Braving Bucharest

I just returned from a cycling conference held in a city no one would mistake for a pedaling paradise -- Bucharest. The car traffic there is so awful, it makes Budapest seem like a pokey village on the Puszta. During the ride from the main airport, my taxi was stuck in gridlock 90 percent of the time. The trip, which just four or five years ago might have taken 30-40 minutes, took more than an hour and a half. A colleague who took the bus said the trip took two hours -- no priority lanes in Bucharest for public transport. A friend of a friend who put me up for the weekend said that traffic has made her more of a homebody. Where she once might have met with her graphic design clients in person, she now has several long-time customers whom she's never seen. Telecommuting isn't just better for the environment, it's also kinder to the nerves.

Despite this, and because of it, the city's mayor, Sorin Oprescu, began promoting bicycling as a car alternative three years ago, apparently after a revelatory visit to Paris. By now, Bucharest has 50 km of cycling tracks that provide safe passage along a few streets in the city centre. As is common in Budapest, the tracks are just painted lines on sidewalks, but it seemed to me that because of the Amazonian width of Bucharest's many boulevards, these sidewalk bike paths can't be said to deprive pedestrians of walking space.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for cars. Drivers park their vehicles everywhere in Bucharest, including across bike paths -- as well as on sidewalks, crosswalks, traffic medians, etc., etc. Some readers will think that's no different than Budapest, but, believe me, it's much, much worse. You have to see it.

With such chaotic traffic on the streets and such a small and ill-used bike path network, it's no surprise that few dare to bike in Bucharest. I asked several people about it, and they were unanimous in their opinion that cycling was too dangerous to consider. My weekend host, Yvonne, said she tried cycling to her office on one of the mayor's new bike paths. The problem was that the path only went half way to the office; after that, she was exposed to the firing range of downtown traffic, and she just gave up. Now the only bike she rides is the stationary exercycle in her living room.

A new NGO, MaiMultVerde (Greener), took its own step to encourage cycling last summer with the launch of the bike-sharing system, Cycloteque. The privately-financed scheme (now sponsored by the Romanian arm of Unicredit) got off to a slow start, did better when university students arrived in fall, but is now temporarily shut down for winter. MaiMultVerde is seeking corporate backing for the continued operation of Cycloteque, and perhaps even expansion of the system, but its future is not at all certain.

If you want to try out Bucharest cycling for yourself, it's nice to have a service like Cycloteque at your disposal. But don't be alarmed when, during the check-out, they offer you the standard protective gear for Bucharest cyclists: not only a helmet but also elbow and knee pads. You might think this is a little over the top. But one of my Bucharest friends told me a story that put it in context. She was driving downtown and saw a cyclist waiting at an intersection. She stopped to let the guy cross but a motorist in the adjacent lane was not so patient -- he kept going as if to drive right through the crossing and knocked the cyclist flat on the tarmac. Luckily, the car had braked before the collision. The cyclist was more dazed than hurt -- although his bike was mangled. Lucky also that the motorist was civilised enough to offer to pay damages. My friend spoke to the cyclist, who was fully girded with the knee and elbow pads and helmet. "Are you ok?" she asked. "Oh yeah," he said. "This happens all the time."

Biking to Bucharest

From Cycling Solution

Interested in learning about how different European cities approach cycling development? There's a conference December 18-19 in Bucharest that will be attended by 40-50 cycling professionals and activists from cities from around the continent. They will talk shop and, providing the city's not too buried in snow, have a look around to see what the host city has done in this area. (Pictured is the fleet from Bucharest's new bike-sharing scheme, Cicloteque, launched this summer.)

Registration is free. You just have get there and find accomodation. I actually know a local Budapest activist who told me he would bike there even though it might be "a little cold." In December? In Bucharest? I think there's a good chance it will and can't say I'm quite hardcore enough to join him on the ride.

I will be there for the conference, however. I'm scheduled to give the final talk of the programme, at 5 p.m. December 19. My talk's supposed to give an overview of urban transport cycling in Central and Eastern Europe. If anyone has any info that might supplement such a talk, please add a comment to this post or write me directly at gspencer@rec.org. I'm interested in any advances that regional cities have made in the field.

By the way, the conference's specific focus will be final results from a two-year EU project called Spicycles. Participating cities, along with Bucharest, were Rome; Berlin; Barcelona; Gothenburg (Sweden) and Ploiesti (Romania). Budapest was not included, but I plan on talking at least a little about it, anyway.

Bucharest launches city-bike scheme

Cicloteque is the name of Europe's latest municipal city-bike scheme, launched the first part of August in Bucharest. With just 100 bikes, it's much more modest in scale than the widely publicised schemes of cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Lyon -- yet it's encouraging to see a progressive step taken in a fellow new member state of the EU.

I wrote an earlier post on the possibility of Budapest getting a similar scheme rolling. http://cyclingsolution.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-bikes-in-budapest.html

The service is marketed as a means of transport, providing an alternative to cars and public transportation. It was created by the NGO Mai Mult Verde http://www.maimultverde.ro (director Dragos Bucurenci pictured left at Cicloteque's launch event) and UniCredit Tiriac bank. The first batch of 100 bikes was installed at the campus of the University of Bucharest. To use the bikes, you have to first pay an annual registration fee of 100 Lei (EUR 30) and an hourly 2 Lei (EUR 0.50) or daily 20 Lei (EUR 5) usage fee.

Mai Mult Verde's stated purpose was to improve urban mobility in the congested capital and to protect the environment. Bucharest has 1.2 private cars, which emit an estimated 125 tonnes of lead every year.

Just as Paris's Velib is financially backed by a commercial partner (JC Decaux advertising firm) Cicloteque got its money from a commercial partner who saw the venture as a good publicity tool. The local branch of Unicredit bank put up 100% of the initial investment of EUR 150,000, which covered the purchase of 100 bikes, the cost of the launch event, as well as the installation of 20 bike racks throughout Bucharest (The racks are just for short stops -- so far, the only place you can pick up and drop off bikes is at Cicloteque's single depot on the university campus.)

Just three weeks after the system's launch, there are 200 subscribers, according to Miruna Cugler, communications manager at Mai Mult Verde. Plans for the future include more bikes and more depots around the city.

In addition, Mai Mult Verde plans to lobby for more bike paths and routes around the city. At present, Bucharest has just a few bike paths, most of which are swarming with pedestrians and other users. The poor quality and quantity of paths mean that urban bike users have to jostle with motor traffic to get anywhere, a situation familiar to cyclists in Budapest.