TransMilenio Attacks a Cyclist

A cyclist descending Ave. Jimenez (also known as the Eje Ambiental, the Environmental Axis), on a collision course with a TransMilenio bus's exhaust.

The suffering cyclist after a toxic bath, courtesy of TransMilenio.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Bicycle Parking Paradox

  

A bicycle (mine) rests on the grass beside the Centro Memoria's car parking lot. 

Bogotá's has laws and policies requiring bicycle parking, in order to promote sustainable transit. But when the new Centro Memoria, a human rights documentation center, opened recently, it included two car parking lots and none for bicycles.

But right across the street  the small and relatively new Parque del Renacimiento has a half dozen bike racks with capacity for perhaps 100 bicycles - but rarely contain more than one or two bikes.

It fits a pattern of incontistancy in Bogotá's parking, which suggests several things to me: That bicycle parking isn't designed by cyclists, and that corruption might be involved. Are huge bike racks built more to give someone's uncle a contract than to actually service cyclists?

The new Centro Memoria also has an underground parking lot for cars, but no parking for bicycles.

Across the street in the Parque del Renacimiento, multiple bike parking racks sit empty.

A lonely bicycle in the Parque del Renacimiento racks.

In contrast, the city recently installed several simple and practical bike parking racks in the Parque Nacional. 

Newly-installed bike parking in El Parque Nacional in Bogotá.

The city also installed practical bike racks in the still-unopened Museo Nacional TransMilenio station. It's the only TM station I've seen with this sort of small, practical bike parking.

Several TransMilenio stations have these big, expensive bike parking structures (this one sat empty for years after completion until demonstrators staged a protest in front of it). They're nice, but 90% of stations have no bike parking at all - even tho Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who designed the system, is a cyclist.

Build it and bikes will come: A few years ago some of us lobbied the Central Cemetery to install bike racks. They did, and today the racks get used, at least on Sundays, when La Ciclovia goes by on neighboring 26th St.

On the other hand, Ave. Septima, which is closed to car traffic during the days, has no bicycle parking. Here, someone chained their bike to a tree.

Last of an Era for Colombian Bike Racing

Jose Duarte with one of his elegant hand-made frames. 

Bicicletas Duarte on Calle 68 in Bogotá.

With its red, green and blue front, Bicicletas Duarte looks like just one more in a strip of store/repair shops on Calle 68, one of Bogotá's several 'bicycle rows.' Like the neighboring stores', Duarte's showroom displays imported, Asian-made bicycles.

So, hard to believe that in the store's rear workshop you can find a legend of Colombian cycling.

The Duarte frame which won

 France's Tour del Avenir.

At 77, Jose Duarte walks with difficulty. His lower back aches from decades of leaning over bike frames. His voice is soft. Some of his memories of his decades in Colombian cycling are foggy. But he talks with quiet pride of his many accomplishments, both on the race course and in the workshop.

Born in the town of La Mesa outside of Bogota, as a teen Duarte bicycled to his electrician job. But at age 17 he discovered that his real vocationlay not in the plugs and wires he worked with, but the pedals and wheels he used to get there.

Duarte's hand-made frames
hang on a wall.

Duarte became a bicycle racer. During his 1956 to 1960 competition years, he rode with and befriended cycling legends such as Italian Fausto Coppi. Duarte competed in several Vueltas a Colombia and in 1959 won Colombia's national road racing championship. But his relationship with Colombia's cycling classics had just begun.

A Career Shift

In 1965, Duarte switched from riding bikes to building them, opening his first workshop.

The afternoon I dropped into Bicicletas Duarte, Duarte had just placed the latest classic lugged racing frame he was building into an acid bath. It may be one of the last of some 6,000 frames molded by his hands.

Strikingly, even more than his own accomplishments on two wheels, Duarte seems proudest of what others have accomplished on Duarte-made frames. In the 1978 Vuelta a Colombia, 35 of the the 90 racers rode Duarte frames. Duarte bicycles have won 6 Vueltas a Colombia, as well as the vueltas of Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala and Venezuela - and undoubtedly others as well. But the greatest achievement is memorialized on his shop wall in the form of the dark blue frame which won France's 1985 Tour del Avenir. The facing wall exhibits snapshots of Duarte with cycling legends including Bernard Hinault and Eddy Mercx, who visited his shop.


Duarte built bikes for Rafael Niño, who won the Vuelta five times, as well as Miguel Samaca, Cristobal Perez and other Colombian cyling legends.

Politicians and Pablo Escobar

Inside Bicicleta Duarte's repair shop.

But not all of Duarte's famous clients were athletes: He also built bikes for politicians, including charismatic presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, assassinated in 1989 by cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. Duarte and Galan also trained together.

Galan "was not such a good cyclist," Duarte recalls, "but he was a good politician."

Duarte's showroom, which sells mass-produced
bikes from Asia. 

Duarte then built bikes for and trained with Galan's succesor, Cesar Gaviria, who went on to win the presidency. Duarte recalls how presidential assistants would call him at 5 a.m. to announce a top-secret training ride. He would board a presidential helicopter and be transported to some country road, where he and Gaviria would pedal amidst a phalanx of armed guards.

