Bike Lanes in Sydney

When I was a kid, I used to marvel at news clips of China because of the number of bikes in the city. In some clips of Beijing, I couldnt even see any cars! Back then, and I hope you would forgive my naivete, I though it was a sign of backwardness. In the eighties, issues such as climate change were not the main focus in people's consciousness. Progress was equated with cars and tall buildings...Fast forward twenty years later and we now see large cities trying to do the opposite to become more bike friendly so that people will use their cars less.

There may be many cities in the world that are more bike friendly than Sydney but I think it is still better than most. The mayor, who goes by the unique name of Clover Moore, made it one of her priorities to redesign roads to make it more enticing for people to dump their cars in favor of their bikes. I'm not going into the debate of whether she spent too much or too little, but more and more of these green bike lanes are sprouting within the CBD. Here are pictures of one of the first bike lanes created here.

As you can see, there are now stoplights for bikes. The lanes have been marked a distinct Green so that people will recognize them.

There are shared lanes with cars or pedestrians.

I hope to see more of these lanes get built as I think it enhances the city's beauty.

And yes, I now think that China should have stuck it out with bikes.