Local Studies

Two-wheel revolution
by Isa Lorenzo
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12TH, 2007
OKAY, SO Marikina still doesnt look like Beijing before China undertook market reforms
and made mainlanders crazy over cars. No other city in the Philippines, however, has a
network of bike paths like Marikina. Sixty-nine percent of the citys locally funded bike
paths run parallel with its rivers and creeks. Other paths have been built next to major
thoroughfares, while some meander in quiet subdivisions.
Its a growing network and its an active network, says Jack Yabut, president of Firefly
Brigade, a citizens volunteer action group that works for clean air and a habitable-
people-friendly environment in the city.
The Firefly Brigade is known for its annual Tour of the Fireflies, a 50-km bike ride around
seven cities. The tour aims to promote cycling as an alternative means of transportation
that is cheap, efficient, environmentally sensible, and good for ones health.
Yabut is also a consultant for a planned bike museum in the city. He says Marikina is
very supportive of bicycling events. But then that can only be expected of a city that
wants to put as many of its residents on bikes.
It all began when Bayani Fernando was still mayor, and he and other city government
officials were looking for ways to use the newly cleared easements paved sections
next to creeks that were built to support the heavy machines used for dredging.
In 1999, Marikina got a $1.3-million World Bank grant for a pilot study on the bicycle as
a viable means of transport within the city. At that time, there was a mega project, the
LRT 2, and the bridge was being made, recalls Carlota Contreras, officer in charge of
Marikinas Bikeways Office. They wanted to build a connection by non-motorized
transport so that people could access the mega-project in Marcos Highway.
She says the World Bank chose Marikina for the pilot project because the city had been
successful in implementing traffic management, and because BF had the political will to
implement the project. The World Bank grant was enough to help fund 19.3 kilometers
of bike paths, or 42 percent of a planned 66-kilometer network looping around
Marikina. The city government put up P14.9 million in counterpart funds, and paid for
an additional 27.3 kilometers. As of December 2006, 50 kilometers of bike paths had
been built.
One out of 10 road users in Marikina is a bicycle rider, says Contreras. The city aims to
increase the number of bicycle users to one-fifth of the total city population.
(View Contrerass powerpoint presentation.)
And so every Saturday, the Bikeways Office conducts a bike clinic for young riders, who
learn the basics of bicycle riding, as well as bicycle safety. Marikina also has a bicycle-
lending program for its Bantay Bayan volunteers group. There is even a city ordinance
offering government employees interest-free bike loans payable in six to 10 months.
As it is, a 14-hour traffic count conducted by the Bikeways Office over a seven-year
period already shows a steady increase in the number of bicycle riders.
Marikinas Bicycle Riders
Source: Marikina Bikeways Office
YEAR TOTAL NO. OF TOTAL NO. OF BICYCLES AS % OF
INTERSECTIONS TRAFFIC BICYCLES TOTAL TRAFFIC
(counted in 14 hours)
1999 11 310,424 13,183 4.25
2002 17 421,935 25,946 5.36
December 17 503,692 41,382 8.22
2005
2006 17 503,183 41,005 9.54
But Marikina local Lani Cortes says that of the bicycle owners she knows in the city, only
half actually use their bikes. She herself used to bike three times a week, but became
too busy to keep the routine going.
Cyclists are also discouraged by the air pollution, smoke-belching vehicles, and other
road hazards, such as cars illegally parked in biking lanes, and airconditioning units and
other obstructions jutting into the bike lanes. Plus, Cortes says, crossing the street on a
bicycle is dangerous. Sometimes bike riders are forced to play Russian roulette with
jeepney and taxi drivers.
Most Marikeos thus use cars or jeeps for transportation, adds Cortes. Unless, she
says, youre in a frame of mind that its more healthy for me to walk or use a bike.
Many use the bicycle to exercise, says Benji Chua, whose family has owned a bike shop since 1981. She
points out, Its a very low-impact activity, even those with heart disease or diabetes are permitted to
do it. Or those with back problems. Chua says one of her customers became an avid biker after injuring
his back playing golf. He went to a chiropractor, who advised him to take up cycling.

Aside from the health benefits, biking is also environment-friendly. Last April 21, Marikina became the
first local government unit in the country to implement a carless day in selected roads. That day, air
pollution index readings increased from fair to good in the carless areas, says Contreras. The city plans
to repeat the carless day this year.

Many may wonder whether the bicycle is a feasible means of transport in the metropolis. Yabut, for
one, commutes to work by bicycle two to three times a week. His office is in Quezon City. I cannot do it
every day because the distance is too far, then theres also a climb from Marikina going up to Quezon
City either via Balara or Batasan, he says.

But you know, he adds, people have gone around the world on a bicycle.
Posted in: Governance, Health and Environment, i Report, Special
Interest, Stories
Tags: firefly brigade, marikina

Source: http://pcij.org/stories/two-wheel-revolution/

Foreign Literature
Literature of the Bicycle Boom
Years During the last decade of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, authors created
characters who rode bicycles, or disapproved of bicycles, or even manufactured bicycles. Eugen Weber,
emphasizing the importance of bicycles at the time, states that an emblem of Progress and one of its
agents at the fin de sicle was the bicycle (195). Literary works of the time reflect this commentary.
While bicycles are often incorporated into scenes of novels, in some cases they are a fundamental
element of the plot structure. Three novels published between 1895 and 1900 are constructed
completely around bicycle tour vacations: The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells (1895), A Bicycle of
Cathay by Frank R. Stockton (1900) and Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome (1900). Arthur
Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes solves two cases in which bicycles are essential elements of the mystery.
In The Adventure of the Priory School (1904) Holmes displays his considerable knowledge of modern
bicycle technology. In The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist (1904), Holmes case arises from 7 the fact
that Miss Violet Smith cycles to and from her teaching position on a lonely country road.
Source: http://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=mls

