Not a smooth ride for city’s bicycle brigade

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 23

The bicycle brigade of the city is battling more than just the soaring heat and the hurdles in its way are laden with spider webs, random electricity cables jutting out from the middle of roads and the encroaching motorbike riders.

Taking stock of the city’s cycle tracks, when this correspondent interacted with the riders, one of the major concerns that raised an alarm was the lackadaisical traffic monitoring. A domestic help, 46-year-old Malti, fears treading the cycle track after the close shave she had while riding back home.

“I’d finished washing dishes at the last house, out of the seven I work in, and was returning home when a rashly driver taxi on the cycle track almost hit me. The man was driving in the opposite direction to evade the peak-hour traffic. There were no cops to check him. It’s true, muzzling the poor folk is the easiest,” she said.

While the sight of motorcyclists and car drivers taking to the cycle track is quite common, there’s little done to manage the cycle route on the traffic lights. It has only been a year since the emergence of pink-coloured cycle tracks that cut through the traffic lights. The route was paved out by levelling a two-foot something chunk of road dividers and by rule, four-wheelers and two-wheelers are to park their vehicles in such a way that they don’t restrict the path carved out for cyclists. However, there’s no strict watch on the violators.

“We are forced to park our cycles in the middle of the dividers and there’s traffic coming from the other side of the road. Often, people, especially car drivers, don’t leave way for us,” rues Sehaj Singh, 28, a resident of Sector 44.

Another avid cyclist, Amardeep Singh, 31, who takes to road early in the morning to exercise, cries foul about the poor lighting and spider webs between the trees and walls along the cycle track.

“I usually wake up around 4 am and cycle for about two hours. Throughout, you’ll find spider webs that will stick to your skin and I’ve even been bit by a spider once while cycling. That’s still not an issue. What’s worse is that there’s poor lighting at these paths. Before dawn, its pitch dark and you can barely see potholes. In several places, there are electricity cables jutting out from the middle of the road. How is one to cycle on such tracks?” he asks.