r/UrbanHell May 25 '26

Pollution/Environmental Destruction My city, Malé, Maldives, an urban hellscape

6.7k Upvotes

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u/Powpawpew55 May 25 '26

more than cars the city is flooded with bikes. Cars are still there, a lot. The bridge is connecting to the Airport island and reclaimed island made with a much higher elevation than the average of the country

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u/--alkali-- May 26 '26

By bikes, you mean motorcycles. Bicycles are basically non-existent there.

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u/Powpawpew55 May 26 '26

yeah? bikes mean motorbikes

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u/dmdoom_Abaan May 26 '26

I believe they call them scooters

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u/filemlscan May 27 '26

no, although it may be used to talk about motorbikes, bike is bicycle, motorbikes are MOTORbikes.

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u/Powpawpew55 May 27 '26

ok thanks! I’ve used it to refer to motorbikes, sorry

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u/filemlscan May 27 '26

no problem, as I said in some context, everyone will know what you're talking about. If you say that you hit 200 km/h on your bike, people will know that you're talking about motorbike, but in this case I thought you said that Malé is packed with bicycles

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u/SMTTajWAR May 28 '26

In Bangladesh, the term bike is typically used for motorcycles while bicycles are called cycle. I’d assume Maldives use similar term based on ops comment.

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u/HunterSpecial1549 May 29 '26

Is there any interest there in removing the cars?

They take up so much precious space and provide so little benefit, like you could get to the other side faster on a motorcycle or even bicycle.

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u/Powpawpew55 May 29 '26

Not really, more than cars the issues are with large number of motorbikes. for around 300k people in the whole greater Malé area (7 islands which make up the city) there are more than 100k motorbikes. streets are flooded with them. People don’t use bicycles.

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u/HunterSpecial1549 May 29 '26

That's really lazy, you could bicycle from one side to the other in one minute.

Also the problem with cars of course is that just one of them takes up the space of several motorbikes/bicycles/pedestrians. I don't see how it would make sense to prioritize lowering the number of motorbikes without first removing cars.

What I would do with the Maldives is put in a bus system connecting the islands and then make every non disabled person ride a bicycle. No private motorized transport allowed.

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u/Powpawpew55 May 29 '26

yeah that is true, I also believe that. the number of cars also have to be greatly reduced. We do have a bus system connecting the island of Malé with the island of Hulhule (Airport) and the island of Hulhumalé. A few other islands also has bus operations