Tbilisi will soon have its own
cycle paths and infrastructure, enabling riders to safely navigate the city in designated
lanes. By the end of this year, the Mayor’s Office of Tbilisi will launch trial
routes for cyclists. Construction of the cycle lanes are already in progress.
Eight-kilometre lanes will be
placed on the right and left banks of the Mtkvari River. Cyclists will be able
to travel from the Mother Tongue Garden along the right bank of the Mtkvari
River and up to Vakhushti Bridge, then down the left bank of the river and back
to the Garden.
A second lane will run from
Saarbrücken Square (Dry Bridge) to Freedom Square and a three-kilometre lane
will also be finished this year in Digomi settlement on Mirian Mepe Street,
said representatives of the Urban Management Agency.
“In order to promote cycling,
around 20 bicycle parking lots will be set up throughout the city and several
more traffic lights will be installed on streets to ensure cyclist safety,”
City Hall claims.
Founder of the Bicycle Amateurs’
Club in Georgia, Tamaz Tikanadze, has been cycling around the capital of
Tbilisi for four years. He says that at present it is not safe to ride in the
streets due to the absence of special lanes and infrastructure. “There are many streets in the capital
where lanes could be immediately arranged. The streets and public transport are
very busy nowadays and the best solution to this issue is developing bicycle infrastructure,”
Tikanadze said.
City Hall’s Transport Service
Department says that after laying the first bicycle lanes, they will have a
better picture of where other such infrastructure can be arranged, but that the
decision to lay bicycle infrastructure should be based on demand.
“Such projects need finances and
the Mayor’s Office will make decisions regarding further infrastructure only
based on demand from the population,” Mamuka Mumladze from the transport
Service Department said.
Non-Governmental Organizations
(NGOs) are calling on the government to promote cycling and a healthy lifestyle
across the country. They also say that the use of bicycles will help people’s
budgets as well as protecting the environment.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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