The traffic situation in Bangalore city got me thinking whether high traffic  volumes on the roads during peak office hours are genuine or ‘man-made’. I kept observing the cars i passed during a time period a found that most cars have 1 occupant mostly and in good cases 2. So that meant 2 people were using road space that could accommodate 4 bikes or 8 commuters. I’d heard of cycling to work campaigns to go ‘green’ but for people who live in residential suburbs this commute can be very long and not highly recommended if you need to reach office in a presentable condition.

This got me thinking, if citizens in Bangalore and other tier 1,2 cities shed the archaic mindset that commuting by car is a necessity for a particular stage of your life and started using bikes we would all be greatly benefited.

Some of the advantages of using Motor bikes

1. When 1 car (2 passengers) go off the street, 4 bikes (8 passengers) can use this space. a 25% saving in much needed road space in our crowded cities. Picture your worst nightmare junction with 1 in every 5 cars missing.
2. On an average cars generally give around 12 Km/Litre mileage. But a bikes these days give anywhere between 40 to 60 Km/Litre. A whooping 75% savings in fuel consumption.

The reason people including me are skeptical of biking to work is that the bikers are the people who suffer the heat, dust and pollution created by all those cars idling at traffic signals. The average car user is oblivious to their plight in the confines of a climate controlled cabin. If you are a car user try to look around and see the discomfort your vehicle is causing to bikers who as of today are often confined to commuting by bike since they can’t afford a car. If a majority of us rejected the car and used a bike for office commute we would be doing a great bit for the environment, saving fuel and commuting smarter to work and creating a clean and healthy roads for even more people to abandon the car for daily office commute.

To spread this news i would greatly appreciate it if you could share this with any ‘car people’ that you know of. Feel free to copy this and put it on your blogs to spread the word.

If you are inspired to take a chance on the bike please register your vote. If you are a blogger feel free to yank this poll and post is along with your post so that we know how well we are spreading this message. Leave comments if you want to expand on this idea.

Happy biking.

 

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Filed under: India politics happenings