I’ve been commuting to work by bicycle for about three months now: not a very long time (my wife has been doing it for about twelve years), but long enough that I’ve thought quite a bit about what I gain and lose by using two wheels instead of four for my daily trip.
While I’m not a bicycle commuting evangelist, most of my co-workers know that I bike and a few have asked the usual questions: Isn’t it dangerous? What about the winter? What about the rain? My answers tend to be brief: it’s probably safer than driving, your personal furnace gets stoked after about a mile, and once you reach the soaking point you really can’t get any wetter. But of course, there’s more to it than that. There are a lot of clear tangible benefits, quite a few intangibles, and some tradeoffs involved in biking to work.
The tangibles
Saving money
I park for free in the ramp at my building, don’t pay for gas, and my maintenance costs are quite low.
I spent about $300 on my “good” bike three years ago, and $42 on an old 10-speed last weekend. Even with accessories–bike rack, lights and reflectors, helmet, some wicking shirts–and necessary items–tubes, tires, chain and gear lubricant–I’d have trouble spending as much on my bike in a year as a car payment or visit to the auto mechanic would cost in a month. Even a bus pass costs a little more than keeping a bicycle in good repair.
I’m not car-free by any means: I still use the car for groceries (though I’ve done the weekly shopping by bike, and occasional errands on the way home), and for longer trips. But commuting by bike has greatly reduced my car usage; I fill the tank once a month at the most.
Environmental impact
If you’re concerned about your impact on the environment, bicycling is a great way to reduce your footprint. My bike produces no noxious fumes, runs on oatmeal and noodle soup most days, and had a much lower production cost than even the smallest car. And unlike an old car, which degrades in its efficiency and cleanliness with time, the 36-year-old bike I’ve been riding this week is no candidate for “cash for clunkers”: with a little love, it’s as good as the day it rolled out of the factory in Manitoba. I’m not going to solve global warming or acid rain with my green Sekine, but I’m at least not contributing to the problem.
Efficiency
A bicycle is an incredibly efficient machine, especially when compared to a car. One of my bikes weighs a little more than I do; the other weighs a little less. On both, I’m expending very little energy to move a combined weight of about three hundred pounds, directly burning no fossil fuels; going down hill, I can cover a whole lot of ground at almost zero cost. Stopped at a traffic light, an idling bicycle expends no energy; indeed, since that’s when I take a sip of coffee, it’s a chance to refuel.
Compare that to a car, which weighs many times more than I do. Most of the energy put into making it go is spent moving its own bulk; if I’m the only passenger, the waste is phenomenal. Even if I’ve got the car loaded down with passengers and cargo, I’m wasting fuel. And when I’m idling, I’m burning fuel for nothing. Even if you have money to burn, and are a global-warming skeptic, you have to admire the bicycle’s efficiency.
Health and fitness
It’s hard to find time to exercise. But it’s easy to get exercise if one of the things I have to do every day–get myself to and from work–involves some exertion. In the time I’ve been biking, I’ve dropped two inches off my waistline and find that I sleep better, don’t get winded going up and down stairs, and generally feel good. The first couple weeks were exhausting, but now I find myself feeling off kilter if I don’t get my 16-mile round trip.
Intangibles
Connection to geography
I used to commute by car, mostly on the highway; I honestly have no idea what I passed, because all I saw was blacktop and other cars. And for a while I commuted by car the length of Lake Street, which gave me a better sense of my city’s geography, but little opportunity to stop and look around.
On a bike, I move a lot slower, averaging about 12 miles per hour, and I can take stock of my route and its place in the city. I look up and down the intersections and see things from a new perspective; I’m connecting the dots into a much more nuanced mesh of locations. And if I’m moved to pause and admire the Mississippi River gorge, the houses along Summit Avenue, the St. Paul Cathedral, the Civil War memorial, or the downtown parks, I can do so easily and without impeding traffic.
I also am intimately aware of topography and geology as never before. Did you know that the terrain rises steadily from the Mississippi to Cathedral Hill, and plunges quite steeply to the river again? In a car you wouldn’t notice the slope, but on a bike you certainly do. The contours of the Earth shape my ride, and dictate my route decisions: shave a few minutes with the steep climb up Dayton, or take the leisurely route around Mississippi Boulevard? Tackle the big hills on Marshall Avenue for a shorter ride, or take the long way around on Summit’s flatter surfaces? In a car, the concerns tend to be traffic and construction; on a bike, things are a lot more fundamental.
