My name is Pinky Jha, I am a general manager of a fitness center by profession and mother of two school children. I am an endurance cyclist and the founding and current president of G3 Cycle Club Gandhinagar. It’s a club run by women for all. We conduct cycling rallies, races and several awareness programmes for school children and the general public. I regularly commute to work on my bicycle and wish to see more people do the same to make my green city even greener.
How would you describe your mission?
Normalize cycling in my city by encouraging the everyday person to get on the saddle and save the environment for posterity!!
What are the obstacles and challenges you’re facing in your city?
Everyday use of bicycles has a certain social stigma attached to it in India. My biggest challenge would be to change that attitude and educate the community on the social and economic benefits cycling can have on individuals, as well as their families. The other challenge will be to create awareness in institutions to create bicycle commuter friendly office spaces.
What are your next steps now that you are the Bicycle Mayor?
I would like to target the civic authorities here first to focus on improving the G Bikes public bicycle sharing project that I am involved in as implementing committee member. It is a huge project already implemented which needs some more momentum and push at this stage.
What can other cities learn from your city?
With my efforts over my time as Bicycle Mayor I would like to focus on the following issues.
- Popularizing g bike public bike sharing project.
- Working with schools and colleges.
- Creating cycle friendly corporate offices.
- organizing health and fitness related programmes.
If I can work with key stakeholder to achieve my goals then Gandhinagar would be a model town in India – reducing carbon footprint and bringing more smiles on the faces of general public!!
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