Every morning, I take my bike from the storage room in our apartment building and enter the mad frenzy known as “biking to work.” Within seconds, I get sucked right into the heart of an aggressive mass psychosis where traffic rules are neglected, hostile overtakings are standard procedure and bikes run into one another. When the red light turns green, the competition of who will be the first to cross the intersection is – literally – a life-or-death-struggle. I don’t even have a time when I need to be a certain place, but I’m pedalling away as if the entire population of Stockholm was about to get eradicated by zombies. And I wonder – how did we come to this? Thanks to numerous bike lanes, beautiful scenery and manageable distances wherever you want to go, biking is supposed to be a pleasant way to enjoy this city. But this once picturesque pastime has now totally imploded in itself. Biking has been destroyed – and the culprits are the cyclists themselves.
Three main categories can be singled out in the Stockholm biking landscape. We’re all too familiar with the Tour de France-clad self-proclaimed bike athlete who thinks he’s just about to conquer a particularly challenging passage through the Pyrénées, while in fact he’s really just pointlessly risking the lives of all other people in his vicinity. My question is, does Mr Tour de France ever wash his clothes? And does he wear any underwear under those bike pants? The smell when he (occasionally) stops at a red light would suggest not – it reeks of sweat and crotch excretions.
Even worse, though, is the bike-rage mum. She is disguised as a normal person, often in her 30’s or 40’s, with a child-seat attached to her luggage carrier – fortunately empty. Wearing a (not very flattering) helmet, she looks like a responsible and balanced individual. But no. The bike lane is her chosen platform for all the pent-up, inhibited aggression she harbours inside as an over-worked, over-ambitious, over-efficient mum. This is the woman who will do anything to overtake you in the narrow passage between a bus and double-parked car, who stands staring at the red light like an eager warrior and who never hesitates to yell at you for whatever reason – all while having a seemingly very important conversation on her hands-free mobile device.
The third category, and perhaps the most dangerous one thanks to its sheer size, consists of people like you and me. Perfectly sane human beings who get drawn into the frenzy because of flock instinct: a feeling that we have to adjust to the craziness to survive ourselves. And while Mr Tour de France and Mrs Bike-Rage Mum are lost causes, we are the ones who need to take responsibility
The efforts to make Stockholm a more bike-friendly city started in the 90’s when politician Stella Fare – representing the Stockholm party – enforced a large-scale expansion of the bike-lane network. In the last 20 years, the number of cyclists has steadily increased, with a whopping 80 per cent increase over the last ten years, and the current plan is to increase it even more. Over the next 15 years a further expansion of the bike-lane network will take place – 72 lanes, or 825 kilometres, of well-defined tracks, along with improved signage, better parking facilities and upgraded maintenance. All of which is great news, of course.
But the single most important thing for the future of biking in this city is that we – normal people who get crazy on bikes – put our foot down and question what the hell we are doing. Don’t get drawn into the madness. Stop your bike and take a deep breath. Because while some things in life might be worth dying for, finding yourself under a truck because Mr Tour de France pushed your buttons is not one of them.
