Dubai : It's 4pm and the Spinneys parking lot at Springs is alive with the lively chatter of schoolchildren. Still in uniform, the children - mostly European - are preparing to head home having just finished a snack at McDonalds.
Drawing up alongside is a senior Dutch executive who has an errand to run at the supermarket even as a Sri Lankan housemaid exits the place.
Nothing unusual about that, except they are all on cycles - a rare sight for a city that has 54 cars for every 100 residents! Welcome to New Dubai, where many prefer to ditch their cars for the environment-friendly bicycle in what could well be an emerging shift towards a green community.
Of late, the humble mode of transportation has become an integral part for residents in areas such as The Lakes, The Springs and The Meadows.
Children ride bicycles to go to school, parents pedal on it to meet friends and gardeners and other workers use it to go about their daily grind.
Clean fun
Katalin Kundrak, a Hungarian economist and resident of Meadows 5, said apart from fun rides and grocery shopping, she uses the cycle to escort her two boys to their football class in the evenings. While the younger boy has to be strapped on to a seat on her cycle, the elder one rides his own bicycle, she said.
"We get to cycle more here than we did back home," said Noor Ali, a Pakistani gardener who has been doing the rounds of villas in The Springs and Meadows ever since the gated communities came up.
A number of children going to schools like Dubai International Academy (DIA) or Emirates International School in the area use their bikes to commute.
But the green push is not without its share of problems.
The ongoing road construction work in The Springs has cut off access to many areas.
Cindy Van de Kreke, a resident of Meadows 8, who is now wary of sending her two children on their bicycles to DIA, said, "We have to cycle to Meadows 6 behind the British School and cross the dam to reach DIA. The construction has doubled the distance from our villa to the school."
"I want to be able to cycle to school again," said her daughter, Emma, 10.
Unlike The Lakes, these areas do not have cycling tracks. "We have to cycle either on the pavements or on the roads and that is dangerous," said Angelique Bertens, a resident of Springs 12.
"The pavement near Spinney's has just vanished because of the digging, piping and drainage works that have been going on for months. I don't feel safe to allow my two girls to cycle on their own any more," said Jeroen Tollenaar, a Dutch resident of Meadows 5.
Not conducive
As things stand, most of Dubai, especially the older parts, are not conducive to cycling though the Roads Transport Authority is reportedly planning 1,300km of cycling tracks throughout the city (see box).
At the Wolfi Bike Shop on Shaikh Zayed Road, Houman Sylvie, a Swiss resident of the Marina, who was visiting to buy a baby seat, said The Walk is a good place for residents to cycle, though the traffic on the roads can get chaotic. Beatriz Leyva from South America, who recently moved house from the Arabian Ranches to Victory Heights, said she could not wait to get her cycle back from servicing.
Dr Khalid Amiri, an Emirati resident of Jumeirah who was also visiting to collect his cycle from servicing, said he uses the cycle four times a week as a form of recreation. "But because of the heavy traffic in our area, we have to drive to some place and then cycle," he lamented.
Cycles being carried on carriages at the back of four-wheel drives are not an uncommon sight in New Dubai. Christopher Justens, a Belgian resident of Springs 12 who carries his cycle on his four-wheel drive, said he and a bunch of friends often drive to a point from where they take off on their cycles as a form of exercise.
Lack of cycling tracks apart, there are other concerns too. Tollenaar said the cost of spare parts for cycles can get prohibitive. "I have to pay Dh320 for a fancy pump that I may not need, when I can do with a simple pump that would cost me around Dh65 back in The Netherlands," he said.
Van De Kreke agrees. "The spare parts are hard to get and cycles too are very expensive in Dubai," she said.
Wolfgang Hohmann, General Manager of the Wolfi Bike Shop, which sells cycles ranging from Dh2,000 to Dh60,000, said the cost of shipping cycles, spare parts for pumps and other accessories from Germany and other countries from the West is expensive. He said one must guard against buying poor quality products as one cannot compromise on durability and safety.
A Roadster whose cycling expeditions are much talked about, Hohmann said 50 per cent of the sales that Wolfi's makes are for families seeking cycles to use in their communities.
A resident of The Lakes with an 11-year-old cycling enthusiast for a daughter, he said, "At the end of the day, a community in which children can cycle around freely is a safe community."