Ironically, in the early 1980s Duarte had also built bike frames for drug capo Escobar himself, altho

Duarte says that at the time Escobar's business was little known.

Duarte, left, fitting politician Luis Carlos Galan. 

"He was my friend," Duarte admits. "But that was before he became a big capo. He was just starting out."

Escobar financed a bicycle racing team and a bicycle factory named Ossito, as well as football teams and other sports. His brother Roberto was a talented bike racer until he got involved in Pablo's business.



"He exported those frames," Duarte says of Escobar. "Nobody knew what they put inside."

When they traveled overseas to race, Escobar's cyclists doubled as cocaine smugglers. In the end, some were killed, others did prison time.

Jose Duarte examines a racing bike's wheel. 

Financed partly by drug money, the 1980s and '90s became an outstanding period for Colombian cycling. Today, with apparently much cleaner finances, Colombian cyclists are once again accomplishing great things in European road races. Leading the charge is the extraordinary Nairo Quintana, who finished second in this year's Tour de France, where he also won the best climber and best young rider jerseys. Quintana, like Duarte, came from a poor family and pulled himself up by his bootstraps (or bicycle pedal straps). Duarte believes that the best bicycle racers come from such humble backgrounds.

Changing Cycling Culture

Sadly, cycling culture has become profoundly corrupted by doping since Duarte's era. Inevitably, suspicions surround every outstanding cyclist, including Quintana.

Duarte with bike racing buddies Hernan Herron
and Jorge Luque.

Back in his day, Duarte recalls, "we drank panela and oatmeal," he recalls. "The strongest thing we took was Alka Seltzer."

Meanwhile, bicycles have also evolved into hi-tech, computer-equipped machines built around frames made of aluminum and sophisticated alloys. Asian, factory-made aluminum bikes have captured the popular market. The racing frames Duarte makes by hand out of steel and chromium-molybdenum tubing are sought only by those who love classics.



"These cost a million pesos," he says of his frames. In comparison, fat-tubed aluminum frames "cost 300,000 pesos." He motions again at his own elegant creations. "Nobody wants these."

Perhaps that what's left Duarte feeling a bit resigned and tired.

His Final Frames?

Jose Duarte in his shop. 

During Duarte's first decade building frames, four competitors appeared in Bogotá - "but they didn't last," Duarte says. "Some went bankrupt, some died."

Today, others also make custom bicycle frames in Bogotá - mountain bikes, fixies, etc - but Duarte doesn't rate them highly.

"Those are common frames," he says. Except for himself, "Nobody makes fine frames."

Grudgingly, Duarte's family business has evolved with the times. His two sons who have pursued careers with bicycles repair aluminum and carbon fiber frames. As for himself, Duarte says he's about done with frame building.

"I'm tired," he says, standing in his workshop beside a row of steel Duarte frames. "I don't want to make any more frames."

But his decision is not absolute. He will still build frames for friends, altho that will depend on the outcome of the spinal surgery he has scheduled for the coming weeks to repair several lower back vertebrae damaged from decades leaning over bicycles.

Duarte doesn't make hand-made steel tube frames to be fashionable or retro. He does it because they're all he knows and because he likes their slim, simple elegance. I left Duarte's shop with terribly mixed feelings - impressed with the man's skill and dedication, but sad about the twilight of an era of artesanal framebuilding.

"People have lost their love for these artesanal frames," laments Claudia Reyes, Duarte's daughter in law, who manages the bike shop. "Working on them isn't easy."

Thanks to the great Colombian bike racing blog Cycling Inquisition, where I first read about Jose Duarte. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Wednesday Ciclopaseo Celebrates Seven Years

Bogotá's Wednesday Ciclopaseo celebrated its seventh anniversary tonight, having grown from a circuit ridden by a few eccentrics to quite a massive phenomenon.

The ride, held either every or every-other Wednesday evening, depending on the season, departs about 7:30 p.m. from the Welcome bike store on 94th St.


The ride is a honking, cheering, lights-flashing, celebration of two-wheeled transport. Altho it's not overtly activist or political, it seems to me that just having hundreds of cyclists riding and enjoying themselves helps change the image of the Bogotá cyclist from a loner who'd obviously rather be in a car, and whose principal street activities are swallowing fumes and darting out of the way of cars, to someone with a legitimate role on the street and even having fun.

The Ciclopaseo does often block traffic - making it the closest thing Bogotá has to a Critical Mass ride - and it gives me a satisfied feeling seeing those sedentary, polluting drivers for once giving bicycles priority - something normally unseen in Bogotá. The ride catches the attention of passers-by, as well. And, if the Ciclopaseo does block streets - that's also what cars do, evey day, and nobody yell as them run way onto the sidewalk.

Andres, who organized the first Ciclopaseo about 5 years ago and continues to lead the ride, says that at the start he had no idea the ride could become so big.

"We never imagined it," he said.

Alejandro Sanchez, who works for Toma Corriente, which sells both electric and folding bikes and who sometimes participates in the wednesday city rights, called it positive for cycling in several ways.

