Santiago Times: Santiago cyclists take to the streets

Anyone who has lived in Santiago for the last four years will have noted a tremendous increase in the once nonexistent use of bicycles in the city. And anyone who has lived in Santiago for the last four weeks will have noticed the surge of cyclists on sidewalks, park paths and traffic lanes as Transantiago drops annoyed passengers, if slowly, at their destinations.
The transport debate in Santiago has generated interest in already existing campaigns to encourage cycling as a replacement for other means of transport. Cycling initiatives could also help solve Santiago’s dire air pollution problem as an estimated 83 percent of pollution comes from cars, buses and trucks.

Previously, the only people who used bicycles in Santiago were European exchange students accustomed to pedaling at home. In many European cities cycling is a common means of transport. In Amsterdam, for example, nearly 40 percent of urban transport is made up of cycling. In Santiago this figure is a low three percent, but bicycle use in the Santiago Nunoa and Providencia sectors has grown by an average 17 percent each year for the last four years—a much faster rate than predicted.

Riding a bicycle in the city had long been regarded as a last resort, reserved only for the indigent. In fact, not so long ago, cyclists in Santiago were frequently subject to heckling, with drivers shouting “Buy a car, man!” as they sped by.

Recently, alternatively-minded upper and middle-class youth began incorporating bicycles into their alternative paradigm and the movement began to catch on. Now, the National Transport Security Commission (Conaset) hopes to turn the trend into a new type of transport culture in which using a bicycle garners social status.

Conaset will begin a campaign this month to add a fourth category to the three it has already identified to define Santiago cyclists—“abject,” “for leisure” and “fanatics.” The latest group would be made up of primarily middle class citizens who would voluntarily take up cycling as their main form of transit. The plan includes campaigns to “re-educate” both motorists and cyclists alike, changing motorist’s attitudes that cyclists are annoying obstructions that hinder traffic, and leading cyclists to consider themselves as legitimate drivers with their own duties and rights.

Activist cyclists and environmental groups such as the Furiosos Ciclistas, Arriba’e la Chancha and Acción Ecologica have put pressure on the government to facilitate cycling – and ease the pressure on the scarce community buses—by installing bike racks at metro and troncal (inter-borough buses) bus stations in the Transantiago system. They are also touring Santiago neighborhoods on bicycle education campaigns, inviting novice riders to learn about city cycling and safety.

Activists are campaigning to reduce the city speed limit to just under 20 miles per hour, which would create a calmer bike- and pedestrian-friendly city. In fact, one of the off-shoots of Transantiago has been an increase in the use of private cars, which, the cyclists note, drive faster than even the raging, yellow micros from the old system.

One cycling initiative the government has begun to take already is the creation of a network of bike paths, called ciclovias, throughout the city. The US$ 100 million project, which began in 2000, is to finish in 2010 and will be 810 miles long.

However, cycling activist groups had little positive to say about the sparse sections of bike path already in place on parts of Alameda. One of their complaints was that the paths have been installed in separate and, seemingly, random sections such that they serve more as mere resting areas between an otherwise never-ending battle for sidewalk space. In some sections where the paths have been physically cordoned off—as opposed to the yellow demarcation line—the space has been usurped by general traffic, parked cars or delivery vehicles.

The activists’ biggest gripe with the bike paths is that they segregate cyclists from motorists and thereby perpetuate the idea that bicycles are not a valid or quotidian form of transport.

Proponents of cycling cite many benefits to both the cyclist and the environment. Cycling is cheap, adds zero noise or environmental contamination to the city and provides cyclists with daily exercise while getting them where they want to go.

SOURCE: LA TERCERA
By Shannon Garland (editor@santiagotimes.cl)