Kolkata’s Ride from Cycle Satyagraha to Bring Back Cycles
INTRODUCTION
The City of Joy, Kolkata has always offered dynamic and vibrant options when considering the different modes of transportation for people to commute. People in the city have heavily relied on walking, cycling and the public transport system to travel from one end of the city to the other for decades now. Moreover, apart from the huge array of public transport options, there is also a quite large size of the population that have been dependent on the ‘Bicycle’ to sustain their livelihood means. Therefore, in 2008 when sudden restrictions were imposed in the city to seal 38 streets for cyclists in an order released by the Kolkata Police, it came across more as a personal loss for many.
Moreover, in 2012, the cycle restrictions were increased to 174 roads and proved to be a huge blow to the poor air quality and congestion of the city, especially to people involved in professions such as milk delivery, newspaper vending etc. and to people for whom cycling is the most affordable option of travelling. These restrictions over a period of time started to resemble an almost blanket ban for the users of bicycles.
START OF “CYCLE SATYAGRAHA”
The authorities cited that bicycles were causing traffic to slow down and was a safety concern which needed to be curbed immediately. The ban on cycling and the reasons cited for it seemed arbitrary and harmful to many. In 2013, this prompted cyclist groups across the city and people whose livelihood depended on cycling, to come together and perform peaceful demonstrations and reach out to the state public authorities and Kolkata Police with their concerns.
In our effort to stay true to the cause of the environment and helping people achieve sustainable livelihood, SwitchON Foundation initiated the campaign called the ‘Cycle Satyagraha’ by bringing thousands of cyclist lovers and groups to come together and raise their voices collectively. For about a year we had multiple engagements and meetings with Ministers, Secretaries of Transport and Kolkata Police; they either said nothing can be done or assured that the matter will be looked into. Finally with a few years invested in the cause of the restrictions imposed, that saw multiple demonstrations, stakeholder meets and studies like speed mapping , vehicle count — which also caught a lot of global media attention, Kolkata Police revoked the previous order of 174 roads and under new notification released in 2014, cycles were banned on 62 roads.
NEED FOR CLEAN AIR AND FAIR ROAD SPACE
Even after renewing the restriction, we were still far from achieving our goal of making cycling the preferred mode of mobility and promoting it across the city. Concerned about growing air pollution across Bengal and neighbouring cities SwitchON Foundation initiated the Bengal Clean Air Network and our efforts continued to make sure that the authorities appreciated the reasons for allowing bicycles to ply on the roads. NEERI’s 2020 report citing that vehicles are the largest source of Air Pollution in the city and has a devastating impact on the health of people in Kolkata, lent more power to our voices.
However Kolkata Police’s doubts remained and in order to counter them we went ahead and repeated the studies starting from deciphering the average speed of cyclists as compared to the rest of the city , traffic count to understand congestion and with data from Kolkata police, the status of fatal accidents and causes for the same. The studies conducted in 2013 and repeated in 2020, showed that private vehicles had doubled in count which can be directly attributed to the increase in pollution and congestion. The speed mapping exercise showed that the average speed of cycles in major roads during day time in Kolkata is about 14 km/hr higher than that of cars which was at 12 km/hr.
Further, a commuters perception study showed over 95% of them were against the complete ban on bicycles and don’t find cyclists risky. We filed a Right to Information (RTI) to understand the logic behind the restrictions and our findings were as follows: Cycles and NMT are rarely involved in accidents on the roads and hence are by no means ‘unsafe’ to others.
WHAT THE AUTHORITIES SAID AND HOW WE COUNTERED THE NOTION
As Covid struck, authorities were compelled to allow the bicycles back on the road once again and we witnessed a shift in the perspective of letting bicycles ply on the streets. However as the covid restrictions eased out the cycle ban was again put in place, much to our disappointment 9 additional roads were added to the list of restriction bringing the tally to 71 banned roads from end 2021. Currently we are at the stage of requesting for a complete scrapping of the order and encouragement of walking and cycling. The revision of the order motivated us to start our “Bring Back the Cycles” campaign which was an extension of the “Cycle Satyagraha”.
Noted celebrities, campaigners and public figures joined in on our open letter to the chief minister of West Bengal regarding the lifting of the Cycle ban from the Kolkata streets. Author and climate activist Amitava Ghosh, renowned writer Ruskin Bond, Singer Usha Utthup, actor-director Aparna Sen, Archer Rahul Banerjee, Member of Parliament Prof. Saugata Roy, filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, Mohandas Pai, were among the eminent personalities who identified and supported the cause. This was followed by multiple events involving children, various schools, public and private writing to the police commissioner where they wanted to cycle to school and wanted the cycle restrictions removed.
MOVING FORWARD
Kolkata police earlier cited that cyclists were slow and a safety hazard on the streets, but when these notions were put to rest, they have now started to bring issues about cyclists not following rules and causing harm or injury. But it is worth noticing that until a few years back car drivers would not wear seatbelts and motorcyclists would not wear helmets. In fact, only after sensitisation did the motorists start wearing helmets. Currently pedestrians and cyclists do not feel part of the current city system, while they perform very important duties like delivering milk and newspaper, they are invisible. They need to be sensitised about following traffic rules for their own safety and that of others. We have ourselves started a road safety program for cyclists and distributed reflector stickers and reached out to Kolkata Police to support them in initiating such a campaign.
Thus, it is clear that the cycle ban is not the solution; rather, both cyclists and pedestrians need to be sensitised on the rules, but more importantly, they need to be given respect on roads and considered as part of the system. Walking and Cycling should be the most preferred mode of transport like in the western cities such as London or Paris, where cyclists feel included within the existing public transport system, especially since Kolkata aspired to be like London or is heavily investing in cycling. We must remember that those who talk about violation of rules by pedestrians and cyclists, eventually forget that the car lobby invented them”.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the time has come when we carry out sensitization of cyclists similar to that being done for motorists, like wearing helmets and fastening seat belts by both citizens and the police. An order from the National Green Tribunal in recent times asks that infrastructure facilitating NMT should be built in the city to which KMDA has come up with a 175 Km Network of Cycling, and a Committee led by the Chief Secretary was set up to oversee it. This plan and the committee should be put to effective use immediately. Kolkata police says there is not enough space for such an infrastructure to be built, but that car centric approach to mobility needs to change, otherwise our city will become unlivable and its air unbreathable . Experts are available to suggest which roads can be built.
‘Comprehensive Mobility Plan’ for Kolkata provides clear guidelines to integrate multimodal transport in the City, but yet hasn’t been implemented. Hence pedestrians, cyclists and NMT do not require to be banned / restricted for their own protection and steps must be taken to promote on the streets. Further, Kolkata Police themselves confess that they don’t have any corroborative data / information / evidentiary record that suggests that cycles and nmt interrupt traffic, hence the ban on cycles & NMT for uninterrupted traffic flow is absolutely arbitrary, and should not have been put in place without consultation from Experts and Stakeholders.
Removing cycle restrictions is not negotiable for the future of our children and the beautiful ecosystem in and around Kolkata and life that thrives on it. Bringing back the bicycle needs to be done now more so than ever, in order to make them the centre of mobility instead of cars in the future for a sustainable and cost effective outcome.