"It's fun," he said, "it incentivies bicycle use and low impact transporte in general."

Andrés, center, is the ride's organizer. He estimated 500
people participated in today's ride. 

 Taking pictures of the strange phenomenon.

Skaters in front!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Satisfied Cyclists?

These cyclists are happy. They're riding on the car-free stretch of Ave. Septima, in central Bogotá.

The annual quality of life survey Bogotá, ¿Cómo Vamos? found that the Colombian city dwellers who are most satisfied with their means of transport are....bicyclists!

I have to wonder whom they spoke to. Many cyclists, sadly, ride to save bus fare, and dream of driving a car. How satisfying can dodging aggressive vehicles while swallowing fumes be? Maybe a lot, especially when you're sailing past people locked inside boxes trapped in traffic jams.

Almost 80% of bicyclists are happy with their means of transport, as opposed to barely half of TransMilenio and metro users. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who'll Stop the Bike Thieves?

Pedaling against bike theft.

This group of Bogotá cyclists rode across town the other day calling for action against bike theft - but I didn't hear any concrete ideas to combat the problem.

Like many big cities, bikes get stolen all the time in Bogotá. I once left a bike locked up on a main plaza, went to a meeting and returned a half hour later to find it gone. When I complained to the police station two blocks away, the cops were only interested in praising the local thieves' abilities. "Thieves here will steal a hole out of the ground," one informed me.

Stolen? Bikes outside a central Bogotá pawn shop.

Teams of thieves also work La Ciclovia, spotting valuable bikes and using tricks or threats to separate them from their owners. "Can I try your bike out," says a friendly young man in cycling gear, with his own nice bike. And he does, and that's the last you see of yours.

A trick like that happened to an Australian friend of mine, who was riding home on his fancy new bike. A three-man team of thieves jumped him and left him bike-less. Insurance replaced that bike, but a month later he stopped when a fellow cyclist asked for help with a mechanical problem. The Australian put down his bike to assist - only to have it nabbed by a waiting thief, while the guy with the supposedly damaged bike rode off as well. Now, he's riding the bus.

There is one effective common sense measure - disguise an expensive bike as a cheap one. It'll pedal just as well, but won't attract criminal eyes.

One kid who worked with Bogotá Bike Tours was delivering a bike on La Ciclovia when another rider blocked him while a second pulled him off of his (our) bicycle. The bike - the best one we had - disappeared down a side street.

Those bikes, I suspect, quickly end up in Medellin or some other city where nobody's likely to recognize them.

Good ideas to control theft do exist, but the police here don't use them. Professional bands of thieves steal a lot of the bikes, so catching just a few of them could really reduce the problem. Why not try sting operations, with vulnerable-appearing riders on nice bikes equipped with hidden GPS devices. Trace the bike to wherever they hide or fence it, and recover a bunch of bikes and catch the band of thieves.

But police have told me they just don't or can't do sting operations.

Instead, the police have carried out what amounts to pointless harassment, by stopping cyclists on

Fighting crime or cyclists? Police take away racing bicycles
because the riders weren't carrying proof of ownership.
(Photo: Juan Carlos Zabala Humanez)

training rides and demanding they prove ownership of their bikes - and confisticating the bikes if they lack property papers. How many people carry around their bicycles' papers? And, bicycle property cards are widely faked.

"Oh, Colombia, where will end up with these injustices by those in power?" asks Juan Carlos Zabala Humanez, who posted this photo of police confisticating a bike during a training ride.

Finally, everybody knows where many stolen bikes end up - in the pawn shops, called compraventas, and a few other places offering nice bikes at absurdly low prices. A few years ago, one of our bikes got stolen from the doorway of Bogotá Bike Tours. I rode down Calle 13 and spotted it, still outside the shop where the thief had sold it. With lots of anger and threats of calling the cops, we obliged the shopowner to give back the bike. "I guess that's why the fellow wanted to sell it so fast," observed another man standing in the shop's door.

The best - and only - good idea I've seen recently is the Biciregistro web page, where you can list your stolen bike and used bicycle shoppers can check to see whether a bike is clean. But it will require participation.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Bicycle Cemetery

Thousands of bicycles rust away. (Photo: ADN)

Thousands of bicycles, confisticated by police because of involvement in accidents or for some traffic offense, are piled up rusting away in the patios of Alamo. Most have been there for more than five years.

And they keep arriving - at the rate of three to five per day.

Why don't the owners retrieve them? There's lots of red tape, ADN reports. Perhaps they lack proof of ownership? Also, patios charges for the bikes's storage - almost 5,000 pesos for the first day, and then decreasing to only 100 pesos a day after a month passes. Eventually, the charges can be more than the value of a cheap bike. The bikes involved in accidents are held as potential legal evidence - altho it's difficult to see their court value, especially after suffering for months or years in the wind, rain and son.

In any case, it's a real tragedy.

Why not issue some decree to sell or give away the bikes after some waiting period, while they're still usable?

It's also worth asking why all those cars and buses which routinely break traffic and environmental laws never seem to get confisticated by the authorities.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours