Practical Thinking
The Dark Side of the Highway
Cycling in a city is one of two things: a hobby, or a way to get somewhere. Some people take a bath as a luxury. Candles, a good book, the phone on silent, an hour of nobody knocking on the door. I'd argue it's a necessity. Cycling is the same.
Every city stretches its corners outwards, and at some point the bicycle gives up. It's too far, so you switch to the bus, a taxi or the train. Fine. That's what cities do. Nobody expects to pedal from Saadiyat to Al Ain in August. Not even me, and I race cars for fun, which tells you everything about my judgement.
But take an island. Take Saadiyat. It is the perfect size for a bicycle. School, the supermarket, the beach, the neighbours, a round of golf: all an easy ride away. On paper, it's a cyclist's dream. It's as flat as a freshly ironed kandura (كندورة), the breeze comes in off the sea, and for a few months a year the weather is so pleasant it feels like a clerical error.
Then someone put a highway through the middle of it, fine! Can we cross safely? NOPE!
It didn't just interrupt the cycle path. It killed it. Heck, it killed the walking path too. You ride along happily, breeze in your face, and then you meet it: a wall of fast traffic and no sensible way across.
It feels like reaching the edge of a free-roaming video game. The map looks endless, your character runs towards the horizon, and then he just keeps running, face first, into an invisible wall.
Here is how it plays out. You set off with the children for an ice cream on the other side. Helmets on, water bottles full, spirits high. At the highway you stop. You look left: lanes of traffic doing their best impression of a Formula One grid. You look right: more of the same. You look at the children. The children look at you. Then all of you turn round and cycle home, having enjoyed the ice cream only in theory.
Now, I'm an architect, so I know exactly how this happens. Somebody draws the road first, because roads are important and have lanes and numbers. Then somebody else draws the cycle path, in green, because green looks friendly. Nobody draws the bit where they meet. That bit is left, as we say in the trade, for later.
Later never comes.
So here is my rule: a cycle path is only as long as its worst crossing. You can lay ten kilometres of lovely red tarmac, plant palms down both sides and put a water fountain every 500 metres. If one road in the middle can't be crossed by a ten-year-old on her own, you haven't built ten kilometres. You've built two short ones and a very long moat.
The fix isn't rocket science. Give the crossing to people, not cars. A shaded bridge, or an underpass that doesn't smell like an abandoned car park. A signal that turns green for bikes before it turns green for the Patrols. Slow the traffic where families cross, the way a fareej (فريج) street slows itself down because there are always children in it. And carry the shade all the way over, because a crossing in August with no shade isn't a crossing. It's a dare.
Do that, and the island stops being a list of nice places with a highway in between. It becomes one place. School, beach, baqala (بقالة), neighbours, all on the same side, because there is no other side.
So I encourage everyone, sorry, the urban planners who drew this (do read my piece on Scale and Perspective), to walk and cycle. Just don't try to cross to the other side. The dark side.
Dear urban planners, come and cycle with us. Enjoy the dark side on our behalf.
Practically speaking,Omran