According to a few friends, cycling wasn’t previously a major part of Mexico City culture (not totally surprising in a massive, sprawling, 20M-person metro area with thinner 7300′-elevation air, heavy traffic, a good subway system, and moderate air pollution), but in the past five years it’s started to take off.
Bike infrastructure (including barrier-separated bike lanes) has gone up around the city, and as of 2010 there’s a major city bike share program in place, EcoBici:
I had a few chances to try it out and was impressed. A fleet of basic three-speed bikes covers the city (444 stations, 6000 bicycles, covering about 22 km^2), with bike stations densely packed every few blocks and a simple, useful app– it was easy to find a bike or bike drop-off spot pretty much anywhere I was in the city:
Signing up for EcoBici as a visitor takes a bit of work– you need to go to one of their office locations (e.g. Campeche 175 in Roma), put down a deposit, and sign a series of forms stating you have read and understand the Mexican Traffic Code, and successfully take a multiple-choice test on such tough questions as “Is it acceptable to bike through a red light?” and “Why is wearing headphones while biking risky? (a) you might not hear traffic (b) there’s no risk”
Once you’ve done that, it’s a flat-fee M$300 (about US$18) for a 1-week membership which, as in most cities with bike share programs, gives you unlimited short (<45 minute) rides as long as you drop the bike at a station at the end of each trip. You’re given an RFID card you can tap at any station to release a bike, and that’s about it.
I saw quite a few people around the city including residents riding these bikes– the easy locking and ability to take one-way trips on subway or car and complete them with bike is an advantage.
Given how much traffic there was, getting around by bike was more reasonable than I expected– some roads (even major expressways) had curblet-separated bike lanes and signals, there were lower-traffic, leafy side streets, and traffic was heavy enough in general that cars weren’t going very fast (especially in and around street markets)…
But it was certainly one of the more attention-demanding cities to ride in– a red light would typically be followed by two or three drivers running it, many 4-way intersections were uncontrolled (with cars jockeying as to who would continue through without clear right of way), and drivers packed intersections into gridlock, sometimes escaping by backing the wrong way down one-way streets or swerving out to pass on the right.
Still, what better way to see a wide range of neighborhoods and eat one’s way across a city in an afternoon?
