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[title]Through interviews with more than 20 Tokyo-based ambassadors, our ongoing Tokyo meets the world series has highlighted a wide range of innovative views on culture, travel and city life. Many of the ideas put forward in the series are aimed at making urban living more sustainable and environmentally friendly, including by changing the way we get around the city.
Promoting emission-free means of transportation such as cycling is a major step in the right direction, and something that Tokyo already appears to be doing pretty well. Bicycles are everywhere in the capital, aren’t they? But look a bit deeper and a very different picture emerges, especially in comparison to some of the world’s truly bike-friendly cities.
What’s hindering Tokyo from charging to the front of the peloton, and what can we learn from more advanced cycling locales? For this special edition of Tokyo meets the world, Peter van der Vliet, ambassador of leading bike nation the Netherlands, and Manabu Chiba, architect, urban designer and professor at the University of Tokyo, got together to talk cycling in Tokyo and how to improve it. Both avid recreational cyclists and former bike racers with a passion for the topic, Van der Vliet and Chiba touched on everything from infrastructure and safety issues to their favourite riding spots in the course of a discussion that should make inspiring reading for all Tokyo cyclists.
Commuting on two wheels: Tokyo vs the Netherlands
Peter van der Vliet (PV): Let me start by saying that I’m an avid cyclist, though not so much for commuting here [in Tokyo], since my daily commute is about 50 metres [from the ambassador’s residence to the embassy]. But in the Netherlands I always use my bike to get to work, rain or shine, in the middle of winter as well as summer. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you can’t park your car – we’re right next to a train station so you either come by train or by bike, and there’s lots of bike parking.
Manabu Chiba (MC): You’ve been in Tokyo for more than two years now, and I’m sure you’ve noticed how there are many bikes on the roads, both mamachari and sports bikes. What’s your overall impression of cycling in Tokyo?
PV: It’s different [from the Netherlands], but the bicycle is being used, and that means there are many opportunities, since cycling is not seen as something alien. People take their children to school and kindergarten by bike, and you can build on that as a basis for expanding commuting to work. There are a lot of opportunities for recreational bicycling, too, and people are really passionate about it. If you go to [the specialist bicycle shop] Y’s Road, you can get the most exclusive bikes – Italian, American, Japanese – and people pay up to 7,000 dollars for a carbon frame.
But for city biking, functional biking, a lot still has to happen, in Tokyo in particular. It won’t suffice to just take some blue paint, paint arrows on a lane next to car traffic, and call that a bike lane. You need safe lanes and bicycle highways that can get you around in the city.
You don’t need to have bicycle paths on every street, but you need arteries that people can use to get into the city and then branch off onto safe streets. That’s a concept that’s been used successfully in other world cities. It requires some sacrifices and investment – sometimes taking away lanes from car traffic, making people upset because that can lead to more congestion. It’s something that requires courage but will pay off.
Another thing that’s very different here is that some people cycle on the sidewalk, which is a big no-no in the Netherlands.
MC: Legally speaking, bicycles generally aren’t allowed on the sidewalk in Japan either. But since the streets are so narrow, the police have to take actual traffic conditions into account and often make exceptions.
PV: In the Netherlands, that would be like driving the Shinkansen on a normal train track [laughs]. In Japan, people usually bike very responsibly and are considerate, but in the Netherlands people on bicycles go fast – everyone has to get out of the way – so [riding on sidewalks] would lead to a lot of accidents.
Another thing is that Tokyo has a state-of-the-art public transportation system. When I first came here – and even now – I was amazed how you can get to so many places in the city by subway and train. Since public transportation is so good, people may feel like they don’t really need to bike.
MC: To someone from Tokyo, the way the bicycle is respected as an important means of transportation in the Netherlands appears really impressive. Why is the bike so highly valued
PV: I should start by saying that [the Netherlands is] a flat country, which makes it easy to cycle. We are also densely populated. Driving a car is pretty expensive, and petrol is significantly more expensive in the Netherlands than in Japan. Owning a car is expensive, as is parking. So the bicycle is a great alternative for a lot of practical reasons: it’s healthy, environmentally friendly, and practical.
Biking has become the natural way of transportation if you live within reasonable distance from your workplace, and even if you don’t, people still bike to the nearest train station, or from the station to work. You do have to invest in a good rain suit and a warm jacket, but everyone has that.
The reason it’s so convenient and practical also has to do with safety. Bike paths and lanes have become fully integrated into urban design and development, and no new neighbourhoods can be developed without bicycle paths and bicycle traffic lights. You can feel safe on the roads in the Netherlands, so there’s really no reason not to take the bike – it’s the obvious choice. Safety, convenience, health, ecological considerations, price – it all adds up.
MC: You also get some sort of support from your employer if you want to buy a bicycle for commuting, right?
PV: Yes, you can save hours, which translate into money, and with that money you can buy a bicycle tax free, which is the same as about a 20 percent discount.
Building a better Tokyo for cyclists
MC: Riding a bike in Tokyo isn’t easy, since drivers and motorcyclists as well as pedestrians tend to consider cyclists a nuisance. Local governments have been trying to look at what’s going on in Europe, take those ideas and apply them to Tokyo, but sometimes their plans don’t fit the [local] situation and context.
PV: An as architect and urban designer, do you think that cycling paths and lanes are well included in urban planning in Japan?
