Emergent Conversation 23

This essay is part of the series Sustainable Urban Mobility in India, PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 23.

 

 

In this episode of Chala Pune: A Podcast by Busकरा , we talk to Dimpu and Bea, exploring their personal journeys with cycling, bike-buses in South Asia, and effective strategies to create cyclist-friendly cities. Reposted here courtesy of Chala Pune Busकरा (Buskara). 

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0jPYOu8nhZYqqahgHKATxr?si=e49f6f2daa1c4450.

Transcript below.

Host

Madhushree Kulkarni is passionate about political ecology, urban mobility, labour, and climate change adaptation. She was the Youth Transport Fellow (2023) with the Clean Mobility Collective and UMIFund, where she campaigned for better public transport and sustainable mobility in Pune, India. Currently, she is pursuing her Master’s in Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden.

Guests

Dimpu Chindappa is a Transportation Engineer with a decade of experience in the core construction sector. Dimpu has worked as a project manager for Oil refinery, Irrigation, Water supply, Highways – Rural roads, and Geotechnical engineering. Her love for Cycling and Sustainable Transport led to a shift in her field of work from construction to transport planning. That’s how The Mobility Agenda Foundation was born. She loves food, farming, and teaching. She advocates for Adopt Don’t Shop and is a proud parent of 2 rescued dogs and a cat. She dreams of cities full of cyclists, walkers, and public transport users that drives her every single day to work for the cause.

Bea Dolores a is an urban designer advocating for heritage preservation and sustainable cities in Manila, Philippines. She is the co-founder of a heritage non-profit Renacimiento Manila and was an international fellow of Clean Mobility Collective’s Youth Transport Fellowship Program.

Editor

Vedant Chaturvedi is a film editor collaborating with independent filmmakers and social developement organisations. His work attempts to engage with diverse creative voices trying to bring forth narratives of inclusion and equity through storytelling.

 

 

Transcript

Madhushree K:  Welcome to another exciting episode of Chala Pune. A podcast by buskara. Busकरा  is an online campaign dedicated to creating a conversation about public transport in Pune. I am your host Madhushree. In today’s episode, I speak to Bea Dolores and Dimpu Chindappa about cycling advocacy and bike buses. Bea and Dimpu, thank you so much for joining me. Before we dive into the episode, could you just introduce yourselves briefly?

Bea Dolores: Hello, I’m Bea Dolores. I am a Filipino who has been a public transport commuter all my life. I have been recently into cycling because of my friends and since buying my bike during the pandemic, that was a big help. It’s just helping me have more freedom and moving around, and of course, going to places where I don’t even need to pay for extra transportation costs. And apart from that I have been in advocacy for seven years and I’m now a co-founder of a heritage and urban renewal organization called Renacimiento Manila that focuses on our cities, improvement of streets spaces and even our cultural identities like the Pasig River.

Dimpu Chindappa: Hi, I am from India and I am a transportation engineer. I’ve worked in the core construction sector for over a decade, only during the Covid lockdown I realized that I need to do something meaningful and I was finding what I really want to do. I found my calling because I’ve cycled my entire childhood, and I felt I should do something regarding cycling and how we can promote that for commuting, not just for exercise and fun. So, that’s when the idea of The Mobility Agenda started and I pursued my masters in transportation engineering. I’ve got the certification in public policy as well. I want to use my expertise to bring change not just in technical aspects as well as awareness and education

Madhushree K: I see that both of you have some personal anecdotal experience with cycling. Bea like you said that it gave you a lot of freedom cycling, so when I was young – cycling opened up a lot of doors for me. I didn’t have to depend on my parents to drop me [places] because my parents were working. I could explore my neighborhood, just hang out with friends who lived a little far. In many ways, it was the first key to becoming independent and moving independently, and it was fun. But as I have grown up, I shifted and I realized that the new area that I was living in – I didn’t feel safe cycling. There were too many cars. I stopped cycling because I had nowhere to do it safely. I want to know Dimpu, you’ve been cycling since they were young, what was your journey and how has your relationship to cycling evolved over the years?

Dimpu Chindappa: Cycling for me was an escape from the house. You also mentioned the same, it gave me freedom, independence, courage and companionship. When I say companionship, it’s because when you had a traumatic childhood and you don’t know what’s happening around you, you’re scared, you’re helpless about things going on in the house, in the neighborhood – so cycling gave me that freedom. It was having a feeling that I have someone to give me company. It made me feel safe. I don’t see the cycle as a material, the cycle is a friend to me. It has been a long journey since childhood. I cycled regularly till the age of seventeen to go to school and [class] 11th and 12th, then different aspects of life became a priority after the age of seventeen. I forgot about how much I was connected to cycling and only when I was 29, that is after 12 years of gap, I realized that I need to get back to cycling just to find myself. This journey has been amazing for me, I cannot actually put words to explain it. Suppose if I had not cycled enough in my childhood, I’m sure my life would have been different and The Mobility Agenda wouldn’t have happened. It’s more of a feeling for me than just anything.