Connection to climate
When it rains, I get wet. When it snows, I get cold. When it’s hot, I get sweaty. The weather has become a big part of my day. I appreciate balmy autumn days, and I look at the coming cold as a challenge to be met with courage and stamina. I no longer move between controlled climates; I have to face the climate that Minnesota’s fickle weather throws at me. It makes me much more aware of weather patterns, subtle hints of changes in the season, and how terribly wrong the weather man can be.
Connection to people
On a bike, you’re not anonymous. People can see you. You make eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists, even motorists. There’s not a lot of chit-chat in the bike lane on Summit Avenue, but I recognize the people who ride the same routine as I do. And I find that smiles, nods, and friendly gestures are the normal means of communication.
Cars are all about anonymity. It’s hard to see drivers; we identify people by their steel-and-plastic boxes, not by their hair, eyes, clothes, or stature. It’s hard to judge even the gender and age of the person in the next car. And communication between motorists tends to be pretty poor: honking horns, flashing lights, and decidedly unfriendly gestures. On a bike, I’m much less likely to make a rude gesture because you can see me; in a car, I can swear at the top of my lungs and make all sorts of wild gesticulations. I can also misbehave with impunity in a car, because you’ll only see my car; while there are certainly aggressive and discourteous cyclists, they’re rarer because they can’t lurk behind anonymity.
Mental wholeness
You can’t multi-task on a bike. (Well, maybe you can, but I can’t.) To commute safely on city streets, you need to engage all your senses, be fully aware of your surroundings at all times, and keep your balance as well. You need to be here, now. There’s not much space for daydreaming or worrying.
And that can be a huge relief. We seldom live here, now; we more typically live in the future or the past, in some elsewhere unconnected to where our bodies are actually located. Bicycling clears away the cobwebs and focuses the mind on the task at hand: staying in the lane, watching for hazards, and keeping the pedals moving. I suppose it’s possible for a cyclist to fall asleep at the handlebars, but it’s much less likely than for a motorist to doze off at the wheel.
Sense of accomplishment
My work life is a combination of quiet desperation and death by a thousand cuts: looming deadlines, incomplete requirements, failed ideas, a bug list that seems to grow by two for every one that I squash. And at home there’s the laundry, the dishes, the hundred dramas of two eight-year-old boys. Not that it’s all grim, of course: I have a wonderful family, smart and funny co-workers, and some room for creativity and exploration in my work. But on balance, life can be exhausting and dispiriting many days.
But when my day starts with a white-knuckle plunge down Cathedral Hill, and ends with an epic climb back up that hill and another wild ride down Marshall Avenue to the Mississippi, I know that I’m guaranteed a peak moment or two. If it’s raining, snowing, cold, or windy, that much the better: for an hour a day, I can be intrepid and brave, undaunted by the elements and a master of the road. It may be a small and inconsequential heroism, but it’s still heroism.
Commuting by car, in contrast, is more of an endurance test. At the mercy of traffic and construction, locked into a climate-controlled box, the best you can claim is to have survived.
Fun
This is really the reason I commute by bicycle: it’s fun. I once heard a story on the radio about adults who were learning to ride bikes–many came from countries where bicycling was considered a sign of low social status, and so they had avoided bikes as children–and one woman commented that it was just like flying. And it is: there you are, moving under your own power with nothing but a bike frame between you and the ground, and you might as well be airborne.
Why do kids ride bikes, after all? Freedom, adventure, fun. My kids can spend hours just circling the block, riding with their feet off the pedals or their hands in the air, seeing how fast they can go or how quickly they can stop. And what better reason to do anything than just plain fun?
Tradeoffs
Sure, there are tradeoffs. My commute takes longer than it would by car, and about as long as by bus. There are risks–a bicycle is much more exposed to hazards on the road than a car is, and is obviously going to lose in a tangle with anything motorized. And riding in the heat, cold or rain can be uncomfortable, even if sometimes exhilarating: you can’t expect perfect comfort on a bike.
Still, I’m willing to accept the tradeoffs. They’re a small price to pay for everything else that I get from my bicycle.
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Trudge164
the traveler
S-Hell
Gail Walter
Maria Stuart
Greg Correll
Salon.com
Comments
I keep thinking about bicycle commuting, but the roads I would have to ride on are pretty hairy and don't have bike lanes or wide shoulders.
How bike friendly are Minneapolis drivers?
I found that one of the down sides of bike commuting was the sheer amount of time it took to get ready for the next day. Riding clothes and shoes have to be dried, raingear dried and packed, lunch packed, business clothes for the day packed, tire pressure checked, chain lubed, water bottle filled, etc., etc. In my experience all of that took about an average of 45 minutes, longer in the winter. Perhaps I was just slow, but there definitely is some overhead time.
Another problem is that you need to work at a place that has showers, if your commute is of any significant distance.
