CESTA

Promotion of Bicycle and Tricycle Use in El Salvador

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PROGRAM JUSTIFICATION

The present program is oriented to promote bicycles and tricycles for daily transportation and to discourage the use of the private cars. The reasons to promote this program are numerous, some of them are the following:

First the high cost of the motorized transportation systen. The public and private modes have to recieve subsidies from the State in order to function, because the TOTAL operational cost is higher than what the users can pay for it. The public system may buy gasoline or spare parts at reduced prices or receive some direct economic support to provide a service which is not very good. Both modes, the public and the private are also subsidized by way of using a infrastructure provided by the State which includes bridges, roads, parking places and the traffic personel. Besides there are other costs originated by the transportation system such as pollution and accidents which are not assigned only to the users of the system.

A point to remember is that the so called "State subsidies" are resources from the Salvadorean population. This means that the cost of the transportation system because it is too high and can not be paid by the users, it has to be paid by the whole population. When the transportation system is subsidized it means that resources that are badly needed in other areas are used to hide the inefficiencies of the transportation system. A more appropriate policy would be to promote the use of low cost transportation modes such as bicycles and tricycles.

The use of bicycles and tricycles is also convenient from the standpoint of resource consumption. As it is widely explained in the chapter 2 of the reference book, the energy and materials required to manufacture a mediun size car could be used to manufacture 100 bicycles, and one car carries on the average 1.5 persons, while 100 bicycles carry at least 100 people, sometines even more. The same happens with the resources required to run the vehicles, a car can give 20 miles to a gallon of gasoline while a bicycle can give the same 20 miles to a glass of water.

Another important reason to promote the use of bicycles and tricycles is their social impact. The motorized vehicles, despite the fact that a lot of resources are devoted to them, will never be able to satisfy the needs of most of the people. Private cars for instance, are so expensive that their ownership is limited to a small fraction of the population, the public modes on the other hand, operate following a cost-benefit criteria which means that they will operate in the regions and in a way that is more attractive to the owners, which does not necessarily coincide with the needs of the people. This fact helps to underestand the social appropriateness of promoting a massive use of bicycles and tricycles in El Salvador, they can be made available to all social sectors of the society.

The ecological problems are seldom discussed in El Salvador, probably because there are other problems that keep the attention of the people, nevertheless the environmental situation is very deteriorated, and it is not difficult to prove that the motorized vehicles have a major responsibility for that, because their excesive proliferation has not only generated a considerable amount of pollution in the cities, but it has also caused the disappearance of large forest areas, and the situation keeps getting worse. Any environmental analysis clearly shows the need to revert this tendency of ecologic deterioration and this can not be achieved without a sensible reduction in the number of motorized vehicles. This is another reason to favor the massive use of bicycles and tricycles.

The heavy use of motorized traffic has also increased the political dependency of El Salvador. A simple decision of 2 countries to stop the supply of oil to El Salvador or the decission of a refinery not to process it, and El Salvador stops completely. The same happens with the vehicles, there is a 100% dependency from outside. With the use of bicycles and tricycles there is an automatic reduction on the dependency on fuels, then the technological dependency is also reduced as the bicycle industry starts to develop.

Some people could argue that the main advantaje of the motorized services is the high speed at which they can travel. The problem is that thanks to the large number of vehicles they are not even efficient at this. What is the purpose of having a vehicle that can travel at 100 miles per hour when the average commuting speed in San Salvador is less that 6 miles per hour?. When the door to door average speed is taken as the parameter, the bicycle is usually the fastest vehicle to travel distances up to 5 or 10 kms in the cities. In the rural areas the distance might be larger, depending on how the transportation system is organized.

Another important consideration are the space requirements. A person needs 3 square meters when riding a bicycle at 6 miles per hour. Traveling in a medium size car, this same person would requiere 6 times more space. The same happens with the parking requirements, a car requires 20 or 25 times more space than a bicycle. This means that a proliferation of the bicycle is even convenient for the the people who are going to continue using their cars because at least they will have more space to travel.

As shown in the chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the reference book, the bicycles and tricycles can also be used to transport goods and people, and generate thus a considerable number of jobs with small investments. This is of prime importance in El Salvador given the serious unemployment problems. The developnent of the bicycle industry is also beneficial because it increases the technological base of the country and the technical knowledge of the people.

The use of bicycles also contributes to the pacification of the society, something worth trying to achieve in El Salvador. A motorized vehicle, whether a car, a bus or a motorcycle makes the driver agressive, probably because the motorized vehicle gives the driver the power to go fast, but at the same time the traffic congestions or the pediestrans frustrate this possibility. To prove this fact it is enough to go to one of the busy streets in San Salvador and hear the drivers pushing the claxons or releasing their poetic feelings with colorful verbal expressions.

The opposite happens with the bicycle, the rider becomes peaceful probably because the fact that the rider has to use his own power and not that of a 50 or 100 hp engine to propel himself, makes him or her feel humble. Besides, a bicycle rider is not isolated as in a car and can interact easily with the nature and the people.

A proof of this pacification phenomenon caused by the bicycle can be seen in Bogota. A street in Bogota is like a street in San Salvador, full of cars, agressive drivers and noise. On sundays the situation is different because 80 kms of streets are closed to the cars and buses and only bicycles and pediestrans are allowed to ride. Then the city has a different face, half a million people go to the streets to walk or to ride a bicycle and this takes place in such a peaceful way that the police is not even present to organize the traffic. Sometimes a group of students can be seen when they stop the bicycles to let a group of cars cross the cycle way, even the thieves seem to stop their daily activities and also enjoy the cycle ways of Bogotà.