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Shanghai by Bike
Dodging cars as China drives toward development
Bill Donahue, Sierra Club Magazine
…The sight [of bicyclists riding in early-morning Shanghai] stirred a certain joy in my heart, for I had come to China with a manila folder crammed with bad news: In a country long celebrated as a kingdom of bicycles, this noble and practical form of transport was, it seemed, quickly becoming a relic, a victim of China’s march toward prosperity. According to the news clips, China was racing to emulate the transportation schemes of the most ill-planned U.S. cities–Houston, say, or Los Angeles. It was spending $40 billion each year to construct what would be, in 2008, the world’s most extensive interstate-highway system. The state-owned Shanghai Auto Industry Corporation, recently allied in a joint venture with General Motors, now employs 65,000 people.
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| Before Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution 40 years ago, the nation was keen on modernizing, and bicycles were a sign of progress. Above: Chinese propaganda posters from the 1940s and ’50s. | |
In 2005, China became the world’s second-largest car market, selling nearly 6 million vehicles. Suddenly it was littering its western high deserts with oil pumps and sucking oceans of crude out of Sudan. Meanwhile, Shanghai was cracking down on cyclists, barring them from select vehicle-heavy downtown streets and increasing by tenfold the fines it imposed on two-wheeled lawbreakers. Ridership was way down. While 60 percent of Shanghai’s population commuted by bike in 1995, only 27 percent did so in 2000–and the city’s power brokers seemed happy about the decline. As one former deputy mayor saw it, “The bicycle is just a reminder of past poverty.”
Grim, yes, but still I wanted to see China myself and measure how that vast land–more crowded than we can fathom–is changing. I could have toured Shanghai’s factories or super-haute clothing stores, musing on how the Chinese have been seized by the same consumerist desires that drive Americans. But I’m a devout urban cyclist. I ride almost everywhere in Portland, Oregon, scarcely driving, and I was taken by how neatly the story of China’s eco-future seemed to boil down to bikes versus cars. So I went to its biggest and fastest-growing city–Shanghai, population 17 million–to determine whether the equation is really that simple.
MORE THAN 5 MILLION BICYCLISTS still pedal the streets of Shanghai, and as dawn broke that first morning, they appeared in mounting throngs outside my hotel. Sichuan Street, a straight, flat downtown roadway off-limits to buses and cars, was so thick with bike traffic that pedestrians could not cross for minutes at a time. As I watched from my window, an old man on a rusty tricycle transporting a load of bamboo stalks was cut off by five electric bikes puttering by. A woman rode along one-handed, an umbrella over her head.
(Sept/Oct 2006 issue)
Long, in-depth article – rather pessimistic about ecological awareness in China.
Safety and righteous fun for bicyclists
Written by James G. Doherty, Culture Change
[Culture Change Editor’s note: For those concerned about peak oil or the environmental devastation of the car, bicycling is a serious option for getting around. Of the many burning issues regarding bicycling, which Culture Change will cover in the coming months, safety is one of the biggest concerns that we deal with as long as we must share the road with cars.]
…Bicycle safety is improving, in places such as San Francisco with its proliferating bike lanes and helpful bike stations. Yet there is still so much risk to one’s body – despite the rewards of cycling – that everyone who bikes would do well to read Jim Doherty’s politically astute article below. Part of Jim’s message is to have fun getting where you’re going while using truly renewable human power that does not spew global-warming pollution! – JL]
Riding the wrong way on any street is the second leading cause of bicycle accidents. Not being seen is the leading cause.
So, when riding a bike, always wear bright clothing with reflective material. Helmets with reflective material help tremendously with safety too, which includes avoiding citations: whether you are required to wear a helmet or not, generally the police will be watching you with an eye to citing you for anything else, no matter how trivial, if you are not wearing at least a hat or helmet. Helmets can also prevent bike jackings, provide a sun visor, and keep eyeglasses dry.
… Bicyclists try to survive in a context of cars where every driver should be presumed to be operating on the thesis that since bicyclists might interfere slightly with this “autogeddon” of noise, fumes, and gasoline consumption, that bicyclists are sort of an invasive species.
To “ride defensively” the bicyclist must presume that every driver on the road makes it their autoholic mission to turn as many bicyclists into roadkill as possible. The result is similar to the egregious story of the invasive cane toads of Australia. The Aussie drivers operate on a philosophy of going out of their way to hit as many cane toads as possible to try and contain the damage this hideous little foolishly imported species does to that continent. (Google “Cane Toads of Austraila” if you think I’m kidding.) A cyclist who surmises this is the philosophy of most drivers towards bicycles, has a “leg up” on their own safety, a much superior position than having both legs up like a dead bug.
– Jim Doherty, a.k.a. “Dances with Bicycles, sleeps with chameleons, and swims with dolphins.” Jim is a transportation bicycling specialist, and lives in Oakland, California. This was written in March 2006.
(X Aug 2006)
Bike safety with an attitude! Many more good suggestions are at the original article. -BA
Maps to prevent bike accidents
Original: And Back to Real Use Cases
Amanda, CivicMaps
A local sustainable transportation advocacy organization is publishing data on bicycle and pedestrian crashes, sorted by injury and fatality. They’ve been able to use this data to demonstrate to the city that certain unsafe intersections warrant closer inspection and intentional traffic calming measures. They could do the analysis internally and publish statistics without maps, but part of their project has been to make the data public and available to community boards and local organizations. They also want to illustrate the problem, for all kinds of good reasons. Maps are a good way to illustrate the problem, but there is a limit to the amount of time and money that the organization can put into one project.
They’ve created giant GIF maps using MapPoint, but they are looking for a better solution. SInce I am convinced that tagging is easy my vision of the solution to their problem is something that will generate maps on the fly based on boolean tag searches [+bicycle+fatality+children] and display crash stats that a person can zoom in and out on. SInce one of their goals is to identify particularly dangerous intersections, they’d need a way to illustrate that a particular intersection has seen more or fewer crashes than another. I am picturing something that looks a lot like fundrace or forward track here.
(20 Oct 2005)
