Bicycle: A Eco-Friendly Green Vehicle
By Zeba Tarannum
To stay healthy and maintain good health, we do different types of exercise. But the best exercise is cycling and swimming. Cycling involves a lot of physical exertion and helps greatly in weight loss. Besides this, it greatly reduces the risk of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases and maintains fitness.
Many who have seen professional cyclists may have noticed most of them are in excellent health. Cycling not only keeps us fit externally, but it also keeps us healthy internally.
Bicycles are as beneficial for health as they are for the environment. Bicycles are called eco-friendly green vehicles. Many ride bicycles just for fun. However, if people know the benefits of cycling, many will ride it with enthusiasm. There is no substitute for cycling to maintain good health.
Cycling is considered to be an efficient means of transportation and very effective for short to medium distances. Bicycles have more advantages than motor vehicles.
For example, cycling allows for permanent physical exercise due to easy parking, increased ability to move easily, etc. It will enable easy access to roads, bicycle paths, and rural roads.
Cycling also benefits from using limited fossil fuels, low air and noise pollution, and very low traffic jams. This dramatically reduces the financial cost of the user as well as society.
It does very little damage to the road, a small amount of road is used. To keep the bicycle lane active on Manik Mia Avenue in the capital Dhaka of Bangladesh, recently a police box was broken.
Dhaka North City Corporation’s concerned authorities have also informed that the city’s bicycle lanes will be evacuated. Gradually, the Corporation plans to have bicycle lanes on both sides of the road in the whole city.
This is very positive and encouraging news for all the cyclists of Dhaka.
Bicycles are popular as an eco-friendly vehicle globally. At the same time, it is healthy and affordable. Besides, there is no alternative to bicycles to survive the traffic jam. And in the current Covid situation, bicycles can be a personal vehicle to avoid public transport. However, many health-conscious people in the city are using bicycles to travel regularly.
Especially adult and young people are more interested in using bicycles. These two-wheeled bicycles can breathe a sigh of relief in this growing urbanization and dynamic mechanical society. Many modern countries around the world are currently sponsoring this vehicle. Bicycles are the pace of urbanization and play a vital role in improving the health of cyclists.
In many cities of the world, everyone from young to old is doing their daily work by cycling. There is much more bias towards the two-wheeled vehicle vehicle’ name bicycle in many developed cities worldwide than oil-burning vehicles.
The Netherlands has the highest number of bicycles used per capita in the world. However, Denmark’s capital Copenhagen is considered to be the most bicycle-friendly city in the world. These countries have separate roadside lanes for cycling.
But nowadays, cycling for short distance travel is officially encouraged and sponsored in various countries like Japan, China, France, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Some cities are also offering special opportunities for office workers or school-college students.
Bicycles are the most used means of road transport in these countries. It is designed in a simple geometric manner to protect the driver from road injuries and make it easier to drive at low speeds.
Many schools and police departments in these countries conduct some educational activities to teach children about cycling skills. Especially they are given an absolute idea about the rules of the road, as they intend to become cyclists. There are also some voluntary organizations for educating older cyclists.
Denmark is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is said to be an ideal city for two-wheelers. Recently, Copenhagen is known as a bicycle-friendly city worldwide. According to the city’s municipal data, about 41% of the cities use bicycles to travel.
The Danishes are very environmentally conscious. And to prevent Environmental pollution, bicycle culture is inextricably linked with their lives. To keep the environment green and keep their bodies healthy, the Danish start cycling from an early age.
Similarly, Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, is known as another bicycle-friendly city globally. It is the most populated city in the Netherlands. Bicycles are the first choice of transportation for about 38% of the city’s population. The number of bicycles is much more than Amsterdam’s total population, and the number of bicycles out of 7 lakh people here is about 8 lakh ( 10 lakh = 1 million).
In Montreal, Canada, there is a separate road for cycling for about 600 kilometers, which is twice the road for oil- burnig vehicles, reserved for bicycles in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In these cities, a lot of money is spent on the maintenance of bicycle lanes every year to ride safely and get encouraged. On a special day of the year, the annual bicycle festival is celebrated with great pomp, which has become a significant attraction for tourists.
More than 435 million people have bicycles in Shanghai city of China. Shanghai is the only place in the world where so many people reach their destination by bicycle every day. Half of the people in this densely populated city prefer bicycles as their daily means of transportation.
Like other countries in the world, Bangladesh also has different organizations with bicycles. At the initiative of these organizations, various arrangements are also made to encourage people to use bicycles. Besides, the members of these organizations occasionally go out on bicycle trips along with regular cycling.
One such organization is Dhaka Cycling Club, which was established in 1993. They encourage people to go cycling by organizing country trips on bicycles many times. However, once bicycles were widely used in remote areas of our country, the use of bicycles is declining due to motorcycles.
The most bicycle shop in the country is in Bangshal of Old Dhaka. Bicycles are highly valued as an eco-friendly vehicle globally. Bangladesh exports bicycle to 28 countries of the European Union (EU), including the United Kingdom and Bangladesh, which is now the 3rd largest exporter of bicycles globally. Taiwan is ranked 1st, and Cambodia is ranked 2nd.
The Meghna Group is leading the country’s bicycle exports, and the Durrant, Pran-RFL Group, Alita, Firefox, and German Bangla companies also export bicycles.
And bicycles are being used as the best alternative of public transport to maintain social distance during this Covid situation. Bicycle for traveling to the office or anywhere else is a good friend for physical and mental development. In the same way, it is also a good friend of the environment.
The harmful smoke of other vehicles that causes extreme damage to the environment, the bicycle doesn’t cause the slightest damage to it. Cycling not only protects us from environmental pollution, but it also protects us from the extreme loud voices of motor vehicles.
According to a recent newspaper report, the production, marketing, and sales of bicycles at home and abroad increase at a favorable rate to go for work or outing by maintaining social distance during the COVID-19 period.
We need to use this opportunity to maintain social distance and to protect the environment. So, let us ride green vehicles to maintain social space and the environment and protect us from the COVID-19 risk and protect the environment.
