From: Estes Wayne-W10191 [W10191 ©MOTOROLA.COM]
Sent: Monday, October 22,2001 4:58 AM :
To: ICEBIKE@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE
Subject: bikes in Beijing
This message has no icebike content, but I thought it might be of interest to the bike enthusiasts on this list. I'm in the middle of a 3-4 week stay in the middle of Beijing. I don't have a bike with me (wish I did!), but I see thousands of cyclists every day. I just wanted to share my observations of the cyclists here.
There are millions of bikes and trikes on the road in Beijing, a city of 11 , million people. Yesterday (Sunday) I took pictures of various bikes and trikes. I'm very fascinated by the variety of cargo trikes. The beds vary from 2x3 feet up to 3x6 feet. The largest ones have coil and leaf suspension for the cargo bed. Some of the trikes have a flat bed, but most of them have an open-top metal box like a miniature pickup bed. Sometimes they put a sheet of plywood on top of the metal box to carry really long stuff. The gearing on the cargo trikes is very limited. They usually have 2 or 3 cogs on the drive axle, and the gear appears to be changed by moving the chain by hand. When using the small cog the "return" chain droops and almost drags on the pavement. Beijing is very flat, so the only reason to change gears is to compensate for the load. Use the low gear if you're hauling 200 pounds of stuff. Use the high gear if you're empty. I've seen some pretty large and/or heavy loads on the trikes. Things like: 10 cases of bottled beer, 8 5-gallon bottles of drinking water, a desk and a large table, or the wife and child. There are also quite a few pedicabs in the tourist areas. They seat two and have small surrey tops that might stop rain a little bit.
Most of the bikes are single-speed which is fine in flat Beijing. About half of them have a chainguard that completely encloses the chain. The rest have a chainguard that encloses about half of the chain. All the bikes have steel fenders and a metal front basket. None of the bikes have reflectors or lights. Less than half of the bikes have rear racks. The rear rack is used about as often to carry a passenger as it is to carry a large package. Nobody uses panniers, and I've only seen one guy wearing a helmet. Male cyclists frequently wear suits and female cyclists frequently wear nice dresses (female office workers rarely wear pants to work). The bikes mostly have frame locks that just keep the rear wheel from turning. They rarely bother to lock bikes to fixed objects. Very few bikes have bells or horns, but most bikes have squealing brakes which are just as effective to warn pedestrians that step in their path. Unlike other Asian cities, there are virtually no mopeds or motorcycles. I don't know why.
There are huge bicycle parking lots. Outside the nearest subway station is a bike parking lot that holds maybe 5000 bikes under an elevated expressway. The typical major intersection will have a bike parking area on the sidewalk that holds a couple hundred bikes. Most small shops have 2 or 3 bikes parked in front on the sidewalk. The city doesn't seem to be very strict about where you can park your bike. The biggest roads usually have a barrier in the middle that makes it impossible to cross the road. Underground pedestrian tunnels and overhead pedestrian bridges provide the means to get across those roads. The stairways ALWAYS have a 1 foot wide ramp on each side of the stairs to make it easy to roll a bike up or down the stairs.
Overall, it appears that bikes are about as fast as cars during rush hour. But the rush hour bike traffic is so dense that bikes rarely go more than 10 mph (16 kmh). Old folks and heavily laden cargo trikes block the way for people who are capable of going faster. The main roads have very wide bike lanes with barriers separating the bikes lanes from the motor vehicle lanes.
There are separate traffic lights for the bike lanes, but they are always on the same cycle as the motor vehicle lanes. There is amazingly chaotic interaction between bikes and motor vehicles at intersections due to turning bikes and turning cars/buses. Bikes constantly weave around the cars at intersections. It doesn't seem as crazy when I watch from the sidewalk as
it does when I'm in a moving taxi and bikes weave around me going in every direction. I'm sure there are frequent low-speed collisions between bikes and cars, but I have never seen one happen. I once saw a cyclist lady arguing with a taxi driver who I presume had bumped her. It was raining when I arrived in Beijing, and all the cyclists were wearing rain capes. I
don't think rain reduces the number of bikes on the road. I asked one of my work colleagues if people still ride bikes after a snowfall. She said that about half the cyclists don't ride after it snows. I suppose the buses are really crowded then. Fortunately the city clears the main roads fairly quickly and the snow melts in 2 or 3 days.
The weather in Beijing is really nice now. Highs of about 70F (21C). Lows of about 52F (12C). The trees are still mostly green. Unfortunately, the air quality is really bad. Today I can BARELY see a building % mile away. That's a bit worse than normal. Usually I can barely see buildings 1 mile away. At noon on a "sunny" day you can safely stare directly at the sun because the atmosphere is so thick. I can hardly imagine how much worse the pollution and congestion would be if all the cyclists drove cars (actually they would ride buses if they didn't ride bikes). And I haven't been here in winter when the air is even worse because millions of people burn coal to heat their homes. Much of the pollution is caused by huge smokestack industries on the south side of the city. The city spends comparatively little on bike facilities compared to the vast sums spend to build bigger roads and expressways for cars and buses. It's a shame because the bike facilities move people far more efficiently than the motor vehicle facilities. I suspect the city's long term goal is to eliminate bicycles to be more like other wealthy bike-free Asian cities such as Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and even less-developed cities such as Bangkok. Beijing's city planners should take a closer look at Bangkok's gridlock before they start tearing out bike lanes and wide sidewalks to make room for more cars.
Wayne Estes
Beijing, China