Madhushree K: Thank you so much for sharing. Bea?

Bea Dolores: Compared to you two, I am actually pretty new to cycling because my journey has been only about several years. And then I’ve only started to really bike outside and onto the main city streets for the past few months. It has been quite a journey for me. It’s such an exploration, it’s very fun. I really appreciate the freedom that I am having, I don’t really need to rely on our public transportation, which is unfortunately like I guess both in India and also here in the Philippines is pretty much… kind of restrictive or at least limited. And while cycling, you can move around much faster in different places without waiting. It’s really fun exploring different places because you know there are shortcuts, places are closer to one another because of the other path that you didn’t know about. Apart from that, what I love about cycling is that it helps me with my strength. It is just for me to know that I can keep on improving my strengths and my skills and capacities. I always turn on a fitness app to see whether I was faster the first time I went here and how much I’m improving as the days go by. If I am in a certain kind of a difficult place like sometimes we get to bike on a flyover and then I would check myself if I can bike using only one gear without shifting and all that. I love learning more about what I can do with my body through cycling.

Madhushree K: Both of you brought very important points, one is about finding yourself, finding your strengths. It’s a personal journey but on a larger scale also it is a way to figure out how to move around in a crowd, in a car-centric city where public transport is not adequate. Before we move on to bike buses, I just want to give a brief explanation of what bike buses are. Bike buses are basically – instead of riding solo, cyclists move together in a pack, they first started in Latin America. This concert was picked up all around the world because it gave a very visible way for people to occupy the streets on cycles. In the U.S recently, a lot of organizers have been helping young children get together and ride safely to schools using bike buses. The reason I invited you both is because in the Global South context, I feel like things are a little different. We have different levels of infrastructure, as compared to the USA for example, and in India the attitude towards pedestrians and cyclists is apathetic. Nowadays, cars consume the road and they think it is their property. In such a case, do you think it is possible to have something like a bike bus?

Dimpu Chindappa: So first of all, I didn’t know that this concept had a name and thank you Madhu for letting me know. I have done this in my childhood – the cycle-bus, I will explain more about it in the Indian context. I’ll use the word cycle-bus because for us bikes means motorbike. I’ll just give you a brief of what I used to do in my childhood and what has to be done now so that we can change the behavior of parents as well as the policy makers. I have done cycle-bus from Class 3 to Class 12 (between 1998 and 2007). I used to go to my friend’s place on the way to school and wait for them to join. We were a group of three to five friends in primary school and in high school the number increased, it was almost 10-15 classmates who would join, and in Class 11 and Class 12, the numbers reached to 20-30 joining the cycle ride. It used to be a lot of fun and if someone was not us, skipping school, we would tease them that they have to study, and if someone is not well, we would come to know and take the leave letter and give it to the class teacher. On the way back home, we would get biscuits and chocolates and drop them at our friend’s place, life was like that.

But now things have changed and this was the case in a small town and when you think of a city like Bangalore in India, it is a metro city. It is a big city and if we have to implement the cycle-bus, we’d have to start spreading awareness on that. Of course, we can start with it but we need the support of traffic police and also the urban transport planning authorities to create a safe space for cycle-bus. Otherwise people will not have the trust to send their kids on the road on cycle. In the reel in which you had tagged me a few weeks back, the teachers were also cycling in the group and parents were coming to drop their children to school.

We cannot have that kind of a thing here, we can think of pushing children to cycle to school by promising parents that a safe infrastructure is provided. For that, we need to do a study of each education institution, understanding from what distance children are coming to school and if they’re coming from 20-25 kilometers, it doesn’t make sense, they have to depend on school buses. If they’re coming from 2-3 kilometers, or up to 5-6 kilometres, we can definitely think of it. But again, if you are promoting that, do we have a good cycle model which helps in carrying school bags as you cannot carry the bags on your back and cycle for a long distance. So do we have such models in India that are available, economical, and also long-lasting? We need to think about all of this when we are promoting cycle-bus.

Madhushree K: Thank you. I think that was, that opened a lot of other doors in my mind regarding the subject.  Bea, have you used cycle buses?

