Cairo -
Egypt has revived the project of the participatory use of bicycles in the streets of Cairo that were exhausted by pollution and congestion, in conjunction with the country's preparations to host the Climate Summit (COP27) next November.
The project, called "Cairo Bikes" (Cairo Bikes), aims - according to official statements - to promote the use of bicycles in Cairo to help reduce traffic congestion and reduce environmental pollution in the capital, which is classified among the most polluted and crowded cities in the world.
And the local authorities in the Egyptian capital announced a few days ago that the project - which was first proposed in 2017 - will officially start operating in mid-July next, with international support and Swiss funding.
How does the project work?
The project is based on a bike-sharing system, where the citizen rents a bike from one station and leaves it at another station.
The implementation of the project will start in the downtown areas, Garden City and Zamalek, with 500 bicycles, in two phases: the first in mid-July and the second in mid-September.
The bicycles are distributed to 45 solar-powered stations in strategic places in these areas, integrated with metro stations and public transport lines.
Bikes are tracked via GPS.
The user can access the available bikes through an application on his smartphone that allows him to unlock and use the bike, at prices starting from one pound per hour (one dollar equals 18.7 pounds).
The project was implemented with the support of the United Nations Human Settlements Program and funding from the Swiss Drosos Foundation with a value of $1.4 million, technical support and supervision by the Institute for Transport and Development Policy.
The launch of the "Cairo Bike" project coincides with Egypt's preparations to host the Climate Summit (communication sites)
climatology summit
The official announcement did not mention the reason for the delay in the launch of the project during the past years, and its decline to the account of other projects for selling bicycles by the state.
However, official statements indicated that the launch of the project is linked to Egypt's preparations to host the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), which will be held in the Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh next November.
Citizens hope that the project will be widely circulated, and that it will not be a temporary cosmetic step that accompanies the conference and will be neglected later.
Are specific roads or paths identified for cyclists to save their lives from accidents?
What if all the bikes of a station were rented or more bikes arrived than it could handle?
I am afraid that the project will turn into a capital tuktuk?
Are you studying this topic well, or is it a snapshot of the climate summit?!🥸 pic.twitter.com/zp8TPplOpr
— Rewish Rawshana (@RRawshana) June 2, 2022
In 2019, the Egyptian authorities launched an initiative entitled “A bicycle for every citizen” to distribute bicycles to citizens and university students at reduced prices, and the Ministry of Youth and Sports said at the time that the first phase would include distributing 100,000 bicycles.
But after about 3 years, only 9,600 bicycles were distributed in 3 phases through the "Your Bike is Your Health" initiative.
The first phase witnessed the distribution of only 1,000 bicycles, although the number that applied for bicycles reached 53,000, according to the Ministry of Youth and Sports, while requests increased in the following phases.
modest number
Experts believe that the 500 bikes with which the Cairo Bike project will start is a limited number to make a traffic or environmental difference in a large city such as Cairo, but the number may be acceptable experimentally, provided that it is the beginning of a wide series of subsequent stages.
The number appears small if it is compared to other countries that adopt bicycle-share transportation projects, led by China, where the number of bicycle-sharing was estimated in 2017 at 30 million, used by about 300 million Chinese.
An imaginary drawing of the supposed bike paths in the streets of downtown Cairo (Nada Foundation for Safe Egyptian Roads)
Security and Infrastructure
With the exception of talking about the stations, the announcement of the project ignored any details related to the infrastructure and safety factors necessary for the success of the project, foremost of which is the designation of safe paths for cycling, the installation of traffic lights and marking for cyclists, or the distribution of safety hats (helmets).
Egyptian streets pose a great challenge to cyclists because they are not prepared for the presence of bicycles and are primarily designed for car service.
In view of the experiences of many countries in this field, we find an increasing interest in providing special lanes for bicycles;
In Paris, authorities announced last year that they would add 180 kilometers of cycling lanes, making the city fully bike-friendly by 2026.
In 2015, Turkey announced the provision of broad incentives to local service institutions that establish bicycle lanes, whereby the institution is granted one bicycle for every meter of lanes it creates.
The exhausted lung of Cairo
The importance of expanding these projects that reduce the use of motorized transportation in the Egyptian capital, given that Cairo is one of the world's most polluted and crowded cities.
In 2018, Cairo ranked first as the most polluted city in the world, according to the Eco Experts report, which measures air, light and noise pollution in cities around the world.
The report, whose results were published by Forbes magazine at the time, caused a sensation, and drew great criticism from the Egyptian authorities, who said that the report was tainted by "a number of flaws in methodology and results."
In its response to the report, the Ministry of Environment stated that most concentrations of pollutants do not exceed the legal percentage.
However, the ministry ignored the point out that the legal ratios in Egypt are equivalent to several times the permissible standards globally, reaching 14 times for fine particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrograms, and 6.6 times for suspended particles less than 10 micrograms.
But in the following years, Cairo achieved some improvement in terms of decreasing pollution, and it ranked 34th in the latest Eco Experts report for 2021.
The partial closure that began in 2020 during the outbreak of the Corona virus, which led to an improvement in air quality in Greater Cairo by 36%, after two months of closure, according to the statements of the Egyptian Ministry of Environment at the time, contributed greatly to this.
The repeated rise in fuel prices played a role in pushing many Egyptians to abandon the use of private cars as much as possible, in addition to the expansion of mass transit operations, the deployment of electric buses, and the increase in the third line stations of the Cairo Metro.
Traffic congestion in Greater Cairo costs the economy $8 billion each year, according to estimates by the World Bank (Associated Press)
congestion and pollution
Cairo Traffic Department data indicate that more than 3 million cars, trucks and buses crowd the streets of Cairo every day.
Cairo ranked 41st globally and first in Africa in the list of the most crowded cities in 2021, according to the Tomtom Traffic Index.
Car exhaust, which increases with traffic congestion, is one of the biggest air pollutants in Egypt in general and Cairo in particular.
The situation is exacerbated by the climatic and topographical nature of Cairo with its tall buildings and narrow streets that trap pollutants in the thick foggy air over the capital, in light of the scarcity of rain and the dry climate.
Exorbitant costs
Traffic congestion and pollution have a heavy bill that Egyptians pay for their age, health and money.
About two million Egyptians annually resort to medical treatment in chest and respiratory clinics due to diseases related to air pollution, which include pneumonia, stroke, heart disease and lung cancer, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health.
A 2019 World Bank study on the cost of environmental degradation in Egypt estimated that the average annual premature death due to exposure to fine particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrograms in Greater Cairo alone amounts to 12,600 cases, in addition to about 3 billion work days lost due to diseases resulting from diseases air pollution.
While the cost of air pollution in Greater Cairo amounted to 47 billion pounds, equivalent to 1.35% of GDP for the year 2016-2017, these estimates include health care costs, employee income losses, and reduced productivity as a result of chronic diseases.
Meanwhile, traffic congestion in Greater Cairo is costing the economy up to $8 billion each year (about 3.6% of Egypt's GDP in 2014), according to a May 2014 World Bank study on traffic congestion in Cairo.