The other down side is injuries. In the years I commuted to work, I hit the pavement twice, once with sufficient force to sand off a large patch of skin on my leg, which then became infected, and I ended up going to the hospital every day for a week for IV antibiotics. Injuries are rare events, but they do happen.
One interesting development in biking is the electric bike. I recently saw an electric bike made by the Giant company. It is actually an electric-assist bike -- you pedal, and the battery power helps you out. They call it a "hybrid." It could be great for people like me, with arthritis or some other physical condition that would make riding an ordinary bike difficult. And this Giant bike has an amazing range -- something like 70 miles on the lower power setting. I have read up on it, and the reviews are very positive.
@Existence of Contradiction: Minneapolis and St. Paul drivers seem pretty decent to bikers on the whole; at least on the streets I take, where there's a good cyclist presence, they share the road. The only times I have trouble are leaving downtown St. Paul during hockey games, when there are lots of people from outside the urban core driving around who aren't used to city streets (though it's the pedestrians tottering around in the crosswalk trying to figure out the crossing signals who pose the biggest threat).
I expect some challenges when there's a big snow, though both cities do a good job of clearing the main roads. The Summit Ave bike lane is right on the street, which is usually cleared curb to curb, but some of the side roads are likely to be tricky. I'm looking at studded tires for those trips.
Goggles are a must-have for the winter; there's nothing worse than a stinging wind in the face and tearing up so you can't see where you're going. Nothing fancy--this isn't Olympic downhill slalom--but enough to block the wind.
Good luck giving bicycle commuting a try; I've found that going with the flow of traffic, even on a busy street, is generally safe: being hit from behind, especially if you're well-lit and decked out in reflective gear, is less likely than being hit by a turning car or colliding with someone coming out of a lot or ramp.
One of my co-workers at my last job had an electric assist bike; it looked pretty neat. In Minnesota, where the terrain is pretty flat, it seems like overkill, but I'd certainly consider one if I had more hills to climb.
@BubberMiley: You're right, the Sekine probably weighs in close to fifty pounds if that. My Raleigh hybrid is a tank, and I definitely feel the difference going uphill. I pack pretty light, so it's probably more like 200-220 lbs of commuting mass on a Sekine day and closer to 300 if I've got the Raleigh loaded down with weekly clothes.
You don't ride a lot on West River Road in Minneapolis then, do you? It's two lanes, winding, meandering, relatively slow but when I drove it to work for a few months I was almost guaranteed a more stressful start to the day than if I had contended with high-speed bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic. Because of the bikes, of course. The ones who ignore the wide, paved bike path off the street and ride nearly in the middle of the traffic lane; who ride side-by-side in pairs or larger groups, one-handed, chatting.
Several times each trip I would have to follow a bike, at the speed it set, waiting for oncoming traffic to allow me to pass, the biker oblivious, making no effort to move closer to the curb.
I can’t disagree with anything you say about bike commuting. I wonder how aware you are, though, of the attitude of arrogant self-righteousness that seems to be pervasive among bike commuters? I mean that attitude that lets them ignore the bike path and block traffic on narrow roads, to ignore traffic laws, adopting the pedestrian role when it suits them, the vehicle role when that’s better.
My brother tells me that cars used to aim for him when he rode to the University and that doesn’t surprise me. I sometimes wish I could adopt a strong disrespect for human life – or at least have as little respect for bikers as they seem to have for everyone not on two wheels.
And I’ve only ever driven that hill at the east end of Summit – which I think is actually Ramsey or Smith - the street that would be Summit if Summit didn't turn north - and that’s hard to miss even in the comfortably encapsulated oblivion of a car.
The bike commuters that I encounter every day generally don't fall into that arrogant category; they stick to bike trails when they're available, share the road with all its users, and are courteous members of the traffic. I really think that the arrogant cyclists are a small minority, and it's unfortunate that they're so visible that all cyclists are tarred with that brush. (I'm also not entirely convinced they're commuters, properly understood, but I've never asked them where they're going.)
The hill I take is Kellogg Ave., past the Cathedral and the History Center; that's wild enough a ride for me. I once considered the steep hill on Smith Street, and thought better of it; even in a car, that one is of almost San Francisco proportions--I admire the people I see walking it.
http://open.salon.com/blog/sueinaz/2009/11/12/200_cows_and_1_pony_bike_ride_through_arizona
As an on and off member of the "spandex mafia", I want to respond to nerd cred with some other ways to interpret the actions of the cyclists he's critical of, but that may deserve a post of its own. Good post, Michael!
@Mary-Anndroid: LA is a motorist's "paradise" (meaning a hell that motorists have built for themselves). I'm glad to live someplace where the bicycling and transit infrastructures are relatively good. Our sprawl-lite burbs aren't great for bikes, but they can't compare to LA's mile-wide pavement. Smart leadership is critical.
