Cycling in the pandemic

A coronavirus vaccine has hit the market… but so far, it’s approved only for dogs.

Our vet is back doing house calls, so my dogs got their annual booster shots on schedule yesterday, in time for the peak of summer.

But the price has gone up for the complete shots, because now the package includes vaccination against coronavirus.

As we know, dogs and cats in other countries have been infected with COVID-19 by their humans.

The vet’s clinic is located on a main city road that has not been placed under lockdown, unlike other clinics inside shopping malls and gated subdivisions. In the first weeks of the enhanced community quarantine, the veterinary clinic was inundated with emergency cases.

He says if a coronavirus vaccine can be quickly developed for animals, it can be done for humans. Let’s hope he’s right. These days we clutch at any piece of good news.

The vet drives his own car when making house calls. Veterinarians have special quarantine passes so no one stopped him on his way to my house.

But the majority of the population must comply with restrictions on mobility. Many are left with no choice but to walk to public markets and supermarkets. For many, this can mean a walk of a kilometer in the pounding summer heat. Walking home carrying a few kilos of groceries, meat, fish and other fresh food items is even harder.

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One sector that has benefited from such inconvenience is the bicycle business.

Under the latest creature of the pandemic, a “modified enhanced community quarantine,” mass transportation services remain suspended, and travel restrictions are still in place in Metro Manila and Laguna. 

So demand has spiked for bicycles. And so have prices. Pre-COVID, you could get low-end bicycles at prices ranging from P2,500 to P5,000. These days, prices have risen by at least 50 percent. For sure, there’s a similar price spike for top-of-the-line bicycles.

With travel and mass transport restrictions likely to remain in place for months, bicycle use could continue going up. Especially if fuel prices start rising, and Metro Manila inches back to its infernal traffic jams.

Just in time for the easing of the community quarantine in many areas, fuel prices jumped by a hefty P2 per liter yesterday.

Oh well… business is business. The revenue-strapped national government has just imposed another 10 percent tariff on petrol imports.

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Increased bicycle use is just fine with cycling enthusiast Gregorio Larrazabal. Yes, that’s the same Goyo Larrazabal, formerly of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

He’s also the organizer of the Terry Larrazabal Bike Festival, named after his late father who was also an advocate of cycling for health, the environment and sustainable living. Launched in 2002, the bike fest is tentatively scheduled in Ormoc City this Sept. 20. On Facebook as of the latest post, 815 people had signified “interest” in the bike fest while 95 said they were going.

When Goyo Larrazabal was a Comelec commissioner, he regularly cycled his way to work at the poll body’s main office in Manila.

Facing “The Chiefs” last Monday on Cignal TV’s One News, he admitted that his experience showed the challenges faced by cycling enthusiasts in this country.

He would arrive energized but sweating at the office, he recalled, so of course he needed a place to freshen up and change. At the start, the air pollution also sickened him. And so, long before Taal Volcano’s ashfall and the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, Larrazabal was already wearing face masks.

Air pollution, the lack of bicycle lanes, and the difficulty of finding parking slots dedicated to bicycles are just among the challenges faced by cycling enthusiasts in our country. In our newspaper office, where there are some employees who ride their bikes to work, they park the bicycles inside the newsroom.

Without special parking areas, ideally beside the posts of security guards, there’s a possibility – especially during quarantines and lockdowns – that bicycles will be stolen.

Bicycles can be enormously pricey. Never mind the artist-enhanced bicycles of cancer survivor Lance Armstrong or the bikes plated with 24-karat gold, made of chrome or encrusted with precious gems and Swarovski crystals. The Italian-made Nevi Spinas road bike with a titanium frame goes for about $17,530 (over P880,000).

On Lazada yesterday, a Rotwild All-Mountain bike was being offered for P60,000.

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Larrazabal swears his bicycle is not top of the line. And he stresses that if the distance between home and office is too great or the cycling infrastructure is inadequate, biking is not for you.

EDSA, he stresses, is out of the question for cyclists. So is the South Luzon Expressway, for those who live, for example, in Laguna and work in Makati or Manila.

Folding bicycles may be brought into the light rail coaches. This can be easier now that physical distancing will be strictly enforced on the trains.

A major challenge, says Larrazabal, is developing a cycling culture to promote public health and improve air quality.

There is such a culture in the world’s sustainable cities. I saw this in the advanced economies of Europe as well as in countries such as New Zealand. Some companies in the US offer incentives for employees to ride a bicycle to work, such as free lunch and bike purchase plans.

Despite my best efforts when I was a kid, I never learned to ride a bicycle. But I can see the merits of cycling in the age of climate change.

This can be a chicken-and-egg thing: do we ride a bicycle to help reduce air pollution, or do we wait for air quality to improve before we start cycling?

Perhaps the quarantine can compel more Filipinos to become cyclists. It can be an upside of this pandemic.