Dalian: City without bicycles
I ran across comments on social media about Dalian being bicycle-unfriendly. This being China, that seemed a bit odd. Didn’t nearly everyone ride bicycles as little as 25 years ago? Wasn’t one of China’s biggest recent start-ups bicycle sharing? How could a city the size of Dalian be so seemingly anomalous?
Turns out those comments were not altogether incorrect.
In fact, some parts of the city accommodate bicycles quite well. In this photo from the northern suburbs, you can see a bicycle lane (plus hard shoulder) wider than a typical car lane. Fantastic, except that bicycles have to share this space with buses and taxis picking-up and dropping-off, so as a cyclist you’re always having to keep an eye over your left shoulder for a vehicle to rush in from behind and cut you off, or alternatively having to anticipate whether to try and pass the temporarily stationary bus or taxi that might, as soon as you decide to overtake, start moving again.
The city proper, though, doesn’t seem especially welcoming. If not unwelcoming, at least confused. On most of the major arteries you see traffic signs with a bicycle icon inside a red slash, presumably indicating bicycles are prohibited on the road. Alternatively, you’ll see other signs with the bicycle icon on a blue background with an arrow directing cyclists to the pedestrian sidewalk (causing one to consider where cyclists are being directed from).
Not infrequently, these sidewalks are blocked by illegally parked cars and trucks and there is simply no way around them except to ride in the street. Also not infrequently, bicycle lanes suddenly terminate, forcing the cyclist to dismount and lift the bicycle onto the elevated sidewalk, as shown here at this tunnel entrance, or alternatively an entrance to an apartment complex or shopping center will interrupt the sidewalk and the cyclist is forced to dismount and lift the cycle down onto the road, cross the vehicle entry, then lift the bicycle back onto the elevated sidewalk.
A further problem is that sidewalks are usually made of brick, not an ideal surface, especially for street bikes. Often bricks may be missing or loose (which doesn’t seem to be much worse of a problem than potholes and poorly poured blacktop).
It seems enforcement is not especially strict. I didn’t test this extensively, but in my week of riding around the city, I was never stopped by police for riding in areas designated prohibited to cyclists. Nor stopped for anything at all. I never had any interactions with Dalian police. I wonder if the bicycle prohibition signs really mean “Cycle here at your own risk.”
The front-desk clerk at the hotel tried to convince me locals don’t cycle much because the town is so hilly. In some parts it is in fact quite so and I had to dismount and push my bike up a hill. In other parts, though, the hills are mild, or absent altogether. I suspect there is something more at play in Dalian, which is completely absent any of the bike share facilities in other cities, such as neighboring Shenyang, the capital of the same province in which Dalian is located and which is veritably littered by share bicycles.
One important question I had before leaving for Dalian was whether I could cycle across the 7km Xinghaiwan Bridge. It seems you can – I did! -- though signs prohibit bicycles. I’ll cover this in a separate post for anyone that might be interested in doing the same and conclude here by noting that cycling is possible in Dalian, but you’ll definitely need your own bicycle and to ride with your wits about you.
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Turns out those comments were not altogether incorrect.
In fact, some parts of the city accommodate bicycles quite well. In this photo from the northern suburbs, you can see a bicycle lane (plus hard shoulder) wider than a typical car lane. Fantastic, except that bicycles have to share this space with buses and taxis picking-up and dropping-off, so as a cyclist you’re always having to keep an eye over your left shoulder for a vehicle to rush in from behind and cut you off, or alternatively having to anticipate whether to try and pass the temporarily stationary bus or taxi that might, as soon as you decide to overtake, start moving again.
The city proper, though, doesn’t seem especially welcoming. If not unwelcoming, at least confused. On most of the major arteries you see traffic signs with a bicycle icon inside a red slash, presumably indicating bicycles are prohibited on the road. Alternatively, you’ll see other signs with the bicycle icon on a blue background with an arrow directing cyclists to the pedestrian sidewalk (causing one to consider where cyclists are being directed from).
Not infrequently, these sidewalks are blocked by illegally parked cars and trucks and there is simply no way around them except to ride in the street. Also not infrequently, bicycle lanes suddenly terminate, forcing the cyclist to dismount and lift the bicycle onto the elevated sidewalk, as shown here at this tunnel entrance, or alternatively an entrance to an apartment complex or shopping center will interrupt the sidewalk and the cyclist is forced to dismount and lift the cycle down onto the road, cross the vehicle entry, then lift the bicycle back onto the elevated sidewalk.
A further problem is that sidewalks are usually made of brick, not an ideal surface, especially for street bikes. Often bricks may be missing or loose (which doesn’t seem to be much worse of a problem than potholes and poorly poured blacktop).
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| Brick road and top of a hill that turned out to be a cemetery |
The front-desk clerk at the hotel tried to convince me locals don’t cycle much because the town is so hilly. In some parts it is in fact quite so and I had to dismount and push my bike up a hill. In other parts, though, the hills are mild, or absent altogether. I suspect there is something more at play in Dalian, which is completely absent any of the bike share facilities in other cities, such as neighboring Shenyang, the capital of the same province in which Dalian is located and which is veritably littered by share bicycles.
One important question I had before leaving for Dalian was whether I could cycle across the 7km Xinghaiwan Bridge. It seems you can – I did! -- though signs prohibit bicycles. I’ll cover this in a separate post for anyone that might be interested in doing the same and conclude here by noting that cycling is possible in Dalian, but you’ll definitely need your own bicycle and to ride with your wits about you.
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An album of my Dalian images:
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