog as well.

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