Bea Dolores: Yeah, although not into a more, like, regular bike commuting version, but it’s more of bike buses, helping newbies or, like, beginner bikers in the streets, especially in the cities. Where, of course, there’s less familiarity, or maybe for the beginners to be just more comfortable riding along the streets, despite being alongside cars and vehicles, and of course, the different terrains of road conditions in the metropolis. Because, of course, biking within your own place would be much more comfortable, probably. But if you’re biking alongside the busy urban environment, that’s really gonna be scary for beginners. And so bike buses here are done, at least informally, with some group of friends or maybe some bike volunteers who really just want to help beginners to at least not be scared of biking on the roads.

That has helped me as well, because for several years of me owning a bike, I never really dared to go outside the main city roads because of that fright, because of me not being familiar with being able to bike alongside the vehicles and all that. That’s why, when this group of friends of mine volunteered for me when I first went into their part of the metropolis, that helped me a lot in making me be much more comfortable. Like, oh okay, in this area, I’ll be able to do this, this is how I can navigate, apparently, with stoplights, with these vehicles just being beside us and whatnot.

And actually observing the people you are with, because they are the ones who are much more experienced and have been in this kind of situation much more often, they have their own techniques, etc., that you can adopt so that you’ll be able to do it on your own, maybe in the future, maybe when you’re comfortable or ready to bike by yourself. So that’s for us. And as well as even in our own city, we then start our own bike buses so that other people are, of course, much more familiar with their own safety. Wherein, in Manila, it’s much more chaotic. They have this, we have this, unfortunately bad reputation of being the least favorite city of bikers here in the metropolis because of how bad the conditions are, how terribly car-centric it is. And yeah, just overall, like, the chaos of a capital city of a country.

And that is why they really needed people like us, who are actually living in this city, to help them navigate. Though they are already experiencing their own areas, etc., they have to be accompanied by us, who know the techniques, who know the way, who know which places are one-way and which routes to go to, so that it’s much more comfortable, it’s much easier to navigate, etc., etc. So I guess that’s the bike buses for here. And as well as for the tourism aspect of being able to go around leisurely but safely, the bike buses are very important.

Madhushree K: Thanks. So what I heard from both of you,  what you highlighted is a lot of safety concerns, and where you broadened the aspect of how it helps people who aren’t used to cycles figure out how to navigate a city on a cycle. Obviously, this is just one strategy of cycling advocacy but the reason it stands out so much to me is because it is a very visual form and a very visible form of occupying the streets, where you have so many people just gaining space on the streets. And the second part is pre-existing cycling, sort of making things safer for them. Bea, do you have any strategy or have you seen them around you in your cities, which have worked?

Bea Dolores: Oh yeah. Well, of course, as someone who has done bike touring and bike buses, it’s pretty much daunting, especially at intersections or traffic lights. A part of your group might break away because the first ones are able to cross the stoplight, while the others get stuck waiting because they didn’t make it in time. So that’s quite a dilemma in bike buses, and it happens in different areas not just at intersections with stop lights, but also at simple corners. You’ll still encounter these kinds of problems. So, you might need different strategies for that, like having extra marshals, or having a separate bike guide while another one leads the group. Then there are other guides who stop cars from crossing through the fleet. Apart from bikes, for example, in our organization in Manila, we also try to make people, who are non-motorists, more visible on the streets. Our organization is more into heritage walks, where several groups of people roam around the city streets, appreciating the place, learning its history, etc. And through these heritage walks or tours, we also take up space in the streets and on the roads. That’s our own way of putting more human footprint on the roads while also giving people a deeper appreciation of the place, and helping them see the realities of how unfriendly some areas are for pedestrians. And from there, we can start imagining or aspiring for something much better for the city and for the people. In comparison, with bike buses, it’s more about using the number of people as the strategy and having more people out on the road, compared to those who usually dominate it with cars or private vehicles.

Dimpu Chindappa: Yeah. At Mobility Agenda, we started thinking about a “Cycle to Metro” campaign for first and last mile connectivity and how we can spread this message to people. Because the government is doing a pretty good job in Bangalore by providing safe cycle parking facilities at metro stations. Even after that, people still take their motorbikes and cars. You can see up to 100 cars and 500 to 1000 motorbikes parked at metro stations. Sometimes, the metro parking facility is not enough, so people end up parking on the street illegally, as well as on pedestrian paths, creating a lot of chaos around metro stations. And there are some people who don’t want to pay for parking at all. Like, you know, if you’re parking your motorbike, you’ll have to pay ₹30 per day. So they don’t want to do that. They want to escape from all this and park on the street.

When we were doing the study and trying to understand what we can do to spread this message, that you can cycle to the metro, and the government is already giving you a safe facility to park your cycle, that’s when physical, ongoing campaigns came into the picture. Of course, a lot of work is going on virtually, where people talk about, you know, “cycle to metro,” “cycle to work,” and different aspects. But when you do things on the ground, you are able to create a bigger impact in society.

Apart from this, when we think of strategies to promote cycling, it depends on what problem you want to solve. And to be honest, we cannot expect people to cycle to work or to school if it’s a long distance. Not everyone will be able to do that. So cycling, I feel, is a better option for first and last mile travel. First mile travel basically means you cycle from home to your bus station or metro station, and then you drop your cycle there. Or, you can walk to your bus or metro station, and then when you reach your destination, you take another cycle  if a public bicycle sharing system is available or you go by walk or another mode of transport, be it bus or auto-rickshaw in Bangalore. So yeah, cycling, I feel, will work great for first and last mile connectivity, where the distance of cycling is short and people are more comfortable with that.

Each place has its own pros and cons when it comes to cycling. When I was in Ahmedabad, the terrain was really, really good for cycling, it was flat. But Bangalore has a rolling terrain, and it makes it difficult to cycle long distances, especially if you’re not physically fit. So that’s where pedal-assist cycles come into the picture. But not everybody can own pedal-assist cycles. There are many aspects that I already mentioned. A good cycling model that is suitable for urban commuting, where you sit upright, you don’t have to bend too much like on sport cycles used to ride 300–400 kilometers. All these things have to be worked out. And, as I said, first and last mile travel is the main priority at Mobility Agenda.

Another strategy we can think of is approaching organizations in Bangalore, the IT companies or any big organizations where people travel from far distances across the city. These companies usually provide bus shuttles or cab services. But sometimes, the cab or bus doesn’t go door-to-door to pick up employees. They have a fixed spot, and employees have to reach there. So we can work with these organizations so that people can cycle from home to these pickup spots, park their cycles safely, and then get into the shuttle. When they return, they take the cycle and go home. All this research has to be done to understand the best approach. And if the organization we’re approaching is really interested in promoting a sustainable way of travel, we also need to know whether their employees are willing to cycle. Based on the study, we can take a call on whether to provide a safe cycle parking facility. And that also requires a lot of funding.

When it comes to projects related to sustainable cities and non-motorized transport, funding is very limited. Political parties still concentrate on big projects like building flyovers, metro construction, of course, metro construction is good, not flyovers. But they still focus on flyovers and other projects that are not really required. There are other ways to improve junctions and provide a better way of travel for people in Bangalore. I’m talking specifically about Bangalore because we are reading a lot about the city nowadays. Recently, the government was thinking of banning carpooling apps that some people are running. And there was a lot of outrage. Why ban carpooling when it’s actually helping solve traffic problems to some extent?

All these things need to be studied well before making any decision. If it’s an infrastructure project like metro construction or building good quality roads, that’s fair. But urban planners can’t get involved in everything. Our role, through the Mobility Agenda, through Buskara, and through our organization, is to think about how we can make roads safer for non-motorized transport, that is, for pedestrians and cyclists. That includes the elderly, children, and the specially abled. So many aspects come into the picture. We want to work for this cause. We want to make our city safe for all these people. But where are we going to get the funds for this? So yeah, when it comes to strategy, we have several strategies we can think of. But it’s about the willingness to do the work and the kind of support we get from government authorities and politicians.

There’s no end to thinking about strategy, it all depends on the support and the funding.

Bea Dolores: Yeah, I totally support what Dimpu has said, and I’d like to add more considerations and problems we’re experiencing here in the Philippines. I really appreciated what Dimpu said about how in India, there’s still a lot of focus on building big infrastructure like flyovers, it’s the same situation here. Apart from that, there are even plans to build expressways on top of rivers, and there have been many controversial reclamation projects. Meanwhile, the existing skyways don’t even have proper flood control or rainwater storage systems. So despite being elevated, these expressways create massive flooding underneath. That obviously affects everyone, nobody can use the roads below because of flooding and congestion, and they can’t access the elevated expressway either. So basically, the entire system fails.

The condition of our existing roads is also a major issue. In most cases, the sections where bike lanes are installed or painted, if they exist at all, are the worst parts of the road. These are typically on the far-right side, where gutters and open canals are located. The pavement is often broken or uneven, which creates real hazards for cyclists. This forces many cyclists to leave the bike lane and ride on the main road instead, just to avoid accidents. I’ve almost had one myself, the bike lane had a break in the pavement where a bike tire could easily get stuck, throwing someone off balance. That’s really scary.

