The Bike Championship 2011

CAN you feel that lately in Indonesia-perhaps even worldwide-going growth in the number of bicycle users? I can. At least the people closest to the environment and work around my house so menggandrungi bikes and cycling regularly travel.
The Bike Championship 2011.

Although no official data about the number of regular bicycle users in the country, a phenomenon that occurs at least 2-3 years show bike boom.

Indonesia's largest newspaper, Kompas, also photographed this momentum and make it the main theme of their birthday is the 45th of last year. Kompas-Gramedia group even has a cycling club has more than one hundred people, and quite active organizing cycling events.
The Bike Championship 2011.
Earth Policy Institute data call, world bicycle production by 94 million per year in the period 1990-2002 has risen to 130 million in 2007, automobile production exceeded that of 70 million. In some countries, growth in total sales was helped by suggestions his government-along with attractive incentives, to use a bicycle. For example, in 2009 the Italian government began to launch a series of incentive programs to encourage the purchase of a bicycle to improve urban air quality and reduce the number of cars on the road, with a 30 percent discount from the price of each bike.

China also showed increased volume of bicycles. In 2007, the number reached 90 million, but now touched 430 million, although the average ownership rate is still higher in Europe. In the Netherlands, one person has more than one bike, and as much as 27 percent of all trips using the bike. While Denmark and Germany close to one bike per person, with the percentage of bicycle trips by 18 percent (Denmark) and 10 percent (Germany).

Achievements, of course, have the causes. Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany had previously set up the infrastructure in a friendly against the cyclists: bike parking, full integration with public transport, comprehensive traffic education and training for cyclists. On the other hand, this also makes other major countries like the United States and Britain have a low level of bicycle users: because of the lack of "grand design" and the policy for it, although they also seem to get there.

As a mode of personal transportation, the bicycle is quite ideal. What more if associated with environmental and health issues. Cycling can improve the respiratory system, reduce air pollution, reduce obesity, increase physical fitness. Bicycles are also not-directly-emit carbon dioxide. I write "directly" because I believe in fact at a certain level of production process one bike definitely has its own carbon footprint. One of the most important thing why the bicycle became so popular: in general it affordable by millions of people who can not afford a car.

Given its compact shape (and now also mushrooming of folding bikes that can be made more compact again), six bicycles can be loaded in lane road used by one car. Not to mention for parking: one space for one car parking could be used to park 20 bikes. Efficiency bike in terms of carbon emissions as a substituent car for short trips is the cube root compared to emissions from cars.

Comparing the efficiency of a bicycle with a car may seem not "apple-to-apple". However, can not but, if you want to review it from the side of suppression efforts amount of carbon emissions or the occupation of public land, this comparison must necessarily be done.

And as I mentioned above, the efficiency of a bicycle not only affects the environment, but also health. Bike is ideal to restore the balance of caloric intake and expenditure for the cost of one's routine health: reducing cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, and strengthen the immune system.

If the European countries (and China) have set up adequate infrastructure to welcome the bike boom boom-and new economic growth-what about Indonesia?

We still need to think and work hard even just to fix the most basic public facilities: walking trails. Almost the entire sidewalk capital city (except for Sudirman-Thamrin point protocol) is diokupasi by traders and ... motorcycles. On a main road in West Jakarta, sidewalks and even leveled to become part of the parking lot of a large restaurant, making pedestrian must be very careful when passing on it, or hit by a car terserempet risk.

That is, irrespective of the proliferation of bicycle users, policy makers do not seem to be in a hurry to meet the needs of cyclists before most essential needs of the road, the sidewalk, be addressed.

Another thing that also concerns me is to keep the paradigm that the bike is a replacement motor vehicle modes. That is, the use of bicycles is substitutif ideally, not just adisional. Indeed, can not be denied, landscape and urban planning in Jakarta often force people to have a home away from work, so it is hard (though not impossible) if the person who lives in Bekasi, for example, must use the bike daily to work in Kebon Jeruk.

Risk of bicycle limited to the mode of thought adisional make efforts to reduce carbon emissions as futile, because in reality they still rely on a car or bike for daily travel. Worse still, as I observed the phenomenon that often, if a bicycle is only functioning as part of a trend and lifestyle so that the cyclists more often occupied by mutually accessories and think about plans for a walk. (Photo by Firman Firdaus / NGI)

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