Inspiration
A friend of mine was musing about LTA’s experiment on multi modal commute. She was looking forward to picking up a folding bike to generally ride around and occasionally to ride to work (with a train ride in between). She is probably like a lot of other people who are on the wall about using cycle for part or whole of their daily transportation needs. We have:
- Motivation – Speedy ride to the MRT (Subway / train station) instead of relying on overcrowded feeder buses.
- Information – Media focus on bicycles is probably the highest today when compared to the past 2 decades. You can hop on to Google and get any additional info you need.
- Choice – We have numerous good / decent shops and many of them carrying a variety of bicycles for people to choose from. The better shops let you take test rides and give you good advice on what you should probably be buying (within your budget)
- Infrastructure – Contrary to what people might think, I believe that our road network is pretty cycle friendly. Sure it would be nice to have segregated bike lanes but reality is that there is probably not enough cycle traffic to warrant a lane for cycling (Once certain traffic levels are reached, we should lobby for bike lanes but that day is far out in the future). The roads are very smooth and the lanes are reasonably wide (in most places). Drivers (a majority at least) are pretty tolerant of cyclists and traffic is not too fast. This is almost an ideal combination of factors for cycling.
Yet, people seem to be on the wall. With so many positives, most seem to focus on the negatives – weather, lack of bike parking facilities etc… In reality there is no ideal biking paradise and one can always find reasons to avoid cycling as an alternate mode of transport. These people would not be long term converts just because some policy by LTA or others is changed.
What we need is not a honeymoon experimentation by the public. We need people to really believe that cycling is a valid alternative. How can we do that? Well, I think it is possible if we lead by example. Recently, a colleague of mine started biking. This morning he mentioned that it takes less than 30 minutes of easy riding to get to work (same as bus commute). I guess more of such converts who switch because it is a faster / more comfortable mode of commuting is what will lead to a sustained bicycle ‘culture’.
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August 7th, 2008 15:55
Cycling can be a viable alternative and we can take baby steps towards making it viable. It took us almost a year to work on the folding bike initiative with LTA and the train and bus operators before it went online. Of course, it came with a restriction: weekday offpeak hours. The multi-modal system has worked well in cities such as London and Taipei. In London, folding bikes and regular non-folding ones get on trains everyday, thus making it easier for people to commute to work from outer London to inner London. With government support and infrastructure in place (and rising fuel costs and personal motivation to boot!), one can only hope cycling will be a viable option in the near future for many more people.
August 11th, 2008 10:56
I was recently in Japan and was amazed at the number of people riding bikes in cities. South Japan is hot and Humid in summer (very similar to Singapore) and that does not seem to deter cyclists.
I suppose when more people lead by example, that will cause a shift in peoples attitudes. Present time seems to have a number of catalysts (including fuel price, inflation, etc…) that can fuel (no pun intended) the change. I guess with bike shops like yours working with the authorities, we can hope for a balanced traffic situation and more road sense from the drivers too