In Chiang Mai, Social Attitudes Crush Bicycling Prospects
Note: this article is part of this week’s EcoWorldly cycling series: Cycling and its importance in countries around the world.
In Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city, you bicycle at your risk in spite of the clear advantages to the environment and physical health.
Next to the pedestrian, the bicycle is regarded as the lowest in the mode of transportation chain.
Chiang Mai’s roads team with vehicles of all sorts and ubiquitous motorcycles that screech, hoot and zig-zag through the traffic.
If anything, the undefined movement of the motorcycles poses the biggest threat to bicyclists. They are forced to stay on the edge of the road where they can potentially ram into the curb. The absence of bicycle tracks on many roads further worsens the situation.
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Apart from this practical life and death consideration about bicycling, this mode of transport in Chiang Mai, like in many developing country cities, is regarded with disdain because it supposedly reveals low economic status.
Many people are reluctant to turn to bicycles because of the social attitudes that demean human powered modes of transportation, including walking.
But there is an additional problem that it is intolerable to bicycle under the hot and sometimes humid weather conditions that prevail in Chiang Mai city. A bicycle ride of anything more than two kilometers can leave the rider practically drenched in sweat.
That prospect is highly undesirable especially for professionals. A way to resolve this issue, at least, for professionals would be for workplaces to provide shower places for their workers who opt to cycle.
In addition, the overall design of the bicycle will have to be improved to make bicycling easier, less demanding on physical energy, and protected from the elements of the earth.
As it is, bicycling in Chiang Mai is largely a preserve for tourists, a hangout or weekend pastime.
Bicycling, compared to other forms of transportation can absolutely play a major role in cutting the emissions from vehicular traffic.
In order for cycling to become an everyday reality in this city, the society will have to undergo major paradigm shifts at the attitudinal, city planning and policy making levels. To make bicycling safe and easy, city planners have a key role to play in designing bicycle tracks and parking spaces.
Educating the public about the benefits of bicycling, particularly the physical benefits, is also essential. But, as the old adage says, it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks.
What that means is that efforts must be targeted at young people to ensure a greater return on investment in awareness raising of the advantages of bicycling.
At government level, policy makers must provide incentives for people that choose to bicycle. In the absence of perceived incentives, it will be difficult to get a critical mass of people taking up this form of human powered transportation.
Whatever the case, bicycling can certainly improve physical health, reduce energy consumption and the associated degradation of the environment, and has a part to play in resolving one of the major problems facing humanity today: climate change.
Other Articles in Ecoworldly’s Bicycling Series
- Forget Sky-high Gas Prices, Biking Beats Them All! by Sam Aola Ooko
- UK: Bike Week 2008 by Pem Charnley
- Bicycle powered water pumps and filtration systems by Nayelli Gonzalez
- Italy’s Two-Wheeled Cities Speed Up Your Life Quality by Eva Pratesi
- In Chiang Mai, Social Attitudes Crush Bicycling Prospects by Masimba Biriwasha
- Google’s Sexy Bicycle Giveaways and Africa’s Versatile Bike Trucks by Sam Aola Ooko
- South Korean Bicycle Ninjas Do Battle Against Asthma by Gavin Hudson
- Of Course Cycling in Australia is Healthy, But What To Do With the Cars? by Ross Kendall
- Cheer up! Bicycling in Italy is a Daily Adventure by Eva Pratesi
- If You Want a Blissful Sex Life, Don’t Ride a Bike! by Sam Aola Ooko
- Bicycling in Peru: An Art of Adaptation by Levi Novey
Image credit: bcballard at Flickr
I was very interested to read this post as I came to Chiang Mai as a keen mountain biker 2 years ago and more or less gave up riding here completely.
The main reason was exactly as mentioned in the article, you are the bottom of the food-chain on the Chiang Mai roads and on several occasions it nearly resulted it being run off the road.
I am an experienced cyclist and used to commute 20km across London every day to work in rush hour. Chiang Mai is a different matter completely.
The Songthaew (red bench taxi) drivers are the worst, they view cyclists with such disdain that they almost don’t bother to see them - frequently pulling in and forcing you off the road.
It’s such a shame that with the pollution problems that hit this beautiful city every year, they don’ do something to encourage cycling - like making Thai drivers actually take a proper test for a start.
In my opinion I think people will start to use bicycle more and more because of gas price increased.
By the way, worth to read it. Thank you.
It can be done! I lived in Chiang Mai for a year and a half (I just left in April), and bicycling was my main form of transportation.If I were still there, it would continue to be my transportation.
Yes, things could be done to make it safer. Yes, at times it was frightening. Yes, sometimes I had to go to work drenched and/or sweaty. But these are problems motorbikes face too.
Don’t give up on it. The more people (other than tourists) that are cycling, the more visible the need for change will be.
Bicycling can be a death trap, and I can assure you that Im so afraid to ride the streets of Chiang Mai.
[...] In Chiang Mai, Social Attitudes Crush Bicycling Prospects by Masimba Biriwasha [...]
[...] 5. Bicycling may encourage the breakdown of economic divides. [...]
I came across this article doing research on the subject of bad societal and social type attitudes and this article has really enlighted me a little bit on what goes on in this world. I don’t want to put my finger on Chiang Mai as having to deal with negative social attitudes is just as bad in the United States if not worse and you have to deal with them in one form or another anywhere you go.
I completely agree with your article, I often tell the member of my family (they are Thai) they should just walk to the market (around 300 meters from home), but they say they would feel ashamed if they walk to the market or use a bicycle as it would make them look poor.
It would be very difficult to change people’s minds, at least for adults.
[...] In Chiang Mai, Social Attitudes Crush Bicycling Prospects by Masimba Biriwasha [...]
I could not disagree more with this article. I accept that Thai’s have a hieratical structure to just about everything and that having a car is regarded as high status. However I have been riding around Chiang Mai on a mountain bike for over two years and feel far safer here than anywhere in the UK.
I find that generally at junctions where no one has right of way I get even lorries giving way to me. If you assert yourself and providing you’re visible then I find motorists seem courteous towards cyclists. The only exception, which is a universal phenomenon, is women drivers who have no awareness of what’s going on around them and will open doors on you or pull out without looking. But that is going to happen anywhere!