Shek's Footprint

These are some pictures from my ride in a cycle rickshaw from Bandel to Chinsura in the Hooghly district of West Bengal. Bandel and Chinsura are suburbs of Kolkatta. They are poorer suburbs with a lot of history built around the banks of river Ganga. A commuter rail provides transportation to Kolkatta. The cycle rickshaws and auto-rickshaws provide transportation from the train stations. There are busses but are very unreliable. 

The cycle rickshaws are modified roadsters. They are comfortable for two people. Some are modified with facing seats for school children. There are no gears. The rear sprocket seems to be a larger one. The front sprocket looked like a 42-48 teeth.

The slide show has pictures of people in various forms of cycling around. The particular day this picture was taken was the morning of a holiday. Hence the crowd appears to be slim. There are pictures of multiple people on a bike, a cargo trike etc. 

A few things to notice: no helmets, no bike lanes, no stop lights and much more. All movement, pedestrian to cars to large trucks happen in a sort of mini critical masses.

The best way to reduce a large expense is to cut down one of the largest causes. This is a law and I can not remember who said it. It works in finances and it works with people’s carbon footprint, and sometimes both.

If a person was to improve his finances, he would achieve the goal faster if he stopped spending on the largest ticket item, say car related, than he would if he was to go frugal on smaller things like drying clothes on the clothes rack and not the drier. When I started to read personal finance blogs, I was motivated to cut down on these small expenses: buy food in bulk, drive less, eat out less, buy generic etc. It barely caused a dent in my expenses and my savings barely went up. It was frustrating. I was restricted from doing the things I like and there were not enough savings to show for it.

Similarly, when I set on the path of reducing my carbon footprint, the suggestions floating around in the web were the high-effort-low-impact ones. I stopped using disposable plastic bottles, used the water heater only half an hour every other day, said no to Styrofoam and looked up information on offsetting carbon. The largest impact, to both, my personal finances and my carbon footprint were when I sold my car. All I had to do was ride my bike everywhere. My savings have gone up, my carbon footprint has shrunk and I have lost weight without even trying. Win Win. I did not even have to invest in high capital initiatives like solar panels. My living in a small apartment lets me not have energy wastage like yard maintenance and cooling costs that most single family homes are plagued with.

The primary reason Shek’s Footprint talks about bicycle advocacy more than about recycling and alternative fuels is that bicycling takes a large chunk out of the footprint in one swift go. It is the rational and healthy way of getting around. Therefore, the million dollar question is: how do I get other people to adopt this idea? The gridlock of political awareness of bicycling and subjective safety of bicycling in people’s minds prevents more people to discover this way of life. In several conversations with bicycle advocate David Hembrow (link), I have come to the conclusion that for real impact towards citizen’s personal finances and health, the government needs to realize that bicycling is the future of daily commute. In my recent conversations with Matt Uhrig from Bikejax (link), I have realized that talking about sharrows (wikipedia link) and urban trails is like putting band-aid on a large wound. It raises awareness but does not much for subjective safety of the people.

To do it right, like these guys did (link), one must look at Netherland’s bicycle infrastructure. Till then the gridlock lives and it will take a lot of courage on the people’s part to get out and try this way of life. They are the true heros.

Until the housing bubble burst of 2007, for most people, the most expensive depreciating asset that money could buy, or rather borrow, was a car. I am not referring to the people that own boats, priuses and exotic cars. When you did get tired of driving the same car, you went to the dealer and haggled with the price of your trade-in. If the Salesman and the Finance Manager played their cards right, you walked out feeling that you got more for your old car than it was worth and the happy dealers went home selling you an overpriced car. Both parties were happy and the vicious cycle of car ownership, maintenance, blood-sucking car insurance payments and sanctimonious petrol buying continued.

Since the housing buble burst, we have come to know a new term called sub-prime. The neat little unassuming term makes drowning home ownership look like a minor technicality. The car-sale industry uses a different term to keep our minds off the obvious problem that cars often depreciate faster than they can be paid for. Upside-down. Another little unassuming term. How about we all call the bull shit and tell people that these assets, the pillars of North America’s economy are usually worth less than money owed on them?

To avoid people from shying away from monster car-loan banks like GMAC, dealers politely explain the new car owner that he is ‘upside-down’ on his old car, so the difference will be effortlessly tacked on to the purchase price of his new car. The not-so-lucky-new-car-owner takes it with a pinch of salt, grabs the keys to his new car, sub-prime from day one and goes into a deeper circle of more debt than equity.

I ended my debt today. CarMax took my car for a decent retail price that was about one thousand dollars more than I had expected. I paid the difference between the retail and the loan remainder and walked off the parking lot completely and absolutely car free. That means, no payments, no insurance, no gas, no maintenance, no new tires, no road rage and above all, complete independence from this addiction.