Gridlocked Shanghai to Ban Bicycles

Bicycles were kings of the road in Shanghai for decades, transporting young and old, lofty and lowly, through streets and markets.

Times have changed, and the automobile now rules supreme.

As for bikes, well, they just get in the way, according to local police.

Already barred from some major thoroughfares, bicycles will be banned altogether from important streets starting next year, newspapers reported this month. To further discourage riders -- especially those with a tendency to bend the rules -- police are jacking up fines tenfold for infractions such as running red lights.

“Bicycles put great pressure on the city’s troubled traffic situation,” the English-language Shanghai Daily quoted police official Chen Yuangao as saying.

Yet cars, buses and taxis put pressure on the environment, argue bike proponents, who aren’t taking the proposed changes sitting down.

Vehicle emissions have become a major source of pollution in Shanghai and other large Chinese cities, even while heavily polluting industries have been shuttered.

Low-polluting alternatives such as electric bicycles have grown more popular, but the new rules would ban those as well. Banning bicycles could also worsen overcrowding on buses and subways and prompt more people to turn to automobiles, worsening the pollution problem.

“Bicycles are an environmentally friendly means of transportation that should not be banned,” the paper quoted Zhao Guotong, an official of the Shanghai Economic Commission, as saying.

Shanghai should instead “take firm control of the increasing numbers of private cars,” Zhao was quoted as saying.

Shanghai, a city of about 20 million, has some 9 million bikes, according to Shanghai Daily. The number of new cycles in the city, ranging from the old-fashioned Flying Pigeons to flashy new mountain bikes, grew by 1 million this year.

Bicycles are still the dominant form of transportation across China, where most people still make less than $1,000 per year. With the Communist Party promoting bikes as cheap, egalitarian transport, working-day China ran almost exclusively by pedal power before increasing affluence and economic reforms fired a desire for private cars in recent years.

Shanghai boasted some of China’s earliest bicycle factories and, like other cities, set aside special bike lanes on main roads and built bicycle parking lots. Hordes of cyclists can still be seen in the old city center, their tinkling bells penetrating the roar of traffic.

Yet cars and freeway development have been gradually encroaching as Shanghai takes its place as the Detroit of China’s burgeoning auto industry.

In Beijing and other Chinese cities, bikes are also being shunted aside as car ownership grows.

In Shanghai, the number of private vehicles -- especially the Volkswagens, GM compacts and Buick sedans made in the city -- nearly doubled to 142,801 at the end of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

And that accounts for only a small percentage of vehicles on the road: Private automobiles are outnumbered 6-to-1 by buses, taxis, government cars and commercial vehicles, according to the official newspaper Liberation Daily.