Bicycling

Mist-Cooled Bike Paths Being Built in Qatar

Correpsondent Pascal van den Noort sends news of this project that his organization, Velo Mondial is working on in Qatar. The ruler of Qatar, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani wants to get his people riding bicycles. One of the challenges in accomplishing this goal is the fact that, for much of the year, Qatar is hotter than a blast furnace.

By Aaron Naparstek

11:30 AM EDT on August 10, 2006

Fortunately, when you’ve got a pannier full of oil money, 115 degree daytime temperatures are no big deal. The Emir hired the Rand Corporation and Rand proposed a 30 kilometer shaded, solar-powered, mist-cooled bike path. The Emir gave the green light and with no cumbersome democratic processes to get in the way the project sailed through to approval (Qatar is similar to Brooklyn like that).

It almost makes you think that if we want to start getting things done in this town, we need to replace New York City’s inefficient plutocracy with a straight-up monarchy. King Weiner anyone?

Aaron Naparstek

Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.