CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
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I'm in Nairobi at the moment which is a monument to cars if ever I've seen one. It can take hours to get across town and it gets especially bad if it rains.
Anyway my taxi driver just about had a coronary laughing at a mizungu (white guy) on a bicycle. 'He's crazy that mizungu baa haa haa haaaa haa'.
General consensus is his life expectancy is about 200 meters in this city. Maybe he's come up with some amazing force field shield around him which keeps him safe?
In Harare, I've been counting bikes. More whites on bikes than blacks,. Mostly old folks. Of course, Iam mainly inthe northern suburbs. and not out and about when the ealry commuters are about (used to be the security guards all rodebikes), not sure that is true now. acouple years back when petrol was scarce, there were a lotmore bikes in evidence. Roads horribly clogged with cars now. (not as bad as Nairobi though)
Chap who's been driving me around shocked to hear that I used to cycle here. Very intrigued to hear about the folder though.
(edit: right on cue, i look up and security guards goes past on bike!)
Yeah outside of Nairobi the man with a bicycle is King. Bicycles are the delivery trucks of the countryside. Its just Nairobi is a crazy horrible city that it would be suicidal to cycle in.
In Malawi they even have bicycle taxis. Its a soft cushion stuck on the pannier rack. The ladies sit side saddle and tuck their skirts up - very civilised.
The following is a bit depressing, although I knew the numbers were high, I had no idea...
Hi, in Malawi I was intrigued by the roads (bikes vs cars): I noticed the same thing: out of the cities the bicycle is everywhere. minimoth cycled to and from the project she was involved with every day (pretty safe on a v quiet track). But I was depressed by how cycles were expected to get off the road for cars (did anyone else notice that)? And the amount of death/injury on the roads:
UK: 36 deaths/million people/year
Malawi: 260 d/Mp/year
[how is that possible? even more mental is per vehicle: in the UK it's 70 deaths/Mvehicles. In Malawi it's 28,889/Mvehicles. In other words, on average 1 in 3 vehicles will kill someone each decade - is that right? that seems completely mental... aghh!]
"Worldwide it was estimated that 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions in 2004"
I feel like road crashes are in the same league as Malaria/HIV (is that contentious?)
"As of 2010 approximately 34 million people have HIV globally...There were about 1.8 million deaths from AIDS in 2010"
I'm hoping to leave the UK soonish and spend a year or two learning about intl development in sub-Saharan Africa. I feel like any work on reducing road-deaths/injuries would be very worthwhile, and would have far fewer risks around 'do-no-harm' than other paths for intervention, as the hazard is relatively new and surrounds a new/non-cultural activity. I'll have to think more, and look around for related NGOs.
SRD/Lezzies: What ideas/advice on this topic have you got? :)
I worry that one small reason the death-toll in developing countries is so high is because a lot of people are out-and-about on foot, while in "developed" countries everyone's inside cars/houses - away from the danger, but also away from the outside/fresh air!
There was a programme on this on Radio 4 a few months back.
It is called "Progress" doncha know and the people in the programme were very pleased with the rate of road building. The huge number of deaths, particularly among children was just the price you have to pay.
lionfishy - i posted something about people cyclingin Cairo a whil back. Maybe not a campaign, but along those lines.
What strikes me here is that even though people took to bikes when there were petrol shortages, they have returned to cars/lifts etc. I had hoped for more residual effect. Of course, also to be considered is that night falls early c6pm most nights, so it is even riskier, specially now that few street lights work.
@Lionfishy - there are some superb companies and groups in the Edinburgh area that work in international development. The ideal thing is if you were to work/volunteer for one of these groups before heading out. If you do go out - make sure you are going to provide skills and expertise that is missing. Avoid NGOs full of hand wringing do-gooders. Especially avoid them if they think bee keeping and basket weaving are routes out of poverty.
Sorry @Min but building roads and improving infrastructure in urban areas has a direct correlation to lifting people out of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Places like Kenya are doing their best to develop low carbon pathways for development though - in the long run the attempt is to lift people out of poverty without following the same emissions pathway we western nations took.
Here's a random fact - the number of people killed in road collisions each year is roughly equivalent to the entire world commercial airliner fleet crashing twice a year with no survivors. Can you imagine the outcry if 70 airliners crashed every day - all planes would be grounded immediately.
There were 25,783 airliners in 2011 (Flight Global World Airliner Census 2011) - and I'm assuming an average carrying capacity of 200 seats as the majority of the fleet is 737 size and below.
It is called "Progress" doncha know and the people in the programme were very pleased with the rate of road building. The huge number of deaths, particularly among children was just the price you have to pay.
