A bike ride in Santiago

I took out a rusty bike that had been leaning against the side of the house and rode a few km (using culturally appropriate SI units). I looked at the Ride the City site for Santiago, which is like google maps but tailored for cyclists, highlighting bike paths, showing bike repair shops. It was helpful in locating streets with ciclovias, like this one. A left side, 2-way bike lane on a cramped 3-lane one way busy street. The space for bikes was just barely enough for passing without clipping handlebars, and an unfortunate feature of this design is that any slack space must bump into the left traffic lane. It was heavily used, and was flexible in design. It was separated from the road in some places, and they were creative in accommodating obstacles. A goal of the city is to have something like 550 km of these paths within the next few years, which is impressive. I have read several feature articles in the paper on cycling, so it is on people's radar. Nationwide and in Santiago the use of bikes is at about 3% of all trips, according to an article I read in El Mercurio yesterday.

 I can't help but contrast this with the South Bay, where I remember a number around 1% of trips being made by bike. And in Santiago, there's an amazingly clean, efficient and cheap metro system as an option too, which makes the 3% number more impressive. Another contrast is that the bike ways are really ad hoc, following no apparent design standards. They are not lanes where one can go 15 or 20 mph, but only provide a safe lane for people to get to work, which makes expanding the network cheaper, and actually seems to serve the needs of many people fairly well. The spandex crowd will still ride in the traffic lanes, and I do the same when I get frustrated with the constant starting and stopping of the ciclovias. It will be nice to see how the use increases as the weather warms.