Ride A Bike, Save Your City
India
Just Another Cyclist, India
Via @fossfan
No Weekends
Just realised that after my latest commitments, I’ve got almost no free weekends available till, possibly, mid-May! Here’s how it’s looking:
Tomorrow (17 Mar) : Meet some friends for Brunch/Lunch + Watch Milan-San Remo
Sunday (18 Mar): Ride the Burgess Hill sportive (86 km / 53 miles version)
Sunday (25 Mar): Ride the Evans Cycles’ Woking sportive (144 km / 90 miles version)
Saturday (31 Mar): Ride the Tour of Flanders sportive (134 km / 83 miles version)
Sunday (1 Apr): Watch the Tour of Flanders in Flanders
Saturday (7 Apr): Get married to this girl
Sunday (8 Apr): Watch Paris-Roubaix
Saturday (14 Apr): Dinner party with her family and friends in Chennai
Saturday (21 Apr): Dinner party with my family somewhere in north India
Weekend (28-29 Apr): Start journey back to London
Weekend (5-6 May): Ride / Drive to Oxford / Brighton with friends
Weekend (12-13 May): Finally, hopefully free :)
A mature cycling culture
Been thinking of some ideas/features on cycling forums / websites that I think are lacking. At some time the thought turned to Cyclists.in and from there to how the cycling culture in India still isn’t mature.
See, in my book, for a place to have a thriving cycling culture it should have had vicious debates on forums and in comments on these topics:
1. Are helmets good or bad for cycling / cyclists?
2. Shimano vs Campagnolo vs SRAM components.
3. Lycra clad speedsters vs. Fixie sporting hipsters vs. Regular pannier & mudguard sporting urban cyclists.
4. Aluminium vs Steel vs Carbon vs Titanium frames.
Since I don’t see any of these debates in place on cyclists.in, I doubt that the cycling culture has matured yet. Wonder how long will the culture take to develop to that level, if ever.
3Cs: Car v/s Cycle in the City
Came across this interesting info on a road.cc article (do read the original here for more interesting facts):
Researchers found that the average journey covered 2.49km and took 14.7 mins, giving an average speed 10 km/h, in line with the average speed of a car in European cities. Average speed rose to 15 km/h, however, during rush hour, making Vélo’v a much quicker way of getting around, even before taking account of the difficulties of finding a place to park a car.
I wonder if the city administrators in India will ever accept these stats and re-orient their infra-focus to include, if not prioritize, cycles.
I wonder if our citizens will ever ask for a clean, cheap, healthy & ‘faster’ alternative over polluting, expensive, lazy fuel-driven and ‘slower’ vehicles.
I wonder if cycling in India will ever again become an accepted part of urban transport mix rather than either a health/endurance fix or a poor man’s vehicle.
How I’d love to see a thriving cycling culture in India. We had one for over half a century, why we can’t have it again?