Hyderabad’s Active Mobility starts with its eco-friendly cycling track on ORR

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Hyderabad: Active Mobility — the practice of engaging in popular physical activities such as cycling or walking — is a mantra for the health-conscious citizens of Hyderabad.

The Hyderabad Cycling Track is one of the biggest initiatives from the city towards pioneering Active Mobility in Telangana and the country.

The Hyderabad Cycling Track along the Outer Ring Road (ORR) is one of its kind and a first in India, and second in the world after South Korea.

It is 23 km long with two stretches — 8.5 km from Nanakramguda to Telangana State Police Academy (TSPA) and 14.5 km from Kollur to Narsingi. The two stretches meet at the Narsingi access. The entire path is fully covered with solar panels, providing an all-climate roofing. It is also illuminated 24 hours along with CCTV camera monitoring. The path is 4.5 meters wide for 3-4 cycles to move easily parallelly.

The Hyderabad Cycling Track comes with multi-fold benefits.

Happiness: Cycling helps produce ‘happiness hormones’, endorphins and oxytocin, helping cyclists feel good after a long ride. Every city needs to keep its people happy and the Hyderabad Cycling Track takes care of that.

Safety: While all the city roads are potentially dangerous to ride even for professional cyclists, this cycling track will provide a safe environment for kids, women and newbie riders starting their first ride. On this track, everyone can feel safe and ride worry-free.

Commute: With a lot of buildings, societies and communities getting built in this stretch, the route will eventually be used for commuting as well. Given that the Airport metro has been announced, the cycling track will be a great addition to its route.

Taking up cycling: The track will generate a lot of interest for people to take up cycling. The route is designed to make people fall in love with cycling. This will increase the number of cyclists inside the city too.

Health: Health is a foundation for happiness and physical fitness is one of the ways to achieve it. The Hyderabad Cycling Track will keep the city residents hale and hearty by providing an exercise routine that is also enjoyable.

Tourism: The city being a melting pot of many cultures, attracts many tourists from other states and across the world. The Hyderabad Cycling Track will be a valuable addition to boost tourism in the city and Telangana.

Sustainability: The track is one of the most eco-friendly projects since the track generates about 16MW from solar energy, which is about Rs 2 crores per month. The project track was completed with less than Rs 100 crores.

Overall, The Hyderabad Cycling Track is a success story and a hit among the residents of Cyberabad, thanks to the efficient work by the Telagnana government, especially MAUD and Industries and IT minister KT Rama Rao; the vibrant cycling community of Hyderabad who started Hyderabad’s cycling revolution; and KMV Spaces, whose quality output made the track possible.

Feedback from the cyclists on the track has been overwhelmingly positive since they believe that they are being recognised by the city and now have a safe place to move. This has given hope for cyclists that there will be eventually a Compressed Bicycle Lanes Network in the city in future.

The Hyderabad Cycling Track has given hope to everyone that the city will achieve 100 per cent Active Mobility in the future and the next generations of kids and grandkids will be able to completely switch to cycling for their daily commute.

Article by-

Bicycle Mayor of Hyderabad, Santhana Selvan