On yer bike, mate!
30 January 2003
While half of China’s population rides bicycles and as many as 30 to 40% of Europeans follow suite, not even 1% of South Africans choose biking as a mode of transport.
The Department of Transport aims to change all this with its national bicycle initiative, known as Shova Lula (Ride Easy). The programme - conducted in partnership over the past two years with provincial and local governments, local NGO Afribike and partners in the US, UK and the Netherlands - aims to make bicycles available as a viable transport option for women and children in particular, in rural and urban areas.
Our cities may not be as bike-friendly as they could be, but there is still plenty of potential for the rest of the nation to take up biking more actively as a cheaper, healthier form of transport. Already, 5 000 bikes have been distributed to people who need them, and the programme is set to become more far-reaching this year.
“The programme is in the first
instance targeted at primary and secondary school students in our most disadvantaged rural and urban settings,” says the Department of Transport. “In a later phase it is hoped to focus on the many thousands of urban workers and rural workers who currently have to walk long distances to get to work.”
Afribike director of projects and research Maikel Lieuw Kie Song says the first phase of the project has demonstrated the viability of bicycles as an affordable transport option. Scholars are sold bicycles at significantly reduced rates.
Many of the bikes have been donated second-hand from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. However, according to Lieuw Kie Song, the poor state of many of the bikes has led to a rethink in strategy, with a preference towards securing new bikes.
The programme has seen the setting up of cycle shops in the form of converted containers, training people to run
cycle businesses, repair bicycles as well as modify them for transporting workloads.
The programme has been established in all provinces except the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape.
This year the Department of Transport is putting a larger-scale bicycle project out to tender. Already, however, a couple of provinces – KwaZulu-Natal and North West province - are running their own programmes.
Meanwhile, Afribike is focusing on bringing biking to the township of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg. In a study with students from Wits University, Afribike has come up with a proposal that will see a cycle lane being built along the Jukskei River, as well as several bridges offering short cuts to cyclists.
“There are many trips that can be made by bicycle. It’s much quicker than walking and cheaper than driving a car. There are also secondary benefits, like the fact that it’s healthy and doesn’t cause pollution,” says Lieuw Kie Song.
There is a “big move” towards
establishing bicycling as part of the city of Cape Town’s mainstream transport system, adds Lieuw Kie Song. Cape Town is drawing from the experiences of Bogota, in Columbia, where bicycling has become a major mode of transport.
Johannesburg’s fast and heavy traffic provides enormous challenges for transforming the city into a potential biker’s paradise, however. “Nevertheless, the city has a lot of potential for biking. A larger-scale approach with infrastructure planning is what is required,” says Lieuw Kie Song.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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