The bicycle as a transportation alternative university (GDL published in October 2010 BIKE: http://www.gdlenbici.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=476&Itemid=1 )
Chronicle
Bike - The bicycle as alternative transportation university
Luis Rodolfo Morán Quiroz
For one of my students of psychology was a great disappointment to learn that, in addition to my travels around the city Condor Guadalajara on my bike 1984 model, I was owner and user of a 1977 VW. "Truth is not true that you have a car?, Is not it time you walk around the bike? "She asked anxiously at the start of classes. Disappointed and had to answer that, especially in the evenings and nights, had not the courage to explore the city by bike all the time. From that moment of disappointment for the aspiring psychologist, there have been many changes in the city of Guadalajara, particularly in regard to increased car traffic in the city, population density and urban infrastructure, and this has most important fact to consider cycling as an additional and alternative transport in this city. The proposal in the eighties appear before the state government to build a bike lane on the avenue had been rejected federalism incostesable and had to spend a quarter of a century for this route at last consolidated, very similar to some of the cycling routes in the eighties and work in cities like Munich and Freiburg, a part of the pavement would be designed to use (relatively exclusive) cyclists.
Since then, the growth of the city of Guadalajara has been overwhelming and from the eighties until the second decade of the twenty-first century and the urban population has increased significantly. If in 2010 the population of the Metropolitan Area (GMA) exceeds four million, in the years eighties, the population of that area is only around two million. The population density in the city of Guadalajara in 1980 stood at 8.654 inhabitants per square kilometer, while in 2010 the density is very similar (8.761 Hbs/km2), which means that much of the growth of population SMG has been in neighboring municipalities. The urban sprawl has spread in several square kilometers, as if in the eighties ZMG extended to four municipalities, and currently reaches eight, El Salto, Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Tlaquepaque, Tonala, Guadalajara, Zapopan, Juanacatlán and Ixtlahuacán of the quince.
The number of cars individuals who cross the GMA has increased dramatically, because its transport needs in the area fail to be covered by public transport. The following are some figures (see table 1), while in the Metropolitan Area of \u200b\u200bMexico there are 0.29 cars per person in the metropolitan area of \u200b\u200bLeon are 0.15 per person, in Guadalajara the amount increases to 0.33 vehicles per person, ie in Guadalajara and in the Valley of Mexico there are about three people per vehicle and Leon there is a vehicle for every six people.
Table 1: Population, number of cars and number of vehicles per capita in three metropolitan areas in Mexico (see the link should display a more orderly version of this table. Here: http://www.gdlenbici.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id = 476 & Itemid = 1 )
Greater Valley of Mexico León, Gto. Guadalajara, Jal. Population
19 '239, 910 1'200, 612 4'298, 715 Number of Vehicles
5'592, 290 189, 327 1'442, 572 inhabitants per vehicle
3.44 6.34 2.97 vehicles per capita
0.29 0.15 0.33
Source: IV Congress Sustainable Travel International, 2008 .*
The lack of planning in the areas of housing, commerce and labor and infrastructure to move between them has been privileged to work to build more cars and fewer for public transport and transfers to walking and cycling. Just look at the conditions and the narrowness of the sidewalks in much of the GMA to realize that there are few areas of the city in which we take into account the need to travel by foot, wheelchair or bicycle-tricycle .
In this context, the GMA universities have done little to encourage its students and academic staff and bicycle transportation, although in recent years ciclopuertos were installed in some of these educational institutions, mainly in the ITESO and then at the University of Guadalajara. In my case, I continued to use the bike for most of my morning commute and some of the evening transfer to my workplace in some academic institutions in the GMA, where I have been a researcher, teacher and eventual Synod. Thus, in addition to my usual shuttle riders work at the University of Guadalajara have been able to take the bike for some courses in the ITESO, Universidad La Salle and headquarters of the University of Guadalajara itself where I perform regularly. My main bike shipments to destinations "academic" including towards the ITESO (a 4kms from my house), my main assignment department, under the University Center for Social Sciences and Humanities (CUCSH), which is located 14kms from my house and outside Campus, near the Parque Morelos, and the campus of CUCSH (a 16 km from my house).
