Opinion: Beijing's new bikeway shows cycle of progress in transport

In northwest Beijing, the large residential area of Huilongguan, with about 500,000 residents, is only 6 to 10 kilometers from the high-tech employment center of Shangdi, where hundreds of companies are located. Shangdi is the northern end of Zhongguancun district, which is often called "China's Silicon Valley".

A 2016 survey by researchers at North China Electric Power University found that residents of Huilongguan work primarily in Shangdi, followed by Zhongguancun as a whole. Furthermore, subway Line 13 connects the areas. So, you might think that commuting such a short distance would be easy. But, the survey concluded: "due to the many vehicles and intense population in many aspects traffic congestion caused people great distress. About 81.5 percent of residents believe that traffic conditions need to be improved".

Any commuter going from Huilongguan to Shangdi needs to cross the heavily traveled G6 expressway, which separates the two areas. Many will also have to cross the G7 expressway. At all times of day, especially during rush hours, traffic is backed up from intersection to intersection. The subway lines are so crowded that travelers often have to wait 20 minutes to enter the station. So, a 6-kilometer commute might take an hour.

Last month, commuters got some relief when a new 6.5-kilometer bikeway opened.

I had a chance to ride it on a Sunday morning. It's a paradise for bike riders. The bikeway is completely separated from car traffic. Motorcycles and walkers are not allowed. The bikeway goes over the crowded dangerous traffic always trying to get through the G6 bottleneck. It took me 18 minutes of safe, easy pedaling to go from Shangdi to Huilongguan.

Planners estimate that the bikeway will handle 16,000 trips per day. In addition to directly benefiting the cyclists, that means fewer people trying to squeeze into the subway, and fewer cars on the road.

I have great respect for the work ethic of the China's motorcycle delivery guys. But, it's a great relief to be able to ride a bike without having one of them zoom by almost hitting me, as often happens when bike riding or just walking on the sidewalk.

At the place where the bikeway crosses above the G6 expressway, it parallels a railway line. Biking in that area earlier, I've often seen pedestrians dangerously using the railway tracks as a way to cross the highway, so I was very happy to see that the bikeway project also built a new separated path for walkers across the G6.

I lived in the Washington DC area for 20 years and commuted by bike most of that time, so I still keep close tabs on bike paths and other biking facilities in the area.

The first thing that will strike any bike rider or pedestrian in Washington is how hard it is to safely cross the Beltway, the ring road expressway that circles the city. There are very few of the kind of elevated walkways that you see crossing the ring roads in Beijing. I can think of only two - one in Maryland and one in Virginia - for the whole Beltway. You can try to get across on regular streets, but then you have to deal with fast traffic exiting and entering the Beltway.

Even worse, Washington-area planners often use a bait and switch. They promise bike facilities, but then use some excuse not to do so after the highway has been built. For example, the Intercounty Connector in Maryland is a six-lane highway going east to west across the state. Initial plans included a parallel bike path, but then, after the highway was completed, planners facetiously claimed that the bikeway would damage the environment. Also, an expansion of the I-66 expressway was approved on the condition that a parallel bike path would be built as part of the project, but now planners are designing that path to be as inconvenient and unusable as possible.

A bike rider was killed in 2016 by a car that did not stop at a road-crossing of the Capital Crescent Trail, a heavily traveled bike path that goes about 15 kilometers from Georgetown to the affluent suburb of Bethesda. You would think that planners would do whatever possible to prevent another death. But, you would be wrong.

The Montgomery County (Maryland) Planning Board recently voted to increase the size of the road from two lanes to four, making it much more dangerous for bikers, many of whom are children, to cross the road. One board member was quoted as saying," Montgomery County is built for the car".

Essentially, the board decided that speeding up car traffic by a few seconds is worth some cyclists' deaths.

Unfortunately, the Washington DC area has better bike facilities than many other places in the US. Many have none at all. The new Beijing bikeway should be a model for my country and the world.