“Cycling … is Not Going to Occur Naturally”: A View on the Research Agenda for Bicycle Mobility in Urban South Africa

Abstract

Although drafting might be an effective bicycle racing practice, closely following someone else’s lead is not necessarily the best course of action when it comes to bicycle planning – particularly in emerging or starter cycling cities that have dramatically different complexities, contexts, and urban forms, to the exemplars of the literature. This contribution reflects on the knowledge gaps, policy transfer concerns, and most pressing research needs in South African cities, if the institutional and activist promotion of everyday cycling is to achieve its objectives. From the outset, a better understanding of the role played by past and current inequity on cycling acceptability is required. A mindful examination of who promotes cycling, to whom, and how, is key: a narrative that seems shaming, coercive, or a knowing better, is an unwise basis from which to redirect our automobile trajectory.