Bicycles are an essential part of the Colombian identity — ubiquitous, cheaper and, in some urban communities, often a faster mode of transportation.
No city in Colombia embodies riding on two wheels more than the capital, Bogotá, where the metropolitan area of nearly 11 million people has no subway system and some of the worst traffic jams in the world.
The city has more than 1.1 million bikes, according to officials, and records nearly 900,000 bike trips per day. On Sundays and holidays, more than 80 miles of highways are closed, a tradition that regularly attracts two million people at a time.
“It’s the DNA of this city,” said Bogotá Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán.
But a spate of robberies and attacks on cyclists this year has left many riders in Bogotá furious. A recent report estimated that a bicycle was stolen in the capital every 42 minutes and small gangs of thieves have targeted cyclists.
“Insecurity for cyclists is at an all-time high,” said Yim Ángel, founder of the Bicycle Collective, an advocacy group. “Cyclists contribute to the environment, to transport, to health, to sport, to recreation. But right now, we have no security guarantee to move freely in Bogotá. We are afraid.”
Cyclists, from daily commuters to hardcore riders and advocacy groups, have called on the city to do more to make the city safer for them, and Mr. Galán, who took office in January, said officials they are already exploring various steps.
While police figures show bike thefts have fallen in recent years, an increase in some types of violent crime in Bogotá last year, such as robberies, sexual assaults and carjackings, fueled growing concerns that the big city is becoming less safe, including for cyclists. .
The concern has been attacked by a series of violent crimes, including the murder of a businessman and multiple armed robberies, in more affluent and usually quieter parts of the city.
Mr. Galan, in an interview, said he was concerned that heightened fear had caused people to abandon more environmentally friendly modes of transportation in Bogotá.
“There are a lot of people who can make trips of four, five, six blocks from home to work or go shopping, but today they do it by car, but they could do it by bike or walk,” he said. . “That’s why, for us, safety is a fundamental priority.”
David Santiago Cortés Peña, 23, who runs a bike shop in Bogotá and rode a professional cycling team last year, recently embarked on a training ride of about 30 miles in a town outside the city.
Around 5:30 a.m., on his way to meet friends at the base of the mountain near where he lives, Mr. Cortes said a man jumped from behind a tree in the dark. He tried to maneuver around the man, but said the man fired at him, with a bullet grazing his eyebrow and forcing him off his bike.
As he lay bleeding on the ground, Mr. Cortes said, he saw the man run off on his bike, which cost him $3,500. To pay for it, he had taken out a loan, sold some things and got help from his older brother.
“It was a whole family effort over the course of a whole year to pay it back,” he said.
He had insurance for his bike, but it had expired in December and he hadn’t renewed the policy. He had also decided that it was too expensive to pay for something that many advanced riders in the city use – a motorcycle escort.
These days, Mr. Cortes uses a borrowed bike and said he would only ride during the day and hire a companion.
“I’ll end up with no savings,” he said, “but it’s better for safety.”
Luis Fernando Guarin, 37, was not training when he fell victim. It did what many in Bogotá use their bikes for: commuting to and from work. He said a nine-mile trip each way that would take two hours on a public bus takes half that time pedaling on two wheels.
“It also fights stress,” said Mr. Guarin, who works for a telecommunications company.
He was walking home on a recent Friday night on a bike path along a major road when, he said, he was accosted by four men who jumped out from behind some bushes and tried to rob him. When he resisted, Mr Guarin said, he was stabbed twice in the abdomen before his attackers fled on his bike.
He tried to file an online police report from his cell phone while at the hospital and at home, but said the website for entering such reports was down. He also never went to a police station to do it in person. Even if he had filed a report, Mr Guarin said, he did not believe his bike would be recovered.
The city operates a bicycle registry designed to make it easier to identify stolen bicycles and return them to their owners. So far, 400,000 bikes have been registered, according to Mr. Galán, the mayor, who would like to see that number increase significantly.
Of the 1,100 bikes stolen in the city in the first two months of this year, only about 15 percent have been recovered, he said. Experts said many thefts could be prevented if cyclists locked their bikes or used stronger locks when not riding.
Mr. Ángel, who helped found the bicycle advocacy group several years ago after a cyclist was fatally shot in Bogotá, said his organization had postponed two recent protest rallies after discussions with officials about improving bike safety. bicycles.
The group has advanced 10 recommendations, some of which reflect what the city is considering implementing in the coming months.
Mr. Galán rattled off a list of possible steps: focusing on the five neighborhoods where the most bike robberies occur; increasing police presence on high streets; installing more cameras and street lights; making it easier to report to the police; and increasing the penalty for robbery as a stronger deterrent.
Andrea María Navarrete, who was the city’s cycling manager from 2021 to 2023, said safer cycling would also help tackle the large gender disparity among cyclists and encourage more women to cycle.
“If women don’t see the risk in infrastructure, that means everyone will enjoy it,” she said.
Mr Galán promised to build on the city’s achievements in mobility to become “the bicycle capital of the world”.
“I know a lot of people will criticize that saying, ‘With so much insecurity, how can you say that?’ he added. “It’s true: we have security problems that we’re trying to solve. And we need to continue to expand bike paths and bike lanes so people can get around. This city has a very special connection to cycling.”
Simon Posada contributed to the report.
