Study: Just 17% women used public bicycle sharing in UT since Aug 2021
Of the total bike rides, rides taken up by males form about 82.7 per cent of them as per an analytical study of the rides carried out by the Chandigarh Smart City Limited.
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On average 1,500 bicycle rides are taken in a day. File Female rides form just 17.09 per cent of the total bike rides in Chandigarh under public bicycle sharing since August 2021 when the first phase of this project was launched. About 29 lakh kilometres have been covered using bicycles in Chandigarh with 657 tons of carbon emission saved in the city.
Of the total bike rides, rides taken up by males form about 82.7 per cent of them as per an analytical study of the rides carried out by the Chandigarh Smart City Limited.
As far as the age-wise rides are concerned, the majority of the bike rides, that is about 63.23 per cent, have been taken up by those aged between 20 and 30 and 18.28 per cent of rides have been taken up by youngsters less than 20 years.
For various female bike enthusiasts, they feel that they require convenience and feel discouraged when unable to open the lock or face technical glitches while bike riding.
Dr Sunaina Bansal, who runs city-based cycling club Cyclegiri, said, “I presume that as a woman you really require convenience. I have tried taking a bicycle three times from the docking stations and it has been quite a discouraging experience. Like once, despite the fact that I have paid the amount, the lock didn’t open or there were glitches in the app or I faced issues midway. Frankly speaking, now I have even taken myself off the cycle app too.”
She added, “When you intend to go to a particular place thinking you will take this bicycle and if I don’t get the cycle at the first docking station, I wouldn’t have the time to go to another docking station to look for a cycle or struggle with its features and glitches. So it has been quite discouraging and when it isn’t a smooth experience, why would people make that switch? That is the reason why women take less rides.”
With around 400 cycle riders, Dr Bansal feels safety is not the only reason for women taking up less bicycle rides.
“As for the safety aspect, I think riding a cycle is like riding a two-wheeler. So safety is not the aspect at all. There are members in our group who have switched over from the two-wheelers to cycle but the public bike sharing project has been quite useless, I’d say,” she added.
Paveela Bali, a fitness enthusiast who runs Run club, lists her reasons as comfort, hygiene, safety on roads full of traffic, which put women off cycling.
“I run past these cycles every day. Some are broken, some are dusty. Also, they are not comfortable to ride and I feel that women will not go to the market or from point A to point B on a cycle which men do generally. Also, safety issues for riding cycle on our traffic-ridden roads is another issue. At the same time, shared cycles abroad are of much higher and better quality.”
She adds that the project could have been executed in a better way. “So many cycle tracks are not maintained properly. It’s a collaborative effort and when the administrators are not promoting it, who will ride them? I feel this project was just to tickmark to show Chandigarh comes under smart city project. The project could have been executed in a better way.”
According to the data with the Chandigarh Smart City Limited, on average 1,500 rides are taken in a day. On weekdays, there are about 1,200 rides while on weekends there are 1,500 rides.
Municipal Commissioner Anindita Mitra while speaking to The Indian Express said that they are really working hard to encourage more people to use public bike sharing.
“For encouraging more and more people to use public bike sharing, we are working on improving our last mile connectivity. New 155 stations are coming up in hitherto uncovered sectors/areas. Also, as per directions of the UT Adviser-cum-chairman, Smart City Limited, sites of public bike sharing docking stations have been shifted next to bus queue shelters, existing or upcoming. This is specifically targeted at encouraging cycling so that any person who alights from a bus, can simply pick up a cycle and ride to his/her destination,” she said.
Most popular docking station
The Sukhna Lake is among the most popular docking stations. This docking station records the highest — 50 to 60 rides — on average in a day. The peak hours for taking the cycle rides have been found to be 5 am to 7 am — a time which significantly witnesses less motorised traffic.
7 lakh rides booked
To date, as many as seven lakh rides have been booked as per the department and there have been more than two lakh registered users.
As a pilot project, 225 bicycles were introduced across 25 docking stations in December 2020. As part of the soft launch and phase 1, a total of 1,250 cycles were introduced across 155 docking stations in August 2021, followed by phase 2 wherein cycles totalled up to 2,500 and were introduced across a total of 310 docking stations in February 2022.
Third phase to be launched on Jan 21
The third phase will be launched on January 21 wherein 3,750 cycles are going to be there across 465 docking stations. Phase IV is expected to be launched by July 30. With the launch of the phase IV, the total number of bicycles will go up to 5,000 cycles and 617 docking stations by July 30.
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