21 October,2010 10:38 AM IST | | By Amit Roy
Two Swedish students are in Mumbai on a two-month project to explore the possibility of making this city more bicycle-friendly. A dedicated bicycle lane at the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) is mooted. The city can take a leaf out of London where the bicycle project has taken off
It has been more than two months since London's flamboyant and blonde tousled-haired Mayor Boris Johnson introduced the 'Barclays Cycle Hire' scheme on July 30 with the idea of scattering 6,000 bikes in 400 docking stations across the central parts of the capital.
Healthy
The idea is a simple one encourage the public to hire the bikes for relatively small sums of money to make lots of short journeys.
The exercise would make people healthier and also reduce congestion. To provide an incentive, the first 30 minutes of bike hire is free.
David Cameron is an avid cyclist but cycles less after he became PM
Obese
Bikes for hire has worked in Montreal and been a great success in Paris where the scheme was introduced two years ago.
Would it work long-term in London? And if it works in London, will other cities across the world, also coping with traffic gridlock, and citizens who eat far too much and are getting obese, be tempted to follow suit?
Suicide
The answer is probably yes to all these questions though the start to what has been nicknamed, 'Boris bikes' has been somewhat slow in London.
The problem, quite apart from initial teething problems, is that so many people in London have their own bikes that they don't really need to hire one.
After the suicide bombings on the London Underground and on a bus in July, 2005, more people took up cycling.
Chic
One advantage London has is that cycling is seen in Britain as very much as a chic, middle class activity. Bikes have long been used in Oxford and Cambridge to get to lectures (Cambridge-based Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has never had a car though he could buy a top of the range Merc with his Nobel Prize money).
Elite
At elite public schools, headmasters traditionally go round on battered bikes.
Boris (Eton and Oxford) has always been a bit crazy about cycling and David Cameron (also Eton and Oxford) cycles, too, though perhaps less so since he became prime minister.
Some feared that when he went to India in June, he would show up India's ageing leadership by cycling to his meetings with them.
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Incidentally, safety groups have hauled up Cameron, for cycling without a helmet. They say that as prime minister, he should set a good example.
Boris
Boris, who was a journalist with The Daily Telegraph, before he became an MP and then Mayor, can knock off a column in 30 minutes.
He was characteristically eloquent when he launched the bike hire scheme in the shadow of London Eye two months ago.
"Londoners have awoken to a new dawn for the bicycle in the capital," he had gushed.
"Overnight, racks have been filled with thousands of gleaming machines that will transform the look and feel of our streets and become as commonplace on our roads as black cabs and red buses.
My crusade for the capital to become the greatest cycling city in the world has taken a gigantic pedal-powered push forwards."
He called it "a great day for cycling and a great day for London" in case people hadn't grasped his point.
Transformation
Boris professes to be happy. "We've seen the streets of central London transformed, as our bikes become a familiar and immensely popular sight on London's streets."
The Mayor wants to turn London into a "cycling city". In reality, it already is.
At office time, swarms of cyclists gliding through the streets have become a common and graceful sight though there is mutual loathing between cyclists and motorists.
The Mayor, aided by his transport advisor Kulveer Ranger is adding more cycle lanes and even cycling 'superhighways' but the level of accidents is still far too high.
Mamils
As cycling becomes ever more popular, invariably there are sarcastic commentary pieces by women journalists lamenting the spreading incidence of "Mamils" middle aged men in lycra.u00a0
Another commentator, Anna Tyzack, quoted a colleague, fellow journalist Andrew Gilligan, who had described cycling as the last outpost of freedom and individualism in a speed camera world.
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"Almost every form of transport in Britain, public and private, is under the control of stupid, fluorescent-jacketed minor officials... only cycling puts you in complete charge of your own travelling life," Gilligan, known to be a cycling fanatic, had raged.
Hitches
To be sure, there have been hitches. Anti-war activists have placed large stickers about the conflict in Afghanistan on the back of some bikes.
Other demonstrators left stickers on bikes at Hyde Park Corner in protest of Barclays' sponsorship of the scheme, unhappy about the bank's record of investing in defence companies.
Yet, every public initiative would naturally have its supporters and detractors.
If London cyclists actually demonstrate healthier hearts and the city records less pollution, the 'Boris Bikes' supporters can tell the carping critics to go take a hike.
I recommend it, Mumbai
AUGUSTUS COKE (33), a surveyor who is managing director of his own firm, is typical of those whose trips to and from work make up the 500,000 cycle journeys that take place in London every day.
He says, "I think the Mayor's 'bike for hire' scheme is great it's been a slow start but once people try it out, it will catch on.
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It will be fantastic. Bikes for hire has caught on in Paris where I have tried it out for a Euro (about Rs 60), you can have a bike for 24 hours.
Once people cycle more, they will drive less and the roads will be safer. I have been cycling for five years. With a basket you can carry your shopping round with you.
I even go out cycling for fun on Saturday mornings. I recommend it to people in Bombay."
My gran would cycle in Punjab
In theory, Kulveer Ranger cannot see why cycling should not be as popular in Mumbai or any other Indian city as it is London where, "safety is our top priority".
"My (maternal) grandmother (Jaswant Kaur Sahni) used to cycle in her village in the Punjab in the days before partition," he says, implying if she could it then, others can today.
In the London Cycle Hire Scheme, Kulveer, a dashing "British born and bred" Sikh, has had a key role to play as "transport advisor" more formally, Director for Transport Policy to Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London.
When it came to ordering the specially made bikes from a firm in Canada, it was Kulveer who was sent to conduct the crucial negotiations.
When it is pointed out to Kulveer that back in India, cyclists and thundering lorries and recklessly driven cars simply won't be able to co-exist, he argues that the country will have to rethink its transport policy.
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India cannot go on pouring more and more cars into already congested streets.
"Cycling is the cleanest, greenest form of transport," asserts 35-year-old Kulveer, who cycles, at least, twice a week from his home in Victoria in south-west London to his office in east London.
"If I go by underground it takes me 40 minutes; if I cycle it takes me 25 minutes," says Kulveer.
Sex and the single cyclist
London is not short of "celeb" cyclists. One of them is model Kelly Brook. Boris Johnson, the Mayor, who is never slow to spot a promotional opportunity, has used Kelly to push his cycling propaganda.
"I'm delighted to be involved," says Kelly. "I really enjoy cycling and anything that reminds people how much fun it can be is a fantastic idea... it doesn't matter if you're an experienced cyclist or getting back on your bike again.
Thus, Kelly has featured in lots of lovely photographs, with an old-fashioned Laura Ashley type skirt billowing in the wind and accidentally exposing her shapely legs.
For Mumbai to match London, UK transport experts suggest that a bevy of Bollywood beauties everyone from Shilpa Shetty to Mallika Sherawat, Katrina Kaif and Deepika Padukone should climb out of their chauffeur driven limousines and take to bikes.
British men and women often wear tight fitting trousers or lycra complete with helmets and gloves, which are sensible but hardly sexy.
The sight of outsize English bottoms, male and female, wobbling on bikes may even put the casual observer off sex for life.
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In fact, many take up cycling precisely because they think the exercise will help them to achieve a trimmer figure and a more fulfilling sex life.
Experience shows that cycling becomes so addictive that some cyclists come to prefer cycling to sex.
