Bike-walking

Commuter biking is a work in progress in Madrid.

My bike, by the Biblioteca Nacional.  It was harder to get there than you would think.

I believe that "la bici es transporte" as the t-shirts say.  But so far I must admit that the handy unlimited monthly bono de transportes seems more practical than my new-old bike, even though the metro is not right at my doorstep (which was one of the things that inspired the bike purchase - that and the "Madrid Celeste" ad campaign I wrote about earlier - I am way to sensitive to propaganda).

I'm used to comparing cycling in New York with cycling in the Netherlands and Flanders, the great bicycle paradises of the world, which make New York seem very shabby and difficult in comparison.  But now I realize how much easier cycling in New York has become over the last twenty years.  Aside from the fact that Madrid is cursed with both steep hills and a climate where the temperature regularly climbs to 30 C (85 F) for four months a year, the "bike lanes" here are rather more theoretical than in New York.  And when I finally arrived at the International Institute (sweaty and terrified) on Friday by bike, I looked around the Calle Miguel Angel and the surrounding side streets for bicycle racks with vain bemusement, and finally remembered, "oh, right, you can lock your bike to the pole of a parking sign."  Locking bikes to street signs was standard when I started riding to work in NY, ten years ago, but first there was a bike rack in front of my school, and then they started popping up along the avenues, and then the side-streets....and now I wonder where Madrid keeps its aparcamiento para bicis, as my little seven year old friend here puts it.  (He has been properly raised to ride a bici and was accustomed to being taken to pre-school on the back of his mother's, so hopefully in another generation Madrid will be the bike-friendly city it aspires to be.)


I realize that the bike lane concept here is actually based on the latest research, and is probably better in some practical ways than New York's, in that it is designed to prevent dooring accidents, and to protect cyclists from buses and taxis, the two vehicles that most frequently pull in and out (sometimes unpredictably).  But having the right lane of a three land road be a dedicated bus and taxi only lane, and then having the middle lane of traffic have a giant bicycle painted on it, along with a warning of a 30 kmh speed limit, means that on busy routes the cyclist is trapped between a nearly non-stop stream of cars passing not only on the left (normal), but also on the right and hovering behind.  In fact, on the right hand, enormous buses go whooshing by, and while rationally I know that they have no need to pull out from their lane due to the improved traffic design, the sickening knowledge that they have a long blind spot and that they're going along full speed while I'm trapped by other cars makes it an unpleasant experience.  It also means that a cyclist who reaches the grateful end of her trajectory and wants to pull onto the sidewalk had better either pray that the block she wants to end on coincides with a red light, or be ready and willing to pull across a lane of buses and taxis that don't expect any competition in their lane.  And gently slowing down to allow the light to change to red isn't an option because of the cars directly behind you.  (This last problem is obviated in those places like along the Calle Santa Engracia, where the lane actually is a narrow but dedicated bike lane, so although you still have taxis and buses on the right, at least there isn't a constant and paralyzing fear of being hit from behind, so you can slow down enough to hit a red light and cross over to the sidewalk.  I'll take a narrow painted strip banned to cars over an entire wide lane I'm supposed to ride in the middle of and share with traffic any day.)


I must admit that some of the sub-ideal nature of this type of lane has to do with my skills (or lack thereof) as a cyclist.  To put it very crudely: I ride slowly.  Especially uphill.  For cyclists who are realistically able to maintain the 30 kmh speed limit or something close to it, there is no particular problem about sharing a lane with drivers who aren't supposed to be speeding anyway, and are generally (I must say) quite courteous.  I can hit 30 kmh going downhill, but there's no way that I can do it going uphill (at least not in my current physical condition, and on the pleasant 3 speed Dutch-style city cruiser that I'm currently riding), and the attempt to try just results in getting so light-headed that I'm afraid I'm going to pass out.  My experience of getting to and from the city center to the Rio Manzanares involves my pulse pounding in my temples from exertion going uphill, and my pulse pounding in my mouth from sheer terror going downhill.  The Madrid definition of a "normal" grade is a bit steep by my standards.  I will never complain about Morningside Drive to Columbia again.  And I will never ever EVER take the cobblestoned alleged bike route around the side of the Catedral de la Almudena down to the Paseo de Segovia again either.  (I have just enough of a theoretical and practical grasp of centrifugal acceleration thanks to my long ago lessons in physics and driving stick shift - both things where I was a very indifferent student - to gently accelerate around the steep switchback curves to maintain balance.  The problem is that when there's a car nosing its way down the slope behind you every time you speed up it stays with you and you think "Oh, no, it thinks I'm speeding up, I won't be able to brake on the straightaway now because it's right behind me, but if I don't brake and I speed up again on the next switchback I'll be going way too fast for control, oh, no, oh, no....")


