Come, let's pedal our way to better health

Fed up with traffic jams? Feeling stressed and tired? Maybe it's time to put your foot down, literally.

A bicycle-rental system, to be launched by Beijing municipal commission of transport on a trial basis, offers us a great opportunity to pedal our way back to a healthier, happier life. The transport commission intends to offer 10,000 bikes at rental kiosks along subway line 5 and line 10 in its massive rent-a-bike program.

The bike-rental system, designed for the last 1 kilometer between metro stations and workplaces, is aimed at encouraging people to get some physical exercise, even it means cycling for only short distances.

A cyclist can hire a bike from a kiosk from 1 yuan (16 US cents) an hour to 10 yuan a day. And since the use of the bike is free for the first hour, the rental would be charged only from the second hour.

Bikes were first put up for hire in July, but a vast majority of Beijing residents have virtually shown no interest in renting them.

It is not difficult to understand why they have given a cold shoulder to the rent-a-bike program. Traffic on most of Beijing's roads is heavy, even scary. Motorists crowd out cyclists even from the lanes earmarked for two-wheelers. Many a cyclist has suffered the wrath of annoyed drivers. Motorists whiz past bikers at high speed, blow horns intermittently or yell obscenities at them because they don't give way even in lanes demarcated for two-wheelers.

Such scenes should remind municipal authorities to discipline motorists, cyclists and pedestrians about "green" traffic regulations.

The bike-rental program deserves kudos, even though it is not the first of its kind in the world. Paris, for instance, began an immensely successful system called Velib in July 2007. The bicycles on offer at the more than 1,450 self-service rental kiosks increased to about 20,600 in 2008. And the kiosks, only about 300 meters apart, are more than four times the number of subway stations.

The Beijing bike-rental system is important not the least because of the traffic jams and frequent breath-choking smog that covers the city. A study by academics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands has found that health and other benefits of cycling outweigh the risks associated with it, such as accidents or exposure to air pollution, that comes with it.

The mental and physical benefits of exercise are so powerful and wide-ranging that if they weren't God-given, they would have had to be regulated by the Ministry of Health. The human body, honed through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, is not designed for the life that most people in cities live today. Driving to work, sitting at a computer all day and then driving back home to sit in front of a television is an invitation to obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and a host of other ailments.

One way to offset such inactivity is through scheduled exercise like workouts at health clubs or the (mini) gyms provided by enlightened employers. But given today's busy working schedules, it is all too easy to skip the gym and the workout.

That's what makes it important to get some regular exercise with a purpose, like cycling or walking (for those who live closer to office) to work. The simple act of switching from driving to cycling to and from work provides two healthy workouts a day, enough to tip most of us back to a healthy lifestyle.

While making efforts to maintain good health is ultimately a personal responsibility, the government too has a part to play. For example, it can take measures to ensure that cycle lanes are safe and not encroached upon by motorists. Protected bike lanes will encourage more Beijing residents to pedal their way to better health.

Motorists, in turn, are justifiably angry when cyclists disregard traffic laws by cycling past stop signs or jumping red lights and behaving as if the left-turn traffic lights are there to be violated.

Traffic laws apply to everyone who uses roads, including cyclists. They are obliged to obey traffic rules if they want to be treated as equals on the road. Traffic rule enforcement officials should hold cyclists accountable for traffic violations, too.

It's a pity that we have to remind people and officials about the benefits of cycling in a city that was not so long ago famous for its bicycles.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.

(China Daily 12/31/2011 page5)