Cycling dying a slow death in India. :-(
Hi all,
Cycling in India was once an important mode of transport not anymore. With the growing number of motorised vehicles especially two wheelers, had also grown the problems associated with them which was unforeseen or unheard of even in the recent past.
The recent explosion in the automobile traffic in India has been seeded, watered and tended for by three main factors: industrial growth, need for anything faster than a bicycle and the prestige and safety associated with riding a bike(yep, its one of the main factors).
The results are overwhelming and shockingly visible, air pollution in cities is so high that SPM(suspended particluate matter) and CO2 in the air hovers at several folds well above the permissible limit. There still are a large number of cycles on the road, but most of them are driven by the daily wage labourers and poor people for whom the bicycle is the nearest affordable mode of transport and their future goal like other well-off masses is to shift to a motor bike.
The pressure for changing from a bike to motorbike is so high that in my company i am constantly urged with an attractive loan package to buy one for commuting.
Turning on to the safety aspect of bicycling, the less said the better. Combined with the pedestrians and the motorcyclists, cyclists form the highest number of casualities on the roads and this is the reason why a significant mass had shifted towards automobiles.
Another ramificatin of this disturbing trend is the increase in widespread use of motorcycles by college students. With most of the colleges located outside cities and minmal public transport infrastructure the students are resorted to riding the dingy motorcycles. There are no safety regulations on roads for helping students commute to school and as a result students riding on bikes are doing so under a great personal risk.
I have been trying to convince people about the advantages of combining bicycles with public transportation but its always difficult to convince people who think they're always standing on thin ice and have no time for matters as simple and unimportant like these. God help me and my people.
regards
srinipartha
:confused: