Page 30 - ELITE PLUS MAGAZINE VOL5

The collective efforts of individuals and organizations are helping Bangkok overcome its cycling teething issues, and will hopefully lead to a more sustainable and eco-friendly urban environmentDespite a number of individual and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) campaigns to boost cycling’s popularity, Oy Kanjanavanit, an environmental activist, is unsatisfied by the progress.“People are longing to reconnect with the environment and are urged to have fun, but in terms of using a bike as a mode of transportation to solve Bangkok’s traffic issues, the many tiny projects for bikes have been counteracted by the huge projects for cars,” she said.Ms Oy believes that as long as Bangkok gives cars the priority, the bike boom will not be sustainable. “We need to rethink the overall traffic flow, as the roads were designed for four-wheel vehicles.”She offers the BMA’s “Green Way” initiative as an example. The need to28 Elite+carry bicycles around and over many obstructions on the route make it not actually bikeable. “The problem is that the people who designed the campaign do not really use it. I reported the issue and invited a director of the BMA to try the route and finally he admitted that it’s hard.”Two years later some budget was allocated to fix the route. To keep the money from being misused again, Ms Oy asked the BMA to involve the group and urban planners from King Mongkut’s University in the redesigning of the route.Though people may have been cynical about initiating a cycling culture in the past, Ms Oy sees a more hopeful mindset towards it now. “As a rider and a pedestrian, I see that car drivers are becoming more willing to share the road. They have morecautious behaviour and have started to stop at zebra crossings.”She has also created a forthcoming mobile phone application that provides bike route maps and lets people report problems such as road deterioration and unworkable bike lanes. The information will be sorted and sent to the relevant government departments to address. She believes that citizen action through the application will help improve some of the issues that stop people from cycling.The collective efforts of individu- als and organizations are helping Bangkok overcome its cycling teething issues, and will hopefully lead to a more sustainable and eco-friendly urban environment in the future.