Since my childhood I am a bicycle enthusiast for over thirty years I am a regular runner. That has helped me to realize that there is a motor vehicle distances are perceived as "distant" when in fact these vehicles to move in only last over time, but not in space. I used the bike for my transportation to the degree ITESO alternately to run and ride in my VW. I started to use it to travel to the University of Guadalajara during my graduate student days, depended on a mastery of the Institute of Social Studies and in his first semester was located in the Lyceum building and Juan Alvarez (who currently holds the system Middle school, SEMS). And graduated from the master used the bicycle for my transportation to my job in the same building, until shortly before going to live in Seattle, a city ideal for runners and cyclists. Later I did my PhD in Tijuana and continued in the habit of relocating school running or cycling.
Gradually, the conditions of the streets of Guadalajara have worsened for bicycles. The large number of cars makes the road surface to deteriorate further and faster than in the eighties and nineties. So, instead of using road bike (in Guadalajara we call "race bike"), many cyclists have chosen to use mountain bikes and is symptomatic that current urban bicycle designs take into account the need wider tires than road, same as in the past could be used with relative ease in the cities. Thus, relatively few who still travel by bicycle route, lighter, and I had to use more often mountain bike, with increased resistance to bumps but less agile handling by the high friction of tire type.
addition to the increased number of vehicles has increased the number of cruise hazardous traffic lights trying to regulate the flow of vehicles and pedestrians, and that in turn generate traffic. What has not increased the visibility of cyclists in the eyes of users of motor vehicles, but not before the eyes of city planners. Until relatively recently (two or three years at best), there were few places where there was a formal place to park the bike in Guadalajara. Even today riders are also academics and students must confome with the bike chained to handrails in public buildings and universities, in the light poles in front of libraries, metal benches in parks or ridges in front to libraries.
Over my nearly forty years of bicycle transportation in the city of Guadalajara (with some experience gained in other cities where I could live and move around by bike, both in Mexico and abroad), I have learned that cyclists have to be flexible on our roads, it is common to see the streets blocked by traffic jams, that the sidewalk (wide or narrow, urban or suburban) are invaded by stalls and fixed and cars and even vans and trucks. Some of the routes on the map seem the most direct may be, in fact, impassable for the number of roads in their areas (stairs, ramps, inadequate, narrow), the density of traffic, the visibility (to see and be seen), for the period available to cross certain streets following the times marked by the light. Cyclists must take into account when planning our trips in the city all these conditions and even the number of pedestrians passing through any parts of our transfer.
is symptomatic that's midweek travel 14kms separating my house from my workplace have to use 50 minutes. I've tried using, on Sunday, some parts of the Milky RecreActiva, and the same distance it takes me only 30 minutes. The downside is that is open weekdays RecreActiva Way and on weekends is not open my workplace.
pimer Since my baby was born in 2007, I organized my work so my trips to downtown are fewer and of shorter duration. To reduce the time when I'm away from home, sometimes I climb the bike into the van, which parked approximately two thirds of the distance between my house and my destiny and continue cycling the length of the last third. Additionally, in addition to shipments to the buildings where I work, I could add, now that my son pimer started going to kindergarten, the morning commute to take to school and pick up three hours later. When he returned to deliver the greatest in school, my second son started our training for when he also started his formal education, adding a second tour through the neighborhoods near our house, which sometimes include a brief visit to his grandfather (2kms away) or his aunt and cousin (a mile).
In recent years, at last the authorities of the University of Guadalajara have reacted ciclopuertos been installed in some of the university buildings, as in the CUCSH and administrative tower. There is still no ciclopuerto in the building in which my department assignment, even though we are about ten people that he usually arrived by bicycle and we have almost three years seeking to install a rather ciclopuerto have to chain our bikes to the railings of the stairs or having to upload them to our area work.
What we should ask is why in other cities and other universities if there is a culture of planning that included the bicycles, wheelchairs and pedestrians in the plans for infrastructure, while in Guadalajara and in the UG, the Iteso and some other academic institutions only recently have begun to consider the possibility that students and faculty and staff arriving by bicycle. In the GMA is still short of shopping malls, public buildings, banks, parks, bookstores, cafes, schools, where bikes can be reached and where there possibility of parking. Ironically, rather than those responsible for these buildings, and even saw motorists welcome the existence of a specific area for bikes, sometimes we close the opportunity or we are "uninvited", despite contributing to increasing the number of users at the same time leave room for others, also do not get the motor vehicle.
* Source Table 1:
IV International Congress on Sustainable Transport, 2008. "Comparison of transport systems in Mexico."
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