Earlier this month, I blogged about bike lanes in the sky. That’s exactly what it would take to get me biking in Delhi, India where 130,000 people–mostly pedestrians and cyclists–were killed in crashes in 2007. All the same, they’re giving bike lanes a try, reports Streetsblog:
One month after a local bicycle advocacy group, the Delhi Cycling Club, sent a list of demands to the Delhi government, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit announced that all major streets will be retrofitted with bike lanes. “In a city like Delhi, cycling would be the most effective mode of transport to combat pollution and congestion on the roads,” wrote Dikshit.
From press accounts, it’s not exactly clear whether the new network would consist entirely of physically separated lanes, which currently exist along the city’s bus rapid transit corridors.
A network of physically separated lanes would be especially useful in a city where traffic laws go largely unenforced. There are 110 million traffic violations in Delhievery day,according to the Guardian.
Delhi‘s investment in a cycling future comes not a moment too soon. Last year’s introduction of the Tata Nano, a car priced at $2,000, has threatened to flood the city’s already full streets with even more automobiles and even worse gridlock.
Source: Streetsblog
