Chandigarh: World Bicycle Day is a reminder of a simple truth: the cycle remains one of the most efficient, affordable and quietly transformative machines ever invented.First conceived in 1817 by the German Baron Karl von Drais and refined over the next two centuries, the bicycle has reshaped personal mobility more profoundly than almost any other mode of transport. As an avid cyclist myself, I find every ride a daily reminder that the bicycle is far more than a machine; it is a symbol of freedom, self-reliance and human endurance – and, perhaps more than ever, a practical mobility solution hiding in plain sight.Yet, across India, its salience is fast shrinking.Once a prized and everyday companion for many of us over 65 in our growing-up years, the bicycle has largely disappeared from urban life; not because its fundamental utility has diminished – it has not – but because cities and towns have refashioned themselves around the needs of motor vehicles, making everyday cycling more difficult, less practical and often unsafe in the 21st century.The underlying irony, however, is that the bicycle remains ideally suited to most short urban journeys – school runs, market visits, office commutes, among others – all of which fall well within cycling distance in India’s traffic-clogged towns and cities. Yet despite this, it is now rarely the transport of choice.According to Wednesday’s Economic Times newspaper, a 2021 World Bank report – ‘Investing for Momentum in Active Mobility’ – had estimated that around 35% of all urban trips in India averaged under three kilometres, about 60% under five kilometres and nearly 80% under ten kilometres – all distances within easy cycling range. The report effectively underlined that a large share of everyday urban travel across the country did not, in principle, necessitate motorised transport.It went on to state that these short distances could not only be traversed swiftly and with ease on a bicycle but also provide millions of sedentary Indians with an opportunity to meet the World Health Organisation’s recommended 150-300 minutes of weekly physical activity. This, in turn, the report recommended could help reduce the perils of obesity and related metabolic disorders that were rapidly becoming endemic across the country, as overall levels of physical activity continue to sharply decline.The Economic Times further reported that India ranks fifth globally for traffic congestion, with conditions in the country’s four largest metropolitan centres – New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai – imposing an estimated annual economic cost of over Rs 1.83 lakh crore through lost productivity, fuel wastage and travel delays.The paper also cited a study by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute), which estimated that shifting just half of all short-distance motorised journeys to bicycles could generate annual savings equivalent to 1.6% of GDP. According to TERI, these gains would accrue through lower fuel consumption, reduced healthcare expenditure, decreased emissions and shorter travel times.The stark reality, however, is that cycling in urban India has not merely declined – it has been pushed to the margins of near-extinction.Many city planners view the bicycle as a casualty of infrastructure failure – the inability to create safe conditions for routine cycling, as cities and towns continue to prioritise motor vehicle movement over all other forms of mobility. Even in parts of south Delhi, cycling lanes introduced with much fanfare between the late 1990s and early 2000s on short stretches were routinely encroached upon by other traffic and eventually disappeared altogether.For many cyclists, however, riding on Indian roads is often likened to playing Russian roulette.Russian roulette. PTI/Karma Bhutia.Official statistics recorded 4,560 cyclist fatalities in 2023, but many cycling professionals and enthusiasts believe the true figure is considerably higher, pointing to a persistent undercounting problem. They argue that accidents involving cyclists – particularly on highways and smaller urban roads – frequently go unreported or are not formally recorded by local authorities, reinforcing the perception that such incidents remain administratively marginal.Only in rare, high-profile cases – such as the death of 68-year-old US information technology pioneer and avid cyclist Avtar Singh Saini, who was struck from behind and killed by a speeding taxi while cycling in Navi Mumbai in February 2024 – does this vulnerability briefly enter public consciousness.Even in the early mornings, when roads are relatively free of traffic, cyclists are rarely free of danger. Motorists frequently drive on the wrong side of the road and, taking advantage of deserted streets and the absence of enforcement, often speed uncontrollably, ignoring traffic signals. Consequently, cyclists are routinely forced to dodge errant vehicles, relying on quick reflexes and constant vigilance to avoid collisions, as even a glancing impact can prove fatal.Meanwhile, few urban realities are more perplexing than Chandigarh’s relationship with the bicycle, whose everyday employment has steadily declined despite having undoubtedly the best cycling infrastructure in the country. Conceived as a modernist experiment in newly independent India, the self-proclaimed City Beautiful was designed by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier 75 years ago, with the bicycle’s two wheels in mind, rather than the car’s four.Over decades thereafter, nearly 300 kilometres of dedicated cycling tracks and corridors have emerged across the Chandigarh-Mohali-Panchkula tri-city region, criss-crossing residential, commercial, farming and institutional areas, providing a continuity of biking movement non-existent anywhere else in India.Many of these tree-lined, well-illuminated and smoothly surfaced tracks, rarely encroached upon by traffic, are regularly re-tarred and, in some cases, even better maintained than adjoining