As Dimpu said, improving road conditions is essential. That’s where the funding and the design focus should go, toward people-first infrastructure, not just massive projects for cars. Why don’t we reallocate some of the funding from these unnecessary mega-projects into better road conditions and safer designs for cyclists and pedestrians? Right now, even the protection we have for bike lanes is weak. The orange bollards we use are movable; they don’t stop vehicles from entering the lane. I’ve seen stronger bollards on social media, ones that are reinforced with steel. Some even undergo crash tests, and though they don’t collapse, they cause real damage to vehicles if hit. That’s the kind of deterrent we need.

So it’s not just about funding, we also need stronger policies. Right now, we have the Philippine Bicycle Act, which is trying to do something. On paper, it sounds promising because it allows local governments to seek a budget for infrastructure. But it lacks key language that puts responsibility on car users. There’s nothing about prioritizing non-motorists or requiring drivers to be more accountable and respectful of cyclists and pedestrians.

We also have something called the Safe Pathways Act or a similar proposal under a different name, that’s supposed to improve walkability and interconnectivity. But again, it focuses mostly on infrastructure without addressing the dominance of motorized vehicles. There’s nothing in the law that shifts priority toward people rather than cars.

This speaks to a broader issue of car-centrism, not just in policies but in the actual design and use of public space. That’s something we urgently need to address. One of the strongest strategies we can use is to amplify citizen demand. We need people to speak up, to push our leaders to reimagine urban mobility. Here in the Philippines, 94% of the population are non-car owners and yet our roads are still designed to serve the small percentage of people who drive. That’s a fundamental imbalance.

There are so many strategies we could pursue, reallocating budgets, improving design, reforming policy, and most importantly, shifting our priorities to make sure that bikes and pedestrians aren’t just accommodated, but prioritized. That’s the only way we’ll break this cycle of car-dominated development.

Dimpu Chindappa: To add a few more points to what Bea said, when it comes to bollards, in India, we cannot think of using steel at all. We have to think of some material that is way too cheap so that theft won’t happen and even with cheap material, people actually cut it off so that it is easy for motorized vehicles to move. So when it comes to providing a safe space for cyclists and pedestrians, it is important for the engineering department, education awareness department, enforcement department, and road safety departments to work together. All of these departments are not working together at the moment. Of course, they are working,  they are doing different aspects of the job but none of their priorities is to work together to make roads safer for non-motorized transport.

In civil engineering, we have this course, the Indian Road Congress, and in that, we have studied that the pedestrian is the king of the road. But I would say the pedestrian is the soldier who ends up fighting and they end up facing a lot of issues. So definitely pedestrians are not the king in India, and of course, in other parts of the world as well. We need to spread the message that pedestrians and cyclists are the kings of roads. Here, I’m saying ‘king’ in a gender-neutral sense, and that’s the message that has to go out.

I can see that people like me, I’m in my early 30s, and I have a certain mindset and behavior which I’ve been trying to change for the past four or five years. But what about people at the age of 50 or 60 who don’t care about pedestrians? And even people our age, or much younger, might not care about pedestrians and cyclists.

So we have to start thinking about giving training to school-going children so that they know what is good and bad. We are not only teaching the cons of using these vehicles, but also what road safety is. In India, clearing the driving test and getting a license is way too easy. It has to be made tougher so that people are aware that when they come on the road, they have to follow certain rules to be safe. And they should be taught during training that pedestrians and cyclists are the top priority on the road. But none of our departments are doing that. So it is important for all these departments, we call them the ‘Triple E’ – engineering, enforcement, and education – to work together and make it successful in building a sustainable city.

Madhushree K: I think we’ve reached the end. But I have so many more points I’d like to discuss, and I’ll probably do that separately with both of you. Thank you so much for giving me your time and your valuable insights. If there’s anything you’d like to mention, like if you’re promoting a campaign or something, you can say it here. I’ll write it in the bio as well, but if you want to say it in your own voice, go ahead.

Bea Dolores: I just wanted to share how much I enjoy biking. And I just want to keep learning more about myself and my capacity, and how much strength I apparently have as a person. So yeah, I really want to share that love. I want to encourage everybody to also have a relationship with their bicycle. Apart from it being our way to move around, it also, of course, needs a lot of our love as well.

Dimpu Chindappa: Thank you so much, Madhu, for having me on this podcast. I have so many stories to tell when it comes to traveling within our cities, whether it’s about commuting by bus or metro, or when we go by walk or by cycle. We can definitely do more podcast episodes about that. So let’s discuss that separately and bring it to the ground.

Madhushree K: Thank you so much, it was really lovely talking to you both.