Claire and Cristhian in Quito on bicycle con los jovenes de Sol de Primavera

The Tour and the Objective

On this trans-national bike tour, we will travel more than 5,000 miles (8,046+ km) from Santiago, Chile to Quito, Ecuador (and possibly beyond). This tour is not just a personal challenge for us, but will also be educational and open to many more people to be involved in various ways. We will stop at NGOs, bike activist organizations and environmentally focused community groups along the way to interview, investigate, give presentations and share information on the movement for the bicycle as alternative transportation. We wish to exchange ideas and stories about climate change and the movements that have formed to address its root causes (such as car culture, industrial agrigulture, consumer culture and colonialism).

Our goal is to do research and collect stories on bike cultures and movements in order disperse them and help the cross-fertilization of various movements by creating resources of information and promoting networking between towns, cities and countries.

We will have a focus on the bicycle as a cheap, accessible, autonomous and environmentally-friendly form of transportation and sport that can be one tangible and practical way to help mitigate climate change. We will be exploring the ways in which we can get more people riding—especially women and other people who aren’t encouraged to ride and have less access to bikes—in order to increase the quality of life for all and promote climate justice.

En este tour transnacional vamos a pedalear en bici más de 5,000 millas (8,046 Km.) desde Santiago, Chile hasta Quito, Ecuador (y quizás más allá). Este tour no es solo un reto personal para nosotros, es educativo y abierto a mucha mas gente para que pueda unirse al proyecto de diferentes maneras. Vamos a ir a ONGs, organizaciones de bici activistas y organizaciones comunitarias ambientalistas a lo largo de viaje para entrevistar, investigar, dar exposiciones y compartir información sobre el movimiento de la bicicleta como transporte alternativo. Querremos compartir ideas e historias sobre el cambio climático y los movimientos que se han formado para luchar contra las razones fundamentales (como la cultura del auto, agricultura industrial, la cultura de consumismo y colonialismo).

Nuestro objetivo es hacer investigaciones y recolectar historias sobre culturas y movimientos de la bici para que podamos dispersarlos y ayudar la cruz-polinización de varios movimientos, creando un recurso de información y promover redes entre pueblos, ciudades y países.

Vamos a tener un enfoque en la bicicleta como una forma de transporte, deporte económico, accesible, autónomo y ambientalista, que puede ser una manera tangible y practica para mitigar el cambio climático. Vamos a explorar las maneras en que podemos tener más gente pedaleando, especialmente mujeres y gente marginalizada, para aumentar la calidad de vida para todas y todos y promoviendo la justicia climática.

domingo, 2 de marzo de 2008

Bike Culture in Cochabomba!