motorised roads. Also, this network continues to expand, connecting neighbourhoods, local markets, schools, offices, parks and community facilities.Alongside the Smart City Mission, the SmartBike Public Bicycle Sharing system was launched in Chandigarh in December 2020, initially with 250 bicycles and 25 docking stations before expanding in successive phases to around 3,750 bicycles across 465 docking stations throughout the city. Long-term plans envisaged as many as 5,000 bicycles and over 600 docking points, making it one of the largest and densest public bicycle-sharing networks in India.By early 2023, the system had recorded more than 200,000 registered users and over 830,000 rides, but its early promise has since proved difficult to sustain, and over the past two to three years, usage has become increasingly uneven, and the scheme has struggled to function as a truly citywide mobility network.Recent reports indicate declining ridership and growing operational difficulties, despite continued investment by the local administration in infrastructure and across the city, large numbers of rusting bicycles are lying unused in docking stations, underscoring the system’s underutilisation.This stagnation of the public bicycle-sharing system mirrors a broader shift in Chandigarh’s urban mobility patterns. Bicycle trips to local markets, schools, offices, parks and community facilities – journeys that comfortably fall within cycling distance – are increasingly being undertaken by scooters, motorcycles or cars. The city’s road geometry, dedicated cycling tracks and extensive greenery, especially the canopy of trees overhead that many foreign cities would envy, are also increasingly underused and less patronised.As a result, what was once an ordinary mode of mobility for lakhs of residents after the city’s founding in 1951 and maturation has, over time, been quietly displaced and reclassified largely as a recreational or fitness activity, confined to a relatively small community of enthusiasts. In structural terms, therefore, Chandigarh remains India’s most cycle-friendly city, but in practice, its status as such is increasingly at odds with lived reality.Chandigarh has many tree-lined cycling tracks like this one but the activity has been quietly displaced and reclassified largely as a recreational or fitness one. Photo: Google Street View.The consequences of this shift extend beyond the city’s cycling culture. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2023-24), Chandigarh recorded the highest proportion of overweight and obese men in the country at 48.5%, or nearly one in two males, out of an estimated male population of about 677,000. This translates to roughly 330,000 men falling into the overweight or obese category, underscoring how the retreat of everyday physical activity is not merely a transport story but a public health one.Even its female residents are not far behind; at 41.9%, the proportion of women classified as overweight or obese has edged down slightly from 44% in the previous NFHS, placing them seventh nationally, though still significantly above the national average. Among women, this translates to approximately 244,000 individuals out of an estimated female population of about 582,000.Taken together, these figures point to a substantial and widening urban health burden linked closely to changing mobility and lifestyle patterns. They also reflect not just altered transport choices, but a broader reconfiguration of everyday physical activity in the city.Perhaps, then, on World Bicycle Day, it is fitting to conclude with a light-hearted reminder of the bicycle’s enduring utility with a little-known and amusing story from the 1970s. It involved Leonid Brezhnev, the former Soviet Union’s political strongman, who unexpectedly highlighted the humble bicycle’s ability to prove both tactically and strategically useful in the most unlikely – and perilous – of circumstances.A keen bear hunter, Brezhnev, on one of his visits to Hungary, then a Soviet satellite, expressed a desire to shoot one such animal in the thickly forested Balaton region in the west of the country. The request from the powerful general secretary panicked the Hungarians, as over the years, brown bears had become nearly extinct in their forests.But eager to please their Soviet master, they consented, and in a bizarrely complicated plan pressed a circus bear into the plot. The aim was to let the trained animal loose in the jungle for Brezhnev, poised on a machan with his telescopic hunting rifle to shoot, adding another grizzly’s pelt to his already bloated collection.But as they say, the best laid plans of men and mice often go awry. And this one most definitely did, but in a delightful way.Happy to be free, the performing circus bear was merrily foraging through the forest when it chanced upon an unsuspecting cyclist, who was not part of the elaborate official Hungarian act. Instinctively, years of circus training and the bear’s muscle memory kicked in, and, conditioned for entertainment, he responded exactly as he had been trained: to ride a bicycle for the amusement of patrons, rather than behave as nature intended in the jungle.Immediately, the bear promptly slapped the rider off his saddle, commandeered the bicycle and began pedalling steadily down the forest path, just as its keepers had trained it to do in the circus. Within minutes, it sailed past the astonished Soviet strongman, who not only lost his composure at the sight of a bicycle-riding bear but also his aim and did not even fire his weapon.The bear, for his part, wholly unaware of the impending threat, insouciantly cycled deeper into the forest, only to be netted later by its circus keepers and a thoroughly embarrassed Hungarian establishment. In an ironically strange and unexpected turn, the bicycle had saved it from being killed.Decades later, it is perhaps the bicycle itself that needs rescuing – from the neglect, rejection and tyranny of urban motorised transport.