People From All Walks Of Life: Beijing Bike Lanes --- We Share the Road...

I have a love hate relationship with Beijing bike lanes...

I feel blessed to currently live in Beijing with its hundreds of kilometers of bike lanes which provide cyclists like me easy access to just about anywhere in the city or surrounding countryside. All major thoroughfares have bike lanes of one fashion or another and each bike lane is clearly marked with a painted symbol of a bike on the roadway or a similar sign with an arrow pointing to the lane reserved for bikes. Happily some bike lanes are more spacious than lanes set aside for motor vehicle traffic, while others are simply thin ribbons of pavement separated from traffic by either flimsy steel fencing or an innocuous stripe of paint. The best bike lanes are the ones where vehicular traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians each have their own "lanes" separated by broad concrete medians, complete with trees, shrubs, and grassy planting areas. Away from the city, decently sized bike lanes can be found along rural highways, affording a cyclist the chance to pedal long distances from city to city, village to village, and if one is so inclined from the urban density of Beijing to the hills and mountains to the north and west.

But do not think for a moment that a Beijing bike lane is dedicated to the sole use and enjoyment of two-wheeled commuters or cycling enthusiasts. Truth be known, these bike lanes are in reality multi-use "pathways" or "slow vehicle roadways" where the bicyclist is but one of many users of this "marked" space. In most instances this sharing of space results in the cyclist being at an extreme disadvantage as larger or faster, sometimes slower and heavily laden, or even less maneuverable vehicles all compete for the proverbial right of way and the same patch of pavement. Many of these vehicles often present themselves in the bike lane as on-coming traffic!!! Throw in pedestrians, who appear to blindly step off of sidewalks or disembark from buses without looking left or right, and you have a chaotic mix in which the cyclist makes headway oftentimes at the expense of life or limb.

While the joys of having these bike lanes are many, so are the objective hazards. In many instances, cyclists share the same space buses use to pickup and drop off passengers. Many bike lanes are simply an extension of a poorly defined sidewalk; with merchants stalls, display racks, restaurant tables or chairs, and storage or refuse bins taking up much of the sidewalk pedestrians have no place to go but to mix it up with cyclists in the bike lane. Most bike lines also provide a convenient place for motorists to park or a ready way to escape the ever-present traffic congestion. And, since Beijing remains a city where construction projects can be found in almost every district heavy machinery, dump trucks, cement mixers, piles of rebar and brick, construction equipment and supplies, workers coming and going, and even safety fencing take over the bike lanes in the vicinity of the work site for week after week.

Efforts are underway to improve Beijing's sidewalks and bike lanes, and to keep them free of motor vehicles. Articles in several local papers and blogs describe initiatives to widen Beijing sidewalks, to build isolation belts to prevent cars from encroaching into bike lanes, and to establish new marking and signage in intersections to better delineate auto lanes from bike lanes. Consideration is being given to enacting better rules of the road and enforcement mechanisms. While these efforts are all targeted to get people back on two wheels instead of four, to ease traffic congestion, to separate cyclists from motorized vehicles, and to improve the environment, these changes and the resultant changes in habits will take time…

In the meantime, as I ride around Beijing and its outskirts, I will continue my love hate relationship with Beijing bike lanes as I share them with a multitude of vehicles, contraptions, and non-two wheeled users….

A week ago I went on a long, out and back ride on the bike lanes that lead to and from the Capital Airport. Here are some of the scenes from that ride, and the folks that shared the bike lane with me...