Bicycle Commuting: The Kalayaan Bike Lane

While biking along the Kalayaan Bike Lane in QC I chanced upon this scene that tells a lot about the bike lane itself. I have identified several things wrong, can you spot it? My observations:

1) Let's start with the sidewalk. There is a sign that says 'No Parking', yet there is a sporty car that is parked right in front of it, Perhaps having a cool car exempts you from this 'suggestion'?

2) The bike lane is designated by green paint, and technically for this to work there should be no other vehicles encroaching on it. Yet we see a lot of cars stepping onto the lane, and sometimes blocking it off completely.

3) Motorcycles zip through the lane frequently.

4) There is an open drainage hole, which is dangerous to all road users.

What can be done here? First off, the sidewalks should be clear, and this is to make the walkability index better. It would be tough to walk around there with such obstacles, especially for people with disabilities. Clearly strict enforcement of the law is needed.

Next problem is the bike lane, or rather the design of the bike lane itself. Kalayaan Avenue on the most part has three lanes going each way. The outermost most lane was split into two, one was painted green and made into a bike lane while the other half, I am not really sure what it is for since it could not accommodate the width of a car. If a car would go into it, it would certainly encroach on the bike lane, so there is an inherent design flaw here.

The next issue is that motorcycles love to zip through the designated bike lane. Mixing a high powered vehicle with a human powered one is a recipe for disaster, especially if newbie cyclists are involved. The whole point of a bike lane is to provide a safe cycling environment after all.

The last issue is the open manhole. This is simply way too dangerous. I guess the local authorities have taken a stop gap action and  put a tree branch there to prevent wheels from dropping in too deep. This is simply an unacceptable and unsafe solution - steel storm grates should be placed there.

So what can be done? First, enforcement is key. Those parked cars should be ticketed, as well as vehicles that encroach on the bike lane. To be fair, a motorcyclist who was tailing me on the bike lane was flagged down by a traffic enforcer, but this is not consistent at all.

It would do well to repaint the whole lane structure, either to make it 3 lanes - 2 for motor vehicles and one for bikes, or 4 lanes, 2 for cars, 1 for motorcycles and 1 for bikes. Also, there should be a barrier of sort that delineates the bike lane from motorized traffic, such as plastic bollards or lane separators. These will make enforcement easier and ensure safer travel for bikes.

Quezon City is attempting to build a bicycle network and this can only be good for the city. However, they should listen to feedback from all sectors that use the roads in order to come up with infrastructure and policies that work.

The bike I used by the way is a 16 inch wheeled folding bike, the Bickerton Pilot. It is a zippy bike that rides well, carries commuting loads with ease and folds into a compact package, which makes it an ideal urban bike.

Bicycle Advocacy: July was a busy month

July 2018 was a busy month for our involvement at bike advocacy. But we are not complaining, because it is all good! Here are some of the things that we did.

Ethel and I were invited to a Technical Working Group Meeting to give our thoughts on the present Comprehensive Sustainable Transport Bill being worked out in Congress. This is an aggregation of all bills pertaining to urban transport - it is quite massive in scope but if passed this will only mean good things for our country. Thanks to Congressman Cesar Sarmiento of Catanduanes for allowing us to give our two centavos worth on non motorized transport issues!

A week later, I biked from our place in QC to attend a talk on Sustainable Transport hosted by a new group interested in bettering urban mobility, AltMobilityPh. This was their initial public meet, and we touched base with a lot like-minded people who are concerned about the burgeoning transport crisis, 

We also attended a Round Table Discussion on Road Safety, a talk hosted by the Bloomberg Initiatives for Global Road Safety. With us here are road safety luminaries Dr. Jojo Go of WHO and DOTr Asec Mark Richmund de Leon. Talks like these are important for the non motorized sector as we are part of the transportation landscape.





With fellow bike advocate Jose Cortez, we are planning out a scheme with LRT Line 1 that will meld trains and bicycles together. This is a work in progress so I really can't say much about it now, but  stay tuned!

And lastly, the Rappler Vlog that Ethel and I participated in finally came out. In this video, we, along with Road Safety Advocate and host Vince Lazatin, and fellow bike advocate Jose Cortez (again!)  rode through the bike lane networks of three cities in Metro Manila and then sat down and talked about our experience, Hopefully this becomes a talking point so that we can improve and increase bike lanes in the metro. Please view the video here: https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/road-safety/207678-right-of-way-bike-commuting-to-beat-traffic?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Inhouse_video&utm_campaign=move-ph

As bicycle advocates, we rode to most of these events on our folding bikes, and we do get a lot of questions and comments about how handy they are. Our bikes of choice are the Tern P18 and the Bickerton Pilot 1707, both great handling bikes that easily fold down to a compact package.