Literature after World War I and the Automobiles Proliferation

By the 1920s the bicycles status as a symbol of progress and fashion diminished as the automobile
became the preferred vehicle for modern, affluent, style-conscious consumers. But even though its
popularity as transportation waned, bicycles never disappeared from use or our collective
consciousness, and literature continued to reflect its place in culture. A 1923 Raleigh advertisement
demonstrates the manufacturing companys shift in marketing tactics and appeals to those who want to
improve their health and escape the pressures of the working world by cycling in a refreshing pastoral
setting (Woodforde 168). In the opening scene of Aldous Huxleys first novel, Chrome Yellow (1921), the
protagonist, Denis, travels on a train headed out of the city and brings his bicycle with him: he always
took his bicycle when he went into the country. It was part of the theory of exercise (9). Bicycles appear
in the works of post-World War I novelists Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir,
Flann OBrien, Samuel Beckett, and L. P. Hartley in significant ways, but their transformational roles are
less transparent than in the fin de sicle novels.
Source: http://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=mls

World War II and Beyond: Beauvoir, OBrien, Bartolini, Beckett and Hartley
Fitzgeralds use of the bicycle anticipates its symbolic representation in novels written during World War
II and thereafter. Literature after the late 1930s often reflects the profound changes precipitated by the
onset of World War II13. The tragedy and horrors of war and the burgeoning atomic age were directly
incorporated into some novels, while others reflect its impact in more subtle ways. Existential, absurdist
and postmodern philosophers and writers of the era such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir,
Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett and Flann OBrien questioned pre-war cultural values and the meaning
of existence. Bicycles continue to appear in novels as transformative vehicles, but they no longer play
the straightforward role as vehicles of liberation from the constraints of cultural mores, gender
restrictions or social hierarchies. Bicycles often continue to be symbols of freedom, happiness and love,
but they lose their irrefutable power to transform characters in permanently positive ways. Literature of
this time such as Flann OBriens The Third Policeman, Simone de Beauvoirs The Blood of Others, Luigi
Bartolinis Bicycle Thieves, Samuel Becketts Molloy and L. P. Hartleys The Go-Between, reflect bicycles
as beloved articles, useful vehicles, and potentially 13 Although the German invasion of Poland in
September 1939 is often considered the beginning of World War II, the war between China and Japan
had begun in 1937. positive transformative machines, yet they are unable to overcome the disquieting
times; bicyclists are no longer destined for eternal happiness.

Source: http://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=mls

Foreign Studies

Cycle Shoppe Talk and Bi-Culturalism in

Denmark
It seems that bi-cultural identities are
just as common here as they are in the
U.S.
Center for Global Studies FLAS Fellow Henry Milander, an undergraduate student
in Business,International Studies, and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations,
used his FLAS fellowships to study Arabic in Amman, Jordan and Fez, Morocco in
the summers of 2015 and 2016. One of the issues he studied while in Jordan and
Morocco was immigration to Europe. In autumn of 2016, he moved from
Morocco to Denmark, where he had the opportunity to meet immigrants and
refugees who had moved to Denmark from Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. He
writes:
I have just returned from Denmark after being abroad for six months, first in
Morocco studying Arabic and second in Denmark studying economic
development, corporate social responsibility and the European Union. I must say
that the greatest benefit I received from being abroad was getting to ask the
questions that I was burning to ask and, more importantly, to pose them to the
people most capable of answering them. To see the world through their eyes was
the true gift of my time abroad.
In Morocco I had discussed with my professor and read articles about the plight of
many illegal sub-Saharan immigrants caught in Morocco trying to enter the EU
through places such as Ceuta (Sebta). After leaving, I wanted to hear about life for
refugees and immigrants in the EU who had managed to complete their arduous
journey. Luckily I lived in Nrrebro, the most multi-ethnic neighborhood in
Copenhagen (and possibly Denmark), which was how I met the owners of the
Tagensvej 69 Cykler cycle shop. What started with a flat tire quickly became a few
hours spent in their shop a couple times per month fixing my own bike, helping
them with a rusted-tight pedal, and enjoying a cup of coffee with them while
hearing about their experiences as either refugees themselves or children of
immigrants.
They all agree that it isnt easy when you dont fit into your countrys dominant
culture. Ahmed noted that their demographic groups lack of political and
economic clout is reflected in many things, such as the regulations on future and
(some) existing mosques, seen as too conspicuous, and on Islamic banking
institutions. While Denmark is considered a very equal country and people point
to its low GINI index, inequality is still prevalent when viewed as intersectional
(such as between genders and different ethnic groups). According to Shawanih,
the good news is that Denmark is moving to greater equality, and minority groups
such as Muslims are slowly making more money and acquiring the wealth which
will enable them to push for policies that better reflect a broader concept of a
Danish citizen. It does make me think, however, of those groups which arent
close to that goal yet, such as the illegal Sudanese immigrants living at the
Peoples Park near my apartment. There is clearly more research needed on my
part to develop a more complete story of immigrants and refugees experiences
after coming to Denmark, but I am grateful for my time in Morocco for enabling
me to ask questions about these experiences, and for my time in Copenhagen for
allowing me to investigate at least some of these experiences.
Henry was awarded the Scan|Design Fellowship, the Northwest Danish
Association Scholarship, and the Fritz Scholarship to support his studies in
Denmark.
Source: http://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=mls