Can we cycle to work?

While Delhi tries to find a way out of the pollution mess, New Zealand is quietly showing all the congested cities a healthy way out.

A Christchurch company is offering hard cash to employees who bike to work everyday in a bid to energise staff and move the city away from a reliance on cars. Employees who cycle to and from work will receive $5 a day and if they keep it up for more than half a year that amount will double to $10 a day, paid out as a bonus at the end of year.

Now isn’t that a perfectly great, healthy and environmentally friendly way to encourage people to cycle? This is a great idea but for most cities in India, there is one big problem – there are no designated cycling tracks.

At a time when riding the car itself is unsafe, how can we bring about people cycling? Even if we want to bring about this change, we simply cannot as it puts people’s lives at risk. And building a cycling track? Forget it!

Guess, we will have to depend only on odd-even and bringing in congestion tax to ease pollution and traffic. We are indeed paying the price of mindless, unplanned growth and development and will continue to do so….