@sueinez: Good luck with the commute! The view from a bike seat is the best, isn't it?
Lots of good points are raised in the comments too. As to whether it's safe to bike in snow and ice, well, it's all relative, and compared to driving a car in snow and ice, there's no contest. I've been biking through Canadian winters for the past thirty years, and though I've occasionally slid off track, my bike has not yet crushed a bus shelter, smashed a car, or flattened any pedestrians. A car, on the other hand, is dangerous enough in the best of times, but an unholy terror on snow and ice. Clearly the more people start biking in winter, the safer our cities will be.
In the winter and the dark, spend the money to stay warm and be visible. Fenders and good booties will go a long way to keeping yourself comfortable. I highly recommend a helmet mounted light (not a flashing one) as it allows for better 'eye contact' as you approach intersections.
I have been debating posting my most recent very bad bike commuting experience on OS. I am interested in hearing a wider range of opinions than from my group of co-workers and cycling friends, although, having read hundreds of reader generated comments on Salon, CBC, and Vancouver Sun across several cycling related articles, maybe I don't. Unfortunately, it seems that there are the same proportion of jerks on bikes as there are in cars.
http://www.momentumplanet.com/cities/los-angeles
You're right. They're the ones I remember. (And I was grouchy this morning when I commented. Sorry if I took it out on you!) There does seem to be an especially aggressive breed of riders between the park and Lake St. sometimes. Thanks for using the path - it seems like a very good one especially since the re-do.
@Karin Greenberg: the sweatiness is a hazard, but can actually be avoided by not riding too hard, or so I'm told. Check out http://letsgorideabike.wordpress.com/ for tips on biking and staying presentable.
@Bart Hawkins Kreps: snow, ice, and cars are a bad mix. If I wipe out on my bike in the snow, I've got a short fall into the slush. If a car wipes out in the snow, well, I've seen that (been in that!), and it's not good for anyone nearby.
@nerd cred: No hard feelings. I'll gladly use a bike path or lane when one is available, and wish there were more. But in the places where no bike lane is available--like my downhill rides on Kellogg and Marshall--then I take my place in traffic and do my best to either keep or be passable. Bikes on sidewalks are a bad idea; I do ride the sidewalk up Kellogg, because I don't want cars piling up behind me at 6mph and there are few if any pedestrians in that highway-like stretch, but that's the only exception I'll make; if there were a bike lane I'd take it.
@Scott Christian: Cars are (relatively) safe for their occupants, not so much for everything around them. That becomes abundantly clear the more of them we try to pack onto our roads. If bicycle commuting served only to reduce the number of cars on the roads, it would be a great thing.
I've been doing it for years !!
Good for the soul !!!
Drivers in the Twin Cities are mostly courteous, but there's always that small minority of drivers who want to let you know that you don't belong on the streets, despite Minnesota statue 169.222 that clearly states bikes are supposed to be ridden on the streets alongside regular traffic.
I ride all year long. The cold isn't as much of an obstacle as the ice or the snow, and when it's 20 below, I'll just bike to the bus station.
Winter was a pain in other ways. Seconding what a previous poster said, it took forever to dress for cold weather. Put on layers of clothes, gloves, foot covers, face masks, then undress and shower at work, put the whole mess on again in the afternoon, and undress at home. I figure about an hour each day of putting clothes on and taking them off.
Committed commuting is not all that cheap. Good cycling clothes that last in bad weather are not inexpensive. Sloppy weather is hard on the bikes. Good lights for night riding are costly or eat batteries. You eat more. And since most committed commuters tend to be fitness nuts, the food is expensive. I needed an extra 500 calories a day, which probably cost about $2 per day, more than I would have spent on gas each day for my fuel efficient car.
Another downside: every season had its road hazards: spring and summer, various seed pods, nuts, sticks, crabapples, gravel; fall, slippery leaves and more nuts and acorns; winter, ice, snow. Road kill year 'round.
I listened to a radio on a head set, but rode with the ear bud in the right ear only so I could hear traffic. I had a rear view mirror and lots of red flashing lights and reflective tape.
I loved my ride. Some mornings it was hard to start, but once on the road, it was glorious. So many beautiful sunrises. Gorgeous flowers in people's yards, lights at holiday time. There were days when the endorphins kicked in and riding felt almost too good to endure. Most people were nice, I was a thoughtful cyclist and had few unkind encounters. I have recently retired, but still ride 100+ per week, along with other vigorous exercise. Yes, I'm well over 60 and can still do that! There is definitely a payoff for the commitment.