MC: No. It’s strange, but in the urban design profession and among city planners [in Japan], not many people are very conscious of bicycles. They’re considered a disturbance for cars, and I think it’s quite difficult to put forward visions for bicycling.
That’s why I’ve proposed a number of ideas that depart from conventional wisdom, one being that bicycle lanes wouldn’t necessarily need to be on the side of the street, but in the centre instead. In Tokyo, the edges of roads tend to turn into parking spaces for buses, taxis and trucks, so having bike lanes there isn’t necessarily the smartest solution. On the other hand, major roads tend to have central reservations that could be converted into bike lanes. That would be much safer and would avoid conflict with other traffic. There would be signals at intersections that would allow for access to the bike lane, and once you’re there you can just go.
Another idea of mine is for bicycle parking that would take advantage of existing guardrails, instead of adding yet another piece of infrastructure. Furthermore, I’ve proposed making a map of Tokyo for cyclists to make it easy to pinpoint relatively flat streets. It’s called ’30-metre Heaven’, with colouring indicating which areas are flat as opposed to where you have hillier terrain. It’s another way of looking at the city from a casual cyclist’s point of view.
Finally, I’ve put forward an idea I call Buil.climb, or ‘building climb’. One part of the expressway system in Tokyo is called the KK Expressway, which was built in the 1960s as an alternative route for drivers to avoid the Metropolitan Expressway. Japan’s economy was growing rapidly at the time, and the road was built for cars to be able to go around the main highway, thereby eluding the terrible traffic jams of the time. Recently, however, there are far fewer cars in the city and [the KK Expressway] is hardly being used, so various people have come up with ideas for renovating that highway to serve other purposes.
My proposal is to convert the expressway into a building that starts from street level and goes up to [a height of] 200 metres. Cyclists would be able to use the building’s rooftop to climb between the skyscrapers of central Tokyo all the way to the top of a high-rise in the Shiodome area, from where you can look out towards Tokyo Bay. There’s a shrine on top of the building, too. The total length would be 2.8km, so the slope percentage on the rooftop would be 6-7 percent. Cyclists who love climbing hills – or going downhill – could use that building for a unique style of recreational biking.
The Buil.climb project has attracted interest from people around the world, and we’re currently exhibiting it at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. We developed the project a bit further to include not only bicycles but also other means of transportation, such as personal mobility vehicles and self-driving cars, proposing a vision for the entire area.
Discovering Japan from the saddle
MC: What are your favourite places for cycling in Tokyo and other parts of Japan?
PV: In Tokyo, I try to get to the Arakawa river to do my 50-60 kilometres, and if I’m in a hurry I go to Toyosu fish market, where I have a loop that’s almost three kilometres with only one or two traffic lights, which I can do quickly and come back [to the embassy].
I’m very happy when I’m at the Arakawa. There’s a dairy farm [Enomoto Farm in Ageo, Saitama] where you can get fresh ice cream that’s iconic among cyclists. The cows are in the barn right next to you, you can smell them [laughs]. Cyclists go up there, reward themselves with ice cream and then return to Tokyo.
Elsewhere, I like climbing Mt Tsukuba. Around Lake Kasumigaura it’s almost like biking in the Netherlands, because you have the lake and it’s very flat; even the scenery is similar. I grew up in an area in the Netherlands that looks a lot like that. You can do a loop that’s around 100 kilometres, it’s nice and easy, except when it’s windy. The great thing about Japan for cyclists is that there’s a variety of possibilities, whereas in the Netherlands everything is flat. Here you have mountains, the seaside, lakes, everything.
MC: You seem to know the scene here quite well [laughs]. You might be interested to know that I organise bicycle events every year, including one to climb the Fuji Subaru Line [toll road up the slopes of Mt Fuji] in July. That started mainly as a get-together for the architectural community, but for [a wider audience] I’ve been organising another event in northern Tohoku ever since the earthquake and tsunami [of March 2011]. My parents are from that area, so I wanted to do something to help the region recover and encourage tourism over there.
Every August, we take two days to ride around the Oshika Peninsula [near Sendai]. It’s around 100 kilometres, and there are many small villages around the coast that were damaged by the tsunami. They’ve had prosperous fishing industries for ages and the food is very nice. Bicycle tourism is our way of getting people to visit these communities.
PV: I’d like to join sometime. In Japan, I generally find it difficult going from city to city, and there are many tunnels, which are dangerous when you’re among traffic. In the Netherlands it’s easier to go from town to town, because there are safe roads everywhere. So in Japan right now it’s still isolated places [that attract cyclists] – they’re not connected. But there’s a lot of potential to improve things, both in the cities and in the countryside. In tourism terms, hiking is a lot more popular than recreational bicycling because it’s so much easier now, but if you make cycling easier, I think it will attract a lot of customers.
One good example is the Shimanami Kaido. You go to Imabari and can rent your bike at Hotel Cycle right there – you just come from the train station, walk 300 metres and it’s there. You can rent a bike and check in, or if you have a bike, take it into your hotel room. Everything is really well thought out, there are bathrooms all along the route and little places where you can eat. Then when you get to Onomichi, you check into your hotel and can take your bicycle into your room again. That’s wonderful, and I hope there will be many more places like that in the future.
A major advantage of places like the Shimanami Kaido and the Lake Kasumigaura cycling path is that they’re so well indicated. Signage is very important for those who don’t read Japanese, since nobody likes to get lost. Japan has so many great routes, but to really shine, many of them need better signs, maps and facilities. It’s just a matter of getting that extra effort in.