Bicycling in Beijing: Initial Observations

Upon arriving in Beijing, it wasn't long before I saw the emerging insanity that is Chinese driving patterns.

In his new book, "A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory," Peter Hessler writes "It’s hard to imagine another place where people take such joy in driving so badly...They don’t mind if you tailgate, or pass on the right or drive on the sidewalk. You can back down a highway entrance ramp without anybody batting an eyelash. . . . People pass on hills; they pass on turns; they pass in tunnels..."

Indeed, as I took a taxi from the Beijing airport to my hostel on the eastern edge of the Forbidden City, I tried to make small talk with my driver as we sped down the interstate. "Brrrrr," I said, rubbing my hands on the tops of my arms to indicate that it was cold outside. He glared at me. "Cold," I said, repeating the gesture. "Colt," he said--moving to turn up the heater in the already overly hot taxi. Not exactly what I'd intended to achieve...I learned quickly that attempting to make small talk in a language that wasn't my own was pretty much useless.

Left with little to do but stare out the window, we passed a car backing-up on the interstate. As in moving backwards and against traffic. On the interstate. Yeesh.

As we neared the city center, passing each of the ring roads forming the outer perimeter of Beijing, I looked desperately for bikes. I was increasingly dissappointed. The Asian city crawling with bikes, the place that so many people instantly understood to be integral to my project, was consumed by cars. The bikes were outnumbered by cars in the Beijing streets leading from the airport to the city center by 10 to 1.

I'd learned from a friend in Melbourne, a friend who'd lived in Shanghai for years, that traffic patterns in China were fundamentally different than those in most western countries. "In China, the bigger you are the more right of way you have," he explained. "So the bikes must always yield to the cars, and the pedestrians must yield to the bikes. Stick with the motorized scooters," he said. "Because you'll be riding faster than the average Chinese, and because you want to be in a group as often as possible, stick with the motor scooters. The bigger the group, the more right of way you have."

Taking all this in from the relative traffic comfort of Melbourne was pretty easy. Sure, I get that. Just give way to the cars.

But after five days spent riding a bike in the streets of Beijing, the dog-eat-dog insanity of it all has been a bit harder for my western mind to comprehend. Cars turn right at all times and without regard for who or what may be in their way. Cars turning left across crosswalks and forward moving traffic are equally as dangerous. So, after you make it past the right turning traffic, you have to guard your life from left turning traffic. And that's to say nothing of the electric powered three wheel carts that fill the bike lanes. Or the motor scooters going backwards in the bike lane, looking up, down, left, right...every way but straight ahead....In spite of the fact that they are in fact heading the wrong way.

In Amsterdam, the madness that is traffic had a name amongst local bicycle riders: the dance. Everyone moved quickly--but carefully--around everyone else: bikes, peds, cars, scooters, skateboarders. In Beijing it is exactly the opposite. Each person moves as recklessly as possible in the general direction of each other person. And the person who stops is the person with the least nerve. Or the person with the least amount of metal around their precious human exterior.

This morning, to pass a bus that had pulled into the bike lane to deposit passengers, I followed about 6 other riders out into traffic on the left side of the bus.

Now, bus drivers are professional drivers--lest we forget.

As I neared the middle of the bus, the driver began to slowly merge back into traffic--pushing me farther out into the roadway gnarled with cars. Looking the driver directly in the eye using her rear-view mirror, I made sure she could see me. She could. I quickly passed the front of the bus with less than an inch to spare between her bumper and my rear wheel. A bully tactic. I'm bigger, you're smaller...Take that!

Stay tuned for more observations and community based bike tomfoolery...

For now, check the Flickr page for photos. As it is, I can't yet add photos to the posts. Blogspot is blocked in China, so my mate Josh has agreed to post some text until we can sort out a better solution.

Keep them wheels turnin'!

[Just so you know, Anthony is having some trouble with the Great Firewall and asked me to post for him - I'll be relaying these blog updates as they come - JMG]

Ya' May Like the Pictures, but the Debate Rages On

I can only guess that since noone commented on the last article, each word--as intended--must have been deeply moving genius that warrants little discussion and no debate.  Instead, simple awe must have washed over each of my readers.