In any case, while I cling to the hope that I simply haven't found a good route into the city center yet, the sad fact is that I don't do well on hills.  I am aware that the only way to solve this particular problem is to keep riding, and hope that eventually the muscle builds up, but in the meantime my trips to the city center have been not so much bike rides as bike walks, involving me coasting down the long hill to the river, pedaling peacefully along the banks of the river, and then panting for a block or so up from Madrid Rio and then dismounting and walking for a while.  (Por la casa del campo, y el Manzanares, quieren pasar los moros, mamita mía no pasa nadie takes on new meaning.  Getting up that slope is fricking difficult.  Whichever Sartre character said that Madrid was a city on a flat plain was a moron, though I take the point about Paris folding relatively quickly.)

The Madrid ayuntamiento's response to the problem of non-racing trained cyclists keeping up with traffic on the uphills seems to be to have equipped the BiciMad bike share program bikes with electric motors, so essentially people don't have to pedal.  Aside from the fact that this seems like cheating, it also strikes me as a problem since it's essentially putting a bunch of completely inexperienced and unlicensed people on Vespas.  (So, like Rome in the good old days, or Hanoi in the present.  What could possibly go wrong?  Oh wait, lots.)

In spite of everything, there are a fair number of brave and competent cyclists on the streets, so I don't feel too alone, and am glad to add to their number since together we make up the critical mass for safety.  I do notice that a lot of the bikes here are either serious racing bikes (and after all, the Spanish do have a great tradition of racers), or (more surprisingly) the little folding bikes that I think are so cool.  There are a number of low-cost budget folding bikes available here besides the cool Bromptons, and my online researches tell me that they are often designed as "bicis de la última milla" or "last mile bikes" that people use in conjunction with public transit, including buses.  Given that I know that even bike pilgrims to Santiago in the summers have been known to take the little FEVE railroad across parts of the Asturias and Galicia where the highways are particularly steep, I suspect that the non-racing cyclist in Spain has a tradition of doing something similar to my bike-walking: using public transit on the uphills, and then coasting the last few flat or downhill miles by bike.  I suppose this is practical too, and it's cool that you can get a cheap folding bike for under 300 euros.

But I have found another route from the Manzanares to Atocha by walking yesterday and carefully checking road directions, which avoids all the major wide bus routes up from the river.  (Google bike maps says it is "in beta version" which is another way of saying they lie, and the ayuntamiento's "safe streets" map is not as helpful as you would think, so walking the routes is really the only way.)  I am going to try it out when I have a chance.  My route down to the river from my apartment goes through the Parque San Isidro, and then down past the nice big Tanatorio San Isidro, right by the cemetery.  The Tanatorio is an enormous building with lots of tinted glass windows and a lobby which is always filled with tasteful white flowers, and has a roundabout with taxi parking for cars to drop off the usually fairly nicely dressed people who gather there for funerals.  It looks rather like a Marriott or similar, an impression which is increased by generally hearing a buzz of conversation from what sounds like the terraza of a restaurant inside its walls.  It's very hard to tell the difference between people gathered for a wedding and for a funeral at first glance.  I tend to think that there are probably worse places to be buried or cremated than what looks like a fairly nice business hotel with majestic views of Madrid across the valley, by a nice park with parrots.  And they do have a nice short but well paved path down to the river which is excellent for bikes because it has little traffic.  So the Carabanchel (or south) side of the river is taken care of.

I refuse to allow ten measly kilometers to defeat me.  I will find a route to the Biblioteca Nacional, and the Instituto and so on.


Pasaremos.  En bici.