Amira El-Naqeeb discusses one all-too-obvious solution to Cairo's endemic problem A small street lined with trees, infused with the colour and perfume of flowers: I am fortunate enough to live in the perfect setting for a morning bike ride. And there was a time when I wouldn't have thought twice about taking my bicycle out on a fine day like this, even before sunset. I cycled very frequently to run errands or simply relax. Sadly, since the Giza governorate started "fixing" the subterranean piping on the street last year -- a task apparently never to be finished -- there have been too many bumps and cracks to walk, let alone cycle, safely. This merely compounded an already hazardous situation: for years now the street has served as an easy shortcut for those who, arriving at this end of the Alexandria desert highway, are eager to avoid congestion on Rimaya Square, jeopardising the lives of cyclists at every turn. The story is typical: few in Egypt seem to register the enormous benefits of cycling, and only those whose livelihood depends on it will continue to cycle under impossible conditions. To fetch "orders", for example, Gomaa Ramadan, door keeper-cum-building caretaker, needs his bicycle: the only mode of transport available to him. "I ride it everywhere," he says, "but I know I could get run over any minute." Likewise Ibrahim Mahmoud, 15, a clothes-ironing shop delivery boy, who dreams of having the benefit of a car; as a cyclist his main gripe is the way public buses will stop suddenly. "Cars too speed past," he adds, making no room for bikes. The other day, a tuk-tuk shoved me against the wall. The side streets are easy, though. It's the main roads that drive me crazy." Still, better off car drivers like corporate manager Ahmed Shukri, 30, would love to switch to this "healthier, cheaper and more practical" mode of transport. "It would require decent roads, however." In China and India, with 1.3 and 1.1 billion people, respectively, bikes have made a huge contribution to solving traffic problems indeed, but in a status-conscious society like Egypt -- and this may even have to do with official lack of attention to bicycles -- bikers are generally looked down on, which makes up yet another major disincentive. For Ahmed Mahmoud, an avid biker in his late 30s, his tendency to cycle solicited comments only from upper middle-class friends and family who see it as something for children; in downtown Cairo and along the Corniche, no one found it strange. It was "the complete absence of traffic rules", rather, together with the state of the roads and the pollution, that made him change his mind about the decision to give up driving: "I live in [the upscale suburb of] Sheikh Zayed, which was built only recently, yet even though the roads are wide and there is plenty of space, it didn't occur to anyone to plan a bike lane." Back in the 1960s, bikes were the pride and joy of teenagers, especially boys; street races were common, and everyone used bikes to run errands. Today the streets are such that even within this terribly limited sphere, bikes are no longer tenable. "Though I like biking I can only ride my bike at the summer resort," Hussein Hamed, a secondary school student, explained. His mother nodded approvingly: "As long as chaos reigns on the street, I will never let him touch a bicycle in the city."
