Tuesday, February 06, 2007

PedesTirants

Poor bicycles. It seems our increasingly unlivable metropolis has an ingrained hatred of all things non-motorised. Regardless of efforts to open spaces for bicycles, city folk have a seemingly low tolerance for them. Just try riding on a congested street and you'll immediately know what I mean. If people don't honk or hurl things at you from their car windows, you will be in imminent danger of getting run over.

You will often decide to ride on sidewalks instead. This is illegal. Everyone does this. (I even got pestered by a policeman in Japan once to get off the street and ride on the sidewalk. That, however, is another story).

Yet the possibility of running someone over is high, and maneouvring between disgruntled pedestrians can be dangerous for the biker. Hence someone came up with the brilliant idea of building bicycle lanes. Separating cars, bikes and joggers, all neatly contained in their own domains: cars on the road, bikes on the lanes and joggers in the park. What a great idea.

Santiago has a good handful of bicycle lanes, variable in quality and usability, mostly in Providencia, one of the largest and wealthiest buroughs. This is also the burough with the largest quantity of parks and green areas in the city. For almost 5km the bicycle lane runs parallel to a park. Nothing breathtaking, just a little sand path with lawns and a few haphazard trees, smack in the middle of a large avenue. Enough, you would think, for cars, bicycles, cars and pedestrians to get along peachily. Yet here is where theory crashes headlong onto messy reality.

Today I almost ran over a little kid, who was playing smack in the middle of the bicycle lane. His mother walked a few steps ahead, and instead of telling him to get out of the way, she just called him over. This after I firmly (though politely) said "coming through, please be careful." Perhaps I could have voiced my opinion on how retarded it is to walk on lanes indented for vehicles moving at higher speeds than nature intended us for in the first place. Opting for peace instead, I didn't. But the thought stayed in my mind.

Poor bicycles. It seems as though they are not only scorned by cars -the unquestioned owners of the concrete mess that is Santiago-, but also by pedestrians reclaiming walking rights on would-be sidewalks. Is walking on bicycle-only lanes their way of getting back at us for appropriating their pedestiran-only sidewalks in the past?

Later in the evening, riding back on the same lane, a middle-aged couple strolled happily, hand in hand, slowly, again smack in the middle of the road. This time, however, I did not have to say anything. Riding from behind, a young man on a bicycle whooshed past them shouting "this is intended for biycles!" The reaction from the older man was a typical Chilean rooster ruffle - "come back and say it to my face!" Of course, by then, the younger man was way ahead.

Again, my ill-celebrated necessity of looking for confrontation tapped me on the shoulder. Sitting by the side of the road, I thought of saying something along the lines of "he's right, you know." After all, there was a whole park to walk on. The clear sky and beautiful dusk, however, saw to it I remained tonguetied.

For the universe is as wise as it is ruthless. Let the man show off his feathers for his woman. Let the bicycle dude keep having a bad day. Reverse their roles and you will probably get the same reactions; such is the folly of our irrational humanity. And sadly, though it could have been prevented, neither tantrums nor tousled feathers will stop the coming of the day when someone gets run over.

The underdog strikes back. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. Maybe on that day, bicycles will finally get some Respect.