The HOW of bike
Building cycling infrastructure can be a cheap, effective way to they need careful thought and planning.
WHAT kind of bicycle lanes should a Malaysian city build? Should they encourage cycling just for fun and exercise? Or should they also aim to encourage cycling to become a form of alternative transport, at least for short distances, say from the home to the LRT/MRT station?
In fact, will bike lanes also encourage people to visit some packed shopping malls on weekends since cyclists will be able to bypass the huge traffic jams going into the car parks? Can they actually reduce traffic jams generally by encouraging more people to cycle to work?
One case study are the plans by the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) to build 56km of bike lanes.
“The main objective is to join up the parks within PJ,” said Suzana Othman, the town planning officer at MBPJ.
“At first, we thought of encouraging cyclists to commute to work, but then we wondered whether it would work with our hot weather. So we decided to focus on cycling for recreation first.”
However, SK Yeong, who cycles to work everyday pointed out: “The temperature at 7am when we go to work is cool. And when I cycle home after work around 6pm, thousands of people are already out doing their evening exercise.”
Another observer added that students are an excellent target group to use bike lanes as they lack other forms of transport (they are not old enough to drive or ride a motorbike). It would also free up parents from having to incessantly send and fetch their children.
Pilot projects
Currently, two pilot projects for cycling lanes have been undertaken by MBPJ – at the suburbs of Damansara Damai and Ara Damansara.
This writer went to check out both places over one weekend evening and saw pretty impressive and extensive pavements desig- nated as “gunasama (dual purpose)” for both cyclists and pedestrians. Some sections were even shaded by trees. When the lanes crossed roads, they were painted blue to alert drivers to the presence of cyclists.
The only problem was: hardly any cyclists were seen using the lanes. At Damansara Damai, several hawkers had even set up stalls on the lanes – suggesting that there was usually little bike traffic on them.
The bike lanes at Ara Damansara connect the housing areas to Tropicana Golf Club, shops, green parks, and the new Tesco, according to Debrizio Wong, who works there.
“So far I’ve only seen a few leisure cyclists in the mornings and evenings, but they were cycling on the road. Sometimes, there are fallen branches he mines commented added, for They there cycling, buy Citta that them!”