Every year on September 22, cities around the world mark World Car Free Day. It’s not a date that gets much attention in our part of the world, but the idea is easy simple: for one day, motorists are encouraged to leave their cars at home and choose non‑motorized ways of getting around such as cycling, skating, walking. The aim is straightforward: cut down on vehicular emissions, a major driver of urban air pollution.
The World Carfree Network describes the day as an opportunity to see and feel what a city is like without cars dominating the streets. From a well-being perspective, it’s also an invitation to reclaim roads for people: to walk, to host street festivals and picnics, to try creative events like alternative‑energy car races in Budapest, sporting events in Kigali, or even horse races in São Paulo. At home in Kathmandu Valley, every Saturday afternoon, a stretch of road in Hadigaun is closed to vehicles, transforming into a lively street event. Families gather to enjoy local food, children play games, and visitors take in a mix of entertainment and community life. It’s a reminder that even in traffic‑choked cities, we can create pockets of space where people, not cars, set the rhythm. For a few hours, the rhythm shifts away from engines and horns, toward laughter and conversation.
More importantly, while it is tempting to linger on the inspiring examples of Car Free Day, it would be myopic on our part to lose sight of its deeper purpose: nudging everyday people toward walking or cycling and persuading decision-makers to invest in mass-transit infrastructure. In practice, walking, as a daily mode of transport, has its limits. Expanding mass transportation requires more than good intentions. It demands political will, an economy stable enough to reassure investors, and economic viability. That’s why the bicycle so often gets cast as the panacea for urban pollution.
Love and hate relationship with bicycles
Bicycles are often praised for being clean, accessible, and deceptively simple. But there is a world of difference between cycling as a weekend leisure activity and relying on it as your primary mode of transport. I rode a bicycle across Kathmandu and Lalitpur for seven years—starting in grade 11 and continuing through my undergraduate degree. That long-stolen bike saved me lunch money, and for that, I am grateful. But let me be honest that those seven years were not inspired by a love for cycling or a noble desire to reduce air pollution. They were born out of necessity to save every rupee after my father passed away in grade 11.
In many ways, the bicycle became a physical manifestation of resilience. But I hated it every single day. Not metaphorically—literally. The chain came off the axle so often it felt like a ritual. I would crouch by the roadside, hands blackened with grease, then walk into class with stained palms. It was not just inconvenient, it was humiliating. Especially on exam days, when time and composure were already in short supply.
To add to the woes, the probability of physical harm to cyclists in Kathmandu is equally worrisome. At least six times in those seven years, I had the fortune of landing in a car’s bonnet because in Kathmandu, every day cyclists are treated like intrusions. I landed on the bonnet of a car six times—yes, six—because drivers simply do not register bicycles as “legitimate vehicles”. Unfortunately, in each case, the first concern was not whether I was injured, but whether the car had a dent. One driver even told me the repair would cost more than my entire bike. The probability of physical harm to cyclists in Kathmandu as opposed to bike and car drivers could be a relevant topic for statistical and epidemiological analysis. However, it is more of a behavioral issue. Generations of social hierarchy have conditioned people to believe that a “poor cyclist’s wellbeing” is secondary to a scratch on a four-wheeler.
Unfortunately, this absurdity does not stop on the streets. I could not believe my ears when a college administrator made absurd remarks about my parked bicycle. I was asked, “Couldn’t your parents afford a motorbike?” But I do not blame the person entirely because the parking lot was filled with bikes purchased from their parents’ money, whereas my average-looking cycle stood in all its unsung glory alone in one corner. Similarly, it was no surprise that a mother’s friend once expressed disbelief that I cycled, given my father’s former position in the bureaucracy. I suppose it was my misfortune not to inherit a motorbike along with his legacy.
The last day I cycled, I crashed into a car that stopped abruptly in front of me. My bike was wrecked. I was shaken. And instead of compensation or concern, I was forced to hand over my watch to the driver, a payment for a collision that was not my fault. That moment broke something in me. I was stripped of dignity. As Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee argue in Good Economics for Hard Times, a fulfilling life requires far more than material well-being; it needs “the respect of the community…dignity, lightness, pleasure”. Faced with a choice between a bicycle that offered free ride and my human desire to live a dignified life, I chose dignity. I never rode a bicycle again.
The aspiration called “car”
In Nepali society, what carries more dignity—owning a car or riding a cycle? Unless the cycle is a carbon-fiber masterpiece, priced in six figures and flaunted by Kathmandu’s cycling elite, the answer seems obvious: the car. I belong to an aspirational middle class of an emerging economy, where the dream of owning a four-wheeler often outweighs the warning signs flashing from the pollution index. Except for the cycling elites, for whom cycles are a romanticized act of environmentalism, for majority of commoners owning a car is a big dream. Environmentalism, too, has class after all.
So here I am, on Car Free Day, in a city still trying to figure out sustainable mobility, and I find myself dreaming about a car more than ever. This is not to say I am against bicycles. We absolutely have to save our cities from becoming suffocating vaping chambers. But what my seven years of grease-stained hands and roadside and social humiliations seem to suggest is that real cycling advocacy may have less to do with painted lanes and more with painted perceptions. We’ve spent years debating where to draw the lines—bike lanes, traffic zones, pedestrian corridors. But the more urgent lines are the ones drawn in people’s minds. And no amount of urban planning can erase that stigma unless we confront it directly.
Painted lanes offer visibility. Painted perceptions offer dignity. The former is technical. The latter is cultural. And until we redraw the mental maps that equate motorbikes with masculinity, cars with success, and bicycles with failure, our advocacy will remain cosmetic. True cycling advocacy means shifting the gaze not just the gear. More importantly for me until dignity rides on two wheel of a cycle, not just four, Car Free Day will remain symbolic. Happy World Car Free day.
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