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With or without new coronavirus, problems of the bicyclists in North Macedonia persist (VIDEO)

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The question about the extent of the importance of bicycles as a means of transportation for North Macedonia’s citizens returned again with the rise of the numbers of COVID-19 infection cases. The coronavirus’ rapid spread through close contacts has led to serious difficulties in the functioning of public transportation in the cities, including an increased interest by the people to use individual transportation that they will not share with others during their travels.

Nikola Krstanoski, professor of Public transport at Department of traffic and transport engineering at the Faculty of technical sciences in Bitola, stresses that the problems with public transportation during the coronavirus crisis have caused concerns in both the experts and the common carriers.

During the period of long lockdown hours, when the schools and the universities were closed and most of the population working from home, in Skopje the number of passengers that use public transportation during this spring was drastically lowered compared to the regular statistics about the citizens that regularly use city bus transportation. But, with the lifting of the protection measures, the citizens again traveling to work, a question arises how they will travel in the future. Some citizens don’t want to take a risk of using public transportation due to coronavirus, so most often they avoid the buses.

The civil initiative “Na Točak” (On a Bicycle) stresses there are three logical options. The first is to double the number of buses in public transportation so that the passengers can be transported in accordance with the protective measures. This is an option that hardly any city in the world can afford, and neither can Skopje. An option remains for the citizens to move to cars and by doing so, all current problems we have will be increased. Else, an effort should be made for the development of bicycle transportation.

The “On a Bicycle” initiative, along with the Citizen Association “Odrzhlivi inicijativi” (Sustainable Initiatives), and with the support of 40 formal and informal initiatives, in april have requested interventions by the authorities that will help bicyclists to move across the cities. They are demanding temporary bike lanes by taking away a whole street lane at places where the main flows of people are and where the public transportation needs the biggest support during the coronavirus crisis, adding bicycle lanes by narrowing the motor traffic lanes on the streets, by freeing the pavements from the parked vehicles and taking measures to reduce the speed of vehicles.

The bicycle lane at Moskovska street serves for parking vehicles; Photo: Bojan Blaževski

Instead of quick acceptance and realization of such suggestions, the municipalities and state authorities seem to find themselves in a state of confusion and lack of strategy about what should be done now. No one considers the bicyclists and pedestrians to be traffic participants, nor is anyone keeping records, and no one is processing the data about their increase or decrease. The Center for Traffic Management and Control (CTMC) in Skopje is only counting the flow of vehicles across the streets. As a result, there isn’t any data about the number of bicyclists.

The last traffic study about Skopje dates from 2011, and in the other cities in the country such a document hasn’t been made at all.

“Since there aren’t any traffic studies, there is no real data about bicycle traffic, and there is an absence of percentage of travels with the use of a bicycle,” stressed Professor Nikola Krstanoski.

The “On a Bicycle” initiative stresses there is a big problem with the lack of data and the lack of understanding by the institutions about the importance of having correct data at any point in time, so it can be analyzed and decisions can be made on basis of that data.

“Our proposal is for CTMC to be transformed from a center for counting vehicles into a center for collecting data from all types of traffic: including bus travels, travels by bicycle, walking, and their analysis,” said the Civil initiative “On a Bicycle”

Despite that, the City of Skopje stressed that during this period they have begun to free space for bicyclists and pedestrians by removing 240 billboards and city lights from public spaces. At the moment, a bicycle path construction is underway at the “Sts Cyril and Methodius” Street near Ramstor Mall, the width of the traffic lanes was narrowed and a bicycle lane was created on the street. The city authorities are working on the placement of protective pillars on several locations in order to free the pavements from reckless drivers while this year, bicycle subsidies were granted in the amount of 10 million MKD.

And where the path is, the bicyclists are coming across to unforeseen obstacles; Photo: Bojan Blaževski

They say they are working on improving the conditions for using a bicycle, and at the moment they are discussing the ideas and initiatives from cities in other countries, which have found ways to secure greater spaces for the bicyclists on the streets.

