Cycle track at MSU: What a Nobel idea, sirjee

Vadodara:The day the Nobel for chemistry was announced last October, Venki was struggling with a punctured bicycle tyre. He lugged the bicycle home on that dark rainy night. But Venkatraman Ramakrishnan enjoyed the quiet walk after the flood of congratulatory messages at the lab where he works in Cambridge.
A big fan of the cycle, Venki, 58, pushed for bicycle lanes on the M S University campus on Monday while talking to students in the physics department, where he had studied. Venki observed how MSU had two widespread campuses, including the main campus and Kala Bhavan. “We could have a bicycle lane. It costs much less than a road,” he said. “Baroda has grown like every other Indian city but cities have not been planned properly. No politician has said where Baroda will be 10-20 years from now. This is true for every Indian city. Some housing society comes up here and there. There is chaos everywhere as there is no planning with no mass transit system.” Recollecting his days at Jivraj Mehta Hall in the boys hostel, Venki said as a child, he could easily cycle or walk. “Now students move on motorcycles and some even in cars. This has shifted balance on the roads. I have a photograph of Sayajigunj in my laptop of 1980 — the same place where there is a police station now. There were only two cycles on that road. Now it is dangerous for bicycles. Even parents won’t allow their kids to move on bicycles. Imagine if all the one billion people in the country had cars,” he said. 

Source: Times of India, Ahmedabad