Or nobody read it, a much more likely answer to the number 0 beside the comment line.   

Regardless, I want to contextualize the thoughts in that article using a story by Gretchen Reynolds that ran this week in The New York Times. 

This debate about whether to increase the amount of bicycle infrastructure in America, that is, whether to lobby political institutions for increased spending on bicycle facilities, is not a new debate; and it is not a debate that appears to be coming to a close.  

The Times article, in it's full glory, is entitled:

Do More Bicyclists Lead to More Injuries?

Reynolds actually answers "no" to this question when looking at the empirical evidence from European nations.  The simple conclusion?  More riders mean less accidents.  This is the widely accepted view amongst transportation experts and advocates, and it is a conclusion affirmed by loads of studies, some of which are cited by Reynolds.  

Still, why does she toss out this rhetorical question a bit later, a question essentially refuted by evidence presented earlier?  

Reynolds writes:  

“Transportation experts cannot agree, for instance, about whether to segregate bicycle and automobile traffic, using concrete barriers along bike paths or creating separate bikeways.”

This much is true, sure. Advocates do disagree about this, and I would argue that the debate has hindered the efforts at increasing safety for cyclists over the years as it has split the advocacy community into seemingly un-agreeable halves.

But then comes the moot question:

“In the short term, (the segregated bike path) approach should protect cyclists. But if if drivers are not given the opportunity to acclimate to riders, will it actually make it more dangerous for bikers in the long run? No one knows. ‘We need studies; we need data,’ Dr. Willett said.”

Of course we know--Reynolds made the point (if not explicitly) earlier in the article.  This is not an issue we need to study or debate to death. The results are in.  

As she wrote earlier, in places where people cycle often (one third to one half of the mode share), we find segregated bicycle infrastructure as a dominant planning pattern.   In those same places, the number of injuries are far fewer per kilometer cycled.  

What, then, is the debate?  Bike lanes in Denver may be contributing to more injuries, but bike lanes are not the same things as the raised and separated cycle tracks we find in Europe.  

There is a direct link between great numbers of bicyclists, separated bicycle infrastructure, and bicycle safety.  This combination, I think, is the ideal.  

Reynolds is clear towards the conclusion of the article about a city's  inability to control the unpredictable nature of cars.  We can, however, create more places for bicyclists to ride safely out of the way of car traffic. 

Cars and bikes will, of course, still interact at intersections.  But by increasing the number of bicycles on the road through protected bike infrastructure, we can increase the awareness among motorists of bicycles passing through those intersections.

Am I simply building a straw man to burn in this and the previous article?  

I wish...The people forwarding the debate about the potential "problem" with increasing protected bike infrastructure have a deceitful name: "vehicular cyclists."   They even have their own wiki page.  

I call the name deceitful because by arguing against this camp of advocates, one might assume I am arguing against vehicular cycling.  But that would be absurd: I rode my bicycle as a commuter nearly every day for 10 years in Memphis, Tennessee, where nary a piece of "European" bicycle infrastructure exists.  Heck, we got our less than 3 miles of bike lane just this past year!  Lets be clear: vehicular cycling is a necessity in Memphis and countless cities across the United States.  

What I am arguing is this: bicycle advocates should advocate for separated bicycle infrastructure.  Otherwise, what are we saying?  That car signals and streets created for automobiles work well for bicycles too?  

Maybe the true vehicular cyclists among us believe this, but it is clear that few Americans think this way.  Otherwise, why aren't more Americans braving city streets with wide outside lanes? 

Of course, as the vehicular cyclists maintain, we must train cyclists to ride well and predictably (note: in the Netherlands and Denmark children received required bicycle lessons in elementary school), but this is not going to help America get over the seemingly insurmountable "safety barrier;" the barrier of insecurity and discomfort with traffic that keeps Americans from taking the bike.  

A raised bike lane or a concrete wall, however, might do the trick.