Bicycle Reference Manual for Developing Countries

Preface

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Letter from the Editor

The bicycle is an intermediate technology solution to the transportation problems especially of the poor in developing countries. Unfortunately, the lower-income groups, who use the bicycle as an important means of transport, are overlooked in most transportation studies. In part this is due to a lack of information on how bicycle usage can be encouraged by transportation planners.

This Bicycle Reference Manual aims at providing transportation planners in developing countries with extensive information that would otherwise be hard to come by. It includes many suggestions on how to promote bicycle usage within transportation planning.

This manual is also meant as an aid to students who should feel encouraged to study bicycle usage in their countries. Far too few studies exist pertaining to this mode of transport. In fact, although little is known about bicycle usage and its benefits, even in regions where bicycle usage is high (Asia), the bicycle is in danger of being systematically eradicated. The first step to including the bicycle in transportation planning is gaining more information about the role of the bicycle. Different approaches on what type of studies can be undertaken have therefore been included. The bicycle deserves to be treated as a full-fledged mode of transport at learning institutions as well as by transportation planners.

As can be seen from this manual, the bicycle is popular world-wide and rightly so! The bicycle is a versatile means of transportation that increases mobility.

This part of my website could only be created with financial backing from - German Appropriate Technology Exchange.
To go to the table of contents of the manual you can either click here, or on the navigation bar link.

So keep cycling!

Barbara Gruehl Kipke
April 1991