10.18.07 kulturnatib

Re: Cycling

I was going to write about something else when I received mail from our publisher and Chief Editor, Eileen Mangubat. She wrote, 'here is something you might be interested in.'

That something was a news item from the Associated Press with the head: 'Cycling gains ground in NYC amid harried commuters, belching cabs.'

Of course, I was interested. I downloaded the attached item and read it.

While reading, my thoughts would wander every now and them to the bunch of 'items' that fellow columnist and colleague in the arts, Radel Paredes, sent me almost a month ago, which he also wrote about in one or two of his columns.

These items were mostly writings by Radel's brother who is based in Surigao City and who is a cycling activist as far as I can gather from his pieces.

Like most activist for whom an organized response to a problem or an issue is a first necessary step, he has called for bicylists to organize in order that, first, their rights as commuters were recognized and respected – they don't get run off the road -- and that, second, commuting by bicycle becomes a legitimate mass option with the same infrastructure support, financial and economic incentives that other more polluting and more resource hungry forms of transport enjoy from local, regional and national governments.

The news item is something that I'm sure Radel's brother, Judel, would salivate over, as I did. But, more than I, he will not stop at simply salivating. He will organize, while I just join fun rides and other actions that other bicycle activists here – a rare breed, so far – will organize. And, of course, write about them, as well.

The news item was mostly about the award or recognition New York City received from the League of American Bicyclists which was an endorsement of the efforts of incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican turned Independent, who, most unRepublican like, is promoting cycling for a cleaner environment and a healthier populace.

The item reports that New York city is, 'installing 400 to 500 bike (parking) racks a year and plans to have more than 400 miles (644 kilometers) of bike lanes and paths by 2009. There will then be 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of bike lane for every 10 miles (1.6 kilometers) of road; the ratio is now 1 to 15. In San Francisco, it is 1 to 7.'

According to city transport commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, the report said, “The way we think about transportation and how we use our limited street space is changing.”

For us, that is a gross understatement. Changing? How about Revolutionized?!

Well, I'll make that, for us and for here. Consider: there are 130,000 bicyclists on the road in New York City’s daily. Because New York is the largest U.S. city at 8 million, that is more total cyclists than any other U.S. city can claim. But according to Census figures, just 0.5 percent of New Yorkers ride bikes to work. That compares to 2 percent in Seattle and San Francisco and a whopping 34 percent in Copenhagen.

We don't have such figures here. Bicycles are ignored as a means of transportation and does not figure at all in any of the transportation plans of the city. Maybe because bicycles do not need overpasses and all those other muscular and ugly – but must be extremely lucrative – infrastructure projects favored by our present city officials.

Yet, the fact is that many factory, itinerant and service workers do bike to work and back, enduring the daily hazard of inconsiderate to abusive drivers, pot holes and uneven road surface, no parking facilities and a largely invisible road existence.

And that their effort and contribution – though maybe unwitting – to reducing pollution and traffic congestion lacks any kind of recognition, support and encouragement from both government and business.

Plus there is really a sizable cycling population here, who, for the most part, still view and practice cycling as mere recreation and not – or not yet -- as a feasible and workable alternative to the dominant ideology of the motor vehicle as kings of the road and there is no other road but this road.

It is difficult to see from the here and now, how this cannot be and will not always be the case. But then that is what activists are for. They are supposed to nudge all the rest of us in the direction where real alternatives are available and the better alternative prevails.

In the case of New York City, there is the unlikely though not unheard of activist. A government who has a vision sees its vision through. A cleaner environment and a healthier populace is a good vision. And Mayor Bloomberg is showing us the way from the saddle seat of a bicycle.