3/06/2017
PUNE: Once upon
a time, Pune had the well-deserved label of ‘the City of Cycles’. Gradually, as
cycles gave way to cars and two-wheelers, the city lost that status. Today,
Pune ranks among cities with the highest density of vehicles - higher than
Mumbai and Delhi - and second only to Chennai.
There have been efforts to popularise the practice of cycling.
The efforts sometimes remained restricted to mere lip service, and at other
times were launched as campaigns. But they have been met with only one result:
Failure.
In the last 10 years, at least half a dozen campaigns have
been launched, and they have fizzled out, with crores of rupees going down the
drain. The situation on the ground remains as dismal as it was a decade ago. A
bicycle rider faces as many difficulties and remains as prone to accidents, as
he did a decade ago.
In 2006, when the Pune Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS)
became operational, as was mandated in the JNNURM guidelines, all bus corridors
were built with a dedicated cycle track. Pune got about 75 kms of cycle tracks
along the various existing and planned BRT corridors. As it widely known,
neither the BRTS nor the cycle tracks ever received approval from the public.
In 2008, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with Interface, a Dutch NGO, for Cycling Expertise
(I-CE), to come up with plans to improve the cycling infrastructure in the
city. A Non-Motorised Transport (NMT) cell was also created, but the initiative
failed to show any results.
In 2009, the then Municipal Commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took
up the cause of promoting non-motorised transport by urging civic officials,
corporators and the public to use bicycles. He also initiated a “No Vehicle
Day” at the PMC every Tuesday. The ‘No-Vehicle’ Tuesday fizzled out as soon as
Pardeshi’s tenure ended.
In 2010, the PMC created a proposal for a pilot public bicycle
scheme, which was to be developed on the DBOOT (Design, Build, Own, Operate and
Transfer) model. As part of the scheme, the agency was going to provide 300
cycles, which would be made available at 25 cycle stations across the city. The
plan received lukewarm response by private bodies; only one bidder showed
interest, but later backed off.
In May 2013, the PMC made public its plan to construct a lane,
made of synthetic material, for cyclists on the Pune-Saswad Road at a cost of
Rs 70.5 lakh. The project never took off.
The civic body then embarked on an ambitious Comprehensive
Bicycle Plan (CBP) in July 2013, which is still in the pipeline and progressing
slowly. According to those involved in its execution, this plan may finally
achieve the concrete result that has eluded all previous efforts.
“This plan has the possibility of bringing back people to
cycling, as it envisages a multi-pronged approach to using cycles as a mode of
intra-city transport. The plan had picked up speed after the Union Ministry of
Urban Development agreed to bear 80 per cent of the cost… however, in the last
few months, it has slowed down,” said Ranjit Gadgil, programme director,
Parisar. Gadgil is one of the nine members of the Bicycle Advisory Committee
(BAC) which is supposed to oversee preparation of the comprehensive plan, with
the help of the three technical consultants appointed by the PMC.
The BAC held its first meeting on January 6, 2016, and it was
expected to submit the draft CBP within nine months. It is already nine months
past the deadline.
According to Gadgil, the reason for overshooting the deadline
is that PMC officers have shown little interest in the project. “The BAC was
supposed to meet every month, but only four meetings have taken place in the
last 18 months. The draft proposal, presented in December 2016, can, at best,
be called a precursor to the draft plan since it has many improvement areas. We
haven’t heard about the plan since then,” said Gadgil.
PMC officials said the CBP has taken a backseat, with PMC
Commissioner Kunal Kumar showing more interest in the Public Bicycle Sharing
(PBS) system, under which 7,000 bicycles are to be provided at a few hundred
stations across the city. With a membership, users can pick up a cycle from any
of the stations and drop it at another station.
“The PBS is a small component of the Comprehensive Bicycle
Plan. It can’t work until other plans and components are worked out and
executed,” said Gadgil. Shriniwas Bonala, head of the Traffic Planning
Department, and Municipal Commissioner Kunal Kumar weren’t available for
comment.
Other civic officials said the tender for PBS is expected to
come out soon and the scheme would be on the tracks within a few months.
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