Not just Africa. South East Europe has been like this for much of the past 20 years*. Only in the last couple of years has the government in Bulgaria, for example, taken action to stop speeding (speed cameras, surveillance) and promote alternative transport modes such as cycling. It was the increasing death toll on roads that turned public opinion: I have to say driving standards seem to have improved as a result. That is, only a small number appear to drive like homicidal/suicidal maniacs now: before it seemed like the majority did!
Still if you look at stats on the most dangerous roads, roads in Scotland that are considered dangerous are incredibly safe compared to most roads in countries like Greece...
* Ironic given that most former Socialist countries have excellent public transport: railways, trams, metros, trolley buses, buses. But cars = "freedom" = status.
@Morningsider
That's my kind of number-mongering. Great in a terrible kind of way.
Delighted to report many more bikes in Bulawayo. Good signage and cyclepaths too. Roads - famously - very wide here. also totally flat. Nice :)
Thanks all for the thoughts. I knew this thread was here and I needed to read it.
@Lezzies:
there are some superb companies and groups in the Edinburgh area that work in international development.
I joined the board of one for a year or two, but found it a bit of a struggle (possibly the hand-wringing/weaving thing was half the reason, but the way decisions were made was atrocious!), so decided to leave. At the moment my fragments of spare time is going to Amnesty Intl campaigning and bike-campaigning! I'm currently doing some (paid! woohoo) work for NIDOS though, getting a new online version of their Effectiveness Tool together.
"The ideal thing is if you were to work/volunteer for one of these groups before heading out" - that would make sense, feel I'm doing this a bit back-to-front. The PhD write-up + NIDOS work is currently pushing the limits of any time I've got though :/
"If you do go out - make sure you are going to provide skills and expertise that is missing." - this is my main concern. I'm fairly skeptical I've got much to offer. Lyndsey's got a masters in public health nutrition (i.e. qualified, registered, etc), and there seems to be a lot of demand for people like her. I'm just a computer geek/know a tiny bit about one tiny bit of brain/how to do research a little bit: Some people suggested that university science depts might be a good place to look into... So I'm currently in the learn-stuff mode, rather than in a hand-wringing-do-gooder-mode.
"Avoid NGOs full of hand wringing do-gooders."
Yeah, I'll try not to be one too! Lyndsey's undergrad was in international development, which seems to have made her pretty skeptical about most/almost-all NGOs to an extent. Anyway, I've slowly absorbed her thoughts and others. I visited Malawi on holiday (and so Lyndsey could finish her work there) and speaking to some people in development (mostly forestry) I got an idea around this.
"Especially avoid them if they think bee keeping and basket weaving are routes out of poverty."
By this do you mean avoid any that feel that small-scale production does not improve livelihoods in any measurable way? or random external projects aren't the way, and that focus should be put on improving the current production currently there? Or the focus on income is too simple? Or is it that thousands of annoying little half-baked schemes scattered all over the country is just a complete mess, and wastes everyones' time? What would a good set of aims/outcomes be? Which NGOs have you been impressed by? What makes a good NGO? Sorry for all the questions - I'm intrigued what you had in mind?
Also I like that if I ask four people involved in this area a question, I'll get at least five different answers...
...ok that was too many questions! But I'm still feeling incredibly uncertain about any of this stuff :)
Thanks for the messages!
Lionfishy - only thing worse than romanticising NGOs is pathologising them. They're just organisations like any other, with all the foibles and challenges usually encountered, except often under conditions of scarcity and hardship.
"Especially avoid them if they think bee keeping and basket weaving are routes out of poverty." As a senior Zimbabwean politician who ran a respected NGO which did 'income generating projects' said to me last week 'i never thought those projects would make anyone rich, but the point was to get women together, talking to each other, and working together on their own terms' that's what will bring change to people's lives.
"Lionfishy - only thing worse than romanticising NGOs is pathologising them. They're just organisations like any other, with all the foibles and challenges usually encountered, except often under conditions of scarcity and hardship." -- fair enough. Trying to walk the linguistic tightrope here: Being "skeptical to an extent" wasn't meant to suggest pathologising them - I just want to look at what their aims are, and whether the members know what they're doing etc. We support several development charities - and Lyndsey's been involved in several! But I really think it's true that some actions by NGOs can do harm... so I definitely look on some with a skeptical (maybe that word is too strong in common-parlance?) eye.
"Especially avoid them if they think bee keeping and basket weaving are routes out of poverty." As a senior Zimbabwean politician who ran a respected NGO which did 'income generating projects' said to me last week 'i never thought those projects would make anyone rich, but the point was to get women together, talking to each other, and working together on their own terms' that's what will bring change to people's lives.
So in the aims etc; empowerment might be the one at the top and not income? re my questions: I didn't mean my questions to be loaded - I just didn't know what Lezzles was getting at.
Ah, wish this text wasn't so black-and-white! I want to be more vague until I've got my head around some of this.
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