“During 2017, 1018, and 2019, more than 30 km of bicycle paths were built or reconstructed. In the past several years, the City of Skopje and PE “Streets and Roads” have been working on freeing the space, and the pedestrian and bicycle paths, from improperly parked vehicles. In the past two years, more than 5.000 protective pillars have been placed and total space in the length of 8 km has been made available,” said the City of Skopje for Meta.mk

There is no public system for self-rental of bicycles

One of the main flaws in Skopje and the other major cities in Macedonia is the lack of a public bike self-rental system. During the coronavirus crisis, such public bicycles could have been an ideal replacement for the use of public transportation for those people that are avoiding the confined spaces with unknown people.

Last summer, JSP -Skopje was tasked with the managing of a new system for bike rental, but the coronavirus caught the city authorities by surprise while the project is still in the planning stage. Terminals for self-rental of bicycles should be placed on 30 locations throughout Skopje including 20 bike stands.

“The planning of this project is not over yet and this is what will provide precise answers about the locations where the stations will be placed, the type of bicycles, their numbers, the spread of the locations, etc.,” said the City of Skopje.

“Eko-Svest” association was part of the team that made possible the “Skopje Rent a Bike” project, which for the past three consecutive years is non-functional. They say that Skopje needs the rental bike system, even though it may mean delegating it to some company.

“Throughout the European cities, numerous successful examples can be seen of city systems for bicycle rentals, where most of them were given under concession to private companies as a partnership with the city. We think the same principle can be successfully applied here,” stress Eko – Svest association.

Even professor Nikola Krstanoski pinpoints that Skopje doesn’t have to give up on the bicycle rental system, but to invest additional assets in the technology for surveillance and monitoring the bicycles. Legal changes have to be made so that it would become easier to fine the citizens that are damaging the bicycles. An important issue is the integration of the city’s public transportation with bicycle traffic.

“I believe that a significant percentage of citizens would discover a most convenient option for movement, if they use a bike to arrive at a JSP bus station, park the bicycle there and continue their ride with public transportation,” stresses professor Nikola Krstanoski about the possibilities of planning stations for public transportation and bicycle stands where there will be safe parking lots for bicycles.

We have no bicycle highways to connect the cities and rural areas

In 2015, the Ohrid Municipality Council for Traffic Security came up with an idea of converting one lane of the old road connecting Ohrid and Struga for bicycle traffic. In the meantime, this road was reconstructed, but the bicyclists that are traveling between these two cities or to other rural areas were not given separate spaces to drive. It’s a sad fact that Macedonia is one of the last countries in Europe that still hasn’t built bicycle roads between two cities, nor bicycle paths that will connect the cities with the surrounding rural areas.

Eko-Svest association says that they have worked on the Smart Ohrid project for building a bicycle and pedestrian path along the Ohrid Lake coastline, but unfortunately, the project isn’t of priority for the authorities at the moment. The “On a Bicycle” initiative, even stress that a bicycle path has already been built on the other side of the Ohrid Lake’s coastline in Albania.

Macedonia is located on Route 11 from the EuroVelo route, which passes across the riverbank of the Vardar river. It’s an international route that will connect Norway and Greece by bicycle.

The Ministry of Transportation and Communications has confirmed for Meta.mk the initiative for building a bicycle corridor such as this through our country, but also stress that so far an institution hasn’t been found that would be working on the development of the bicycle paths on a state level. This ministry also stated that the building of bicycle paths has been left up to the municipalities.

While the ball has been passed through from one place to another regarding this subject, there is still no reply from the institutions about where can the bicyclists ride their bicycles if they want to travel from a suburban area or a village to the city or can travel between two cities by using a bicycle.

According to the data provided by the State Statistical Bureau, in the past few years, there was a drop in the number of households that own a bicycle. Last year, 33.5% of the households owned a bicycle in their homes. Still, there is a growth in the households that are engaged in agriculture and own a bicycle. 46.8% of the agricultural households in 2019 had a bicycle, which is a growth of over 15 % compared to 2018.

Even some of the most distant Skopje areas are not connected with bicycle paths; Photo: Bojan Blaževski

Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised by the data that shows in the past one and a half-decade, the number of traffic accidents with injured bicyclists has doubled. Last year, three bicyclists got killed while 232 bicycle drivers and riders were injured. The bicyclists are forced to use the roads, instead of bicycle paths, and as a result, they end up as victims of reckless drivers. Even some distantly remote areas in Skopje, such as Drachevo, Saraj, or Radishani don’t have special bike paths along which the bicyclists would be traversing to the city’s center.

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