The Paths To Greendom

Os caminhos para a cidade verde
Sempre gostei de andar de bicicleta: sobretudo por ser divertido, porque resulta de uma combinação entre design simples e alta tecnologia, apelando ao meu sentido de estética, e ainda porque tem muito que ver com a liberdade – liberdade de me fazer à estrada com a promessa de aventura. Com a idade chegou a percepção de outras vantagens relacionadas com novas preocupações: andar de bicicleta é uma boa forma de me manter saudável, bom tanto para o coração como para a forma física, sem ter de gastar parte significativa do meu salário em mensalidades de um healthclub (sendo certo que correr é ainda mais barato…), permite-me deslocar-me com bastante rapidez, e não faz barulho nem emite CO2.
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The Paths To Greendom
(Published in Portuguese in Ponto Final, Macao, October 8th 2010)
By Eric Sautede

I have always enjoyed riding a bicycle: mainly because it is fun, because a bike is a mix of simple design and high-tech gears and thus appeals to my sense of aesthetic, and also because it has a lot to do with freedom—freedom to hit the road with a promise of adventure. With age came other perceived advantages addressing new concerns: riding is a good way to keep healthy, on both heart and fat sides, without having to shelve a significant part of my salary in health-club subs (I agree, running is even cheaper…), and it allows me to commute pretty fast and yet it is quiet and does not produce CO2 emissions.

While living in Beijing some 20 years ago, not having a Phoenix bicycle—a black Dutch-looking bike made in Shanghai—was almost unthinkable: that was the easiest way to get around town as buses were generally overcrowded, the subway network made of two rather inconvenient and barely connected lines, the taxi fleet scarce despite the rapidly expanding wave of yellow minivans, and “private” cars were still the monopoly of collective work units. Parking lots for bicycles and side lanes fitted with bicycle-repair stalls could be seen all around town, and the portrait of Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Square was often the vanishing point of a foreground filled by a lengthy and orderly packed line of black bicycles resting on their rear trapezoidal kickstand. Of course these days are gone, and the capital city is now very often paralyzed by traffic and pollution has become a serious issue, and not anymore only because of charcoal burners.
The modern upheavals brought in by the intensification of car usage—city pollution and congestion—have recently given rise to some sort of counter-movement where bicycles are playing a leading role in providing cities with a more human face. Among these, bicycle sharing systems (bikes stationed all-around town and made available to the public for free or for a very reasonable sum of money) have proven both promising and successful. Unsurprisingly enough, the Dutch pioneered the idea in the 1960s in Amsterdam, but the consumption society got the best of the initiative, and within a month the “white bikes” of Amsterdam had been either stolen or ditched in nearby canals. The first financially successful bicycle sharing system came into existence in a small medieval seaport of Western France called La Rochelle in 1974, and it helped a lot in “saving” the historic seventeenth-century city centre. La Rochelle is rather flat, home to less than 80,000 people, visited by hordes of tourists on a seasonal basis and rich in heritage: rings a bell?
More recently, it is the Paris experiment that attracted worldwide attention. The Parisian Vélib’, a shorten form of “freedom bicycle”, hit Paris’ pavements back in July 2007, and now operates 20,000 grey bicycles accessible from 1,639 stations scattered in the capital proper as well as in the immediate suburban municipalities (a station every 300m). After paying a refundable deposit of about MOP$1,500 via Credit Card, anyone can ride a bike as much as one wants for the next 24 hours for just MOP$10 (no single trip from one station to another should exceed 30mn if one does not want to incur additional charges… and a yearly subscription costs only MOP$290!). Many other places have followed a similar path, including the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province that started its experiment in 2008 and now boasts 50,000 bicycles accessible through 2,177 stations, allowing for a mind-blowing 250,000 trips a day! Yet, contrary to Paris’ round the clock system, bicycles are only available from 6:30 to 20:00 in Hangzhou.
Looking in the details of the Parisian scheme, it is interesting to see that it associates the municipal authorities with the advertising holding Jean-Claude Decaux (also present in Macao…), the latter accepting to operate the system in return for free advertising spaces granted by the former. The public side is of course the one pushing for the development of bicycle paths, and Paris has now more than 370km of such paths and plans to have 600km by 2013 for a municipal territory of only 105 sq. km. On Sundays and public holidays, the Seine River banks become only accessible to pedestrians, roller-skaters and bicycle Riders. Bicycle companies benefit as well: sales of bicycles in Paris have grown by a significant 7% in 2009! Moreover, for those who need or prefer an additional push, the Paris municipality is offering to all residents up to MOP$4,000 in aid for the acquisition of an electric bicycle.
Bicycle sharing system constitutes a necessary complement to all other means of public and private transportations—what is called intermodal transportation. Such systems help switch to cleaner, quieter and more fluid city flows. On the user end, they help solve the issue of parking, theft and maintenance that one faces with a private bicycle. They also foster the sense of belonging to a community by providing additional occasions for social interactions—one always feels good when sharing tips! And finally, they are part of a wider phenomenon called “collaborative consumption” that lessens the destructive consequences of hyper-consumption by widely extending the life- and usage-cycle of a product (renting and sharing becoming as important as buying!).
A stroll around the Saiwan Lake will convince anybody that bicycles have become fashionable again in Macao. Why is it then that the only decent bicycle path is hidden along the Western side of the Cotai strip under the Lotus Bridge? Why is it that we are prevented to cycle from the Peninsula to Taipa? Why is it that there is not even a feasibility study about having an uninterrupted bicycle path from the Saiwan Lake to Coloane, especially if the latter is supposed to be preserved as the “green lung” of Macao? What about access to Hengqing Island? And then, with the Light Transport Railway on the horizon, don’t we deserve at least a study about a bicycle sharing system that would provide a convenient and clean link with a mode of transportation that will soon become the backbone of all traffic in Macao? All statistics show for Paris (or Amsterdam…) that neither rain nor security issues constitute acceptable excuses for not widening the network of bicycle paths… What are we waiting for?