Cochabomba: a perfect bike city...except (almost) nobody bikes
Entering Cochabomba was a bit frightening... more than 40 miles of suburban cities and the highway full of giant trucks and taxis that didnt mind cutting off cyclists one bit. We were much relieved to see a sign, "The Start of the Bike Path". How amazing, and what perfect timing as we were being stressed out. The bike path, which ran for about 8km from a suburban city to maybe 10 blocks outside of Cochabomba, was indeed more relaxing to ride in. However, it had speed bumbs and so as a cyclist you were forced to slow down before each intersection with cars. Now, if a city wants to promote non-motorized transport, shouldnt they be putting the speed bumps in way of the cars crossing the bike path, not vice versa? This was our first introduction to the poor design of Cochabombina bike infrastructure. We heard from a friend that there was an article about biking as transportation in one of the main Cochabombina newspapers, Los Tiempos, in the last sundays paper. We decided to check it out, so we went to the office of Los Tiempos and asked to speak with the author, thinking we could interview her about what she knew about bike organizations in Cochabomba. It turns out, she started interviewing us, and then took our photos, and thats how the article in Los Tiempos (which we put in the last blog entry) came to be. However, we also got a chance to interview her, and we learned quite a bit. Luz Marina Canelas--- First of all, she told us, there are currently no organizations promoting the bike as alternative transportation in Cochabomba, and as far as she knows, not in any city in all of Bolivia. However, her newspaper, Los Tiempos, has started a new campaign to celebrate their 55th anniversary called Los Tiempos Close to You (Cerca de Ti) in which the newspaper is working in 4 areas, one of which is the Environment and Ecology. Luz is in charge of this area, and has decided to chose the bicycle as the main thing to promote environmentalism in Cochabomba. She has started a publicity campaign on biking and will write at least one article a month until the summer about the benefits of biking as transportation. She also is working with private bisnesses to finance a large publicity campaign that includes posters, newspaper ads, billboards, fliers and more, all promoting biking. She does not want to work with the government because the politicians always politicize things and that will make it more complicated and a lot slower. She prefers to work with private companies, the police, the transit authorities, and others who are more stable than politicians and so things move along faster. The project is still in its initial stages, so she is still working things out and open to ideas. We told her we are impressed that a newspaper is taking the initiative in a city, and taking on the role of an NGO with respect to biking. She told us that she wants to promote biking in Cochabomba because it used to be a biking city, it was famous for having a lot of cyclists in the 1970s. But now the auto has taken over especially because there is an open door policy with Chile and old junky cars come in from Europe (the ones that no longer meet the environmental standards of European or Asian countries) and get sold in Bolivia dirt cheap. For this reason there are 80,000 autos in a city of 1million people, and the number of autos is growing. Thats a lot of cars for a Bolivian city. There are a ton of taxis and Trufis (fixed route taxis) that clog up the streets as well as private cars. Therefore there is chaos and curruption and no one controls the drivers and many are driving without liscences. But Cochabomba is a perfect biking city, says Luz. Its flat, the streets are relatively wide, the climate is nice, what more could you ask for? In addition there are bike paths, though she admits they arent the best, and the publicity for them is terrible. The primary bike path, which curves around a large portion of the city, was built 10 years ago and has never been popular. Now it is notorious for being highly dangerous and there have been many cases of robbery and assault of bikers. She said that at one point Cochabomba was number 3 in the world in terms of contamination, and for this reason the city government started El Dia del Peaton (the day of the pedestrian) the first Sunday of every september where the entire city is open only to cyclists and walkers. On this day many people bike, but other than that, there are very few who chose to bike. And why is that? Well there isnt respect from drivers, as is true in most cities, and also theres huge problems with insecurity. Many people have had thier bikes stolen and many just dont want to deal with the risk of getting one stolen. In additon, cyclists can be the victims of robberies and other crimes. Cochabombinos really feel the insecurity of the streets, and therefore dont let thier kids out on the streets to ride bikes. The sad thing is, when you go to one of the two closed in neighborhoods in Cocha, where you cant enter unless you have permission, you can indeed see kids out in the streets on thier bikes. But only in these closed, privileged places. The rest of the city, nothing. Its a sign that a lot needs to happen in terms of the reclamation of public space in Cocha. There are few bikers in Cocha, and even fewer women bikers. Luz thinks that for every 50 male bikers perhaps there is one female biker. She thinks it is because theres no custom for women to bike, and generally thier gender role (of domestic work) means they are in movement less than men. They also may decide to take a taxi or bus to not have to worry about parking thier bike or it getting stolen. Another important factor is that the traditional dress that many Cochabombina women wear makes it much more difficult to ride a bike (skirt and often times heels). Despite all the challenges, Luz wants to work to promote biking in order to lessen traffic and contamination in the city, as well as to help people lead more active and healthy life styles, in addition to opening thier eyes to a cheap and autonomous form of transport. Shes new at this, and isnt in contact with bike movements in other cities, and so it was a good opportunity to share ideas from Santiago, Chile (public bikes) and Quito (ciclopaseo) and other places in the world where the bike movement is more advanced. We wish Luz the best in her campaign to promote the bike in Cocha and hope that other people are inspired and form groups to continue the work in this beautiful city. If any bikers are traveling to Cocha, we recommend you talk with Luz at Los Tiempos and share your ideas about how to promote bike culture, or if not, you can write her at: lmcanelas@lostiempos-bolivia.com. After talking with Luz we decided to check out this notorious bike path ourselves. We couldnt have imagined how bad it really was until we saw it. Poorly designed, with tunnels so low you had to bend down low to pass, and which ended up serving more as public bathrooms than a bike path. There was also trash and glass and shrubs in the path, as well as holes and bumps, and the path went through forest-like areas which could clearly be dangerous at nighttime. Though we were biking in the middle of the day we didnt feel safe, and so the poor design of this bike path caused us to leave it after a few kilometers. We only saw about 4 other bikers on the path while we were there--its obvious it is barely used. We did however meet a friendly biker who is optimistic about bike culture in Cocha, and you can listen to our interview by entering the google group page Movement por un Cambio. Though Cocha doesnt currently have a bike culture, it did in the past, and it has the great potential to have one in the future, especially with Luz taking the initiative. All it needs is a few more dedicated activists to head up some campaigns and we think that some real movement could happen hear. If any Cochabombinos are reading this, we want to support you! Adelante! A Note on Arriving in Cochabomba from Oruro: We left Oruro late Saturday the 23rd of Februry late in the afternoon, and pushed against the headwind 35km to arrive in the farm Hornenco (sp?) where a very kind farm hand and his beautiful children took us in to camp by thier house and offered us good conversations, giant glasses of fresh yogurt from the farm and hot chicken soup. The next day we packed up while chatting with thier 5 kids who were so open, friendly, kind and smart. It was indeed one of the kindest families we have ran into during this trip and we thank them profundly. We headed out the next day and climbed well over 1,000 meters up until about 4,500 feet, and very tired we zoomed downhill 8 km to Japo a small town where the people have beautiful winter hats. It was late and we were freezing (still wet from a hail storm up top) and so we asked to rent a room to stay in. In the morning we got to watch the daughter work with her loom, weaving a beautiful shawl with designs of dogs and birds. Very complicated and hard work, and the girl said she learned in a day and if we stayed a day we could learn too! (I dont believe it!) We headed out expecting it to be all or at least mostly downhill (as everyone kept telling us, ohh its alll downhill from here!) but were met by more and more and more uphill. We probably climbed 1,000 meters again and finally at 5pm starting downhill...and down and down and down! 30km we sped down in less than 2 hours! We ended up doing 91km that day, finally stopping in Parotani hoping for a hostal, and insted sleeping inside a construction site where they locked us in at 8pm and let us out at 8am. A funny situation, one of many we have had, but all good! We left in the rain, with our new rain booties, and entered the giant sprawl that comes out of Cochabomba. 40km later we were in Cocha and we met my friend Brendan (from Macalester) in the main plaza, and I double biked him about 8km to the house he is renting. Its a great house with a beautiful and large garden and Brendan has been so very kind and generous to let us stay for so long. THANK YOU BRENDAN!! Weve had an amazing time in Cocha, seeing old friends, meeting new ones, seeing radical art, music, poetry and films, attending a good party, learning Tai Chi, eating Hari Krishner food, and biking around the beautiful (and dangerous) streets of Cocha. We are moving on now, heading out to La Paz, and though we will miss our lovely and relaxing time in Cocha we must move on... Goodbye for now!

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