20
Chapter 2
NO EXCUSES, BIKE TO WORK
pedestrians to think about, and, very often, intersections where you suddenly have to mix with cars, driven by folks who really aren’t expecting you to cross in front of them. The bottom line is keep your eyes peeled for the unthinking and the unhinged but don’t let any of the above scare tactics prevent you from cycling to work. A sedentary lifestyle is a far greater risk to your health.
“I don’t have the time”
Cycling is truly door-to-door. No searching for a car park, an empty space or a parking meter. No getting stuck in traffic jams. Motorists tend to under-estimate the actual times car journeys take, door-to-door. Not too surprisingly, they over-estimate how long the same journey would take by bike. On a bike you can estimate your journey time to the minute and can take short-cuts not available to motorists. For Shelby Wood, a reporter with The Oregonian newspaper, and a newcomer to cycle commuting, even if cycling was slower than driving it would still be worth it: “Minute-to-minute comparisons don’t capture the intangible benefits of bike commuting, including the fact that you aren’t stuck on Interstate-5, window-to-window with a fellow motorist whose forefinger is jammed up one nostril. You just can’t get that time back.” The future for motorists is even slower speeds than today. In a one-person-one-car society just a handful of people can cause gridlock. And with population densities increasing, such bottlenecks will become more and more commonplace. Getting stuck in traffic is a huge time waster for motorists and they have to factor in lots of extra travel time if they want to get anywhere by a specific time. Andrew Burns, Edinburgh’s transport leader has warned that a 20-minute car journey in the city could take an hour by 2026. The same distance journey in 2026 by bike will take the same time as today. Or, if even better infrastructure is put in place for cyclists, cycle journey times will actually decrease.
“Rain! I hate getting wet!”
Unless you live in Seattle or Manchester, it rains a lot less times per year than you might imagine. In the UK – supposed to be a rain-sodden isle – when you cycle a daily ten mile journey, statistics say you will only be rained on once in every one hundred trips. That is three to four trips a year on a daily basis. That doesn’t mean drizzle, it’s downpours. Anyway, with modern waterproof and breathable fabrics, it’s possible to arrive at your destination in comfort in all but the fiercest of storms. Yes, even in Seattle or Manchester. You think Denmark is dry? It rains a lot there, but cycle journeys in Copenhagen still account for 40 percent of the total. Even if you travelled by car you might have to go outside at some point, risking a soaking, especially as you won’t be wearing the right kit. Wet roads are slippy for cyclists. Care is needed. Slow down. Brake early to wipe water off your wheel rims. Don’t venture into puddles, the hole could be bigger than you think. Make sure your commute bike has full fenders and, for total protection, mud-flaps, too. Bright lights are needed on really rainy days. Ride all corners gingerly but take extra care on wet leaves, and avoid turning on wet draincovers and wet painted street lines. Watch out for shiny, blueish-rainbow patches on the road. Fuel spills can take you down should you corner on them. If the weather is truly foul, make that your non-bike day. But don’t be surprised when your definition of what makes for a foul day shifts over time. You may find you start to invest in all-weather cycling kit just so you don’t have non-bike days. One of the reasons for this is getting to work on time: a downtown downpour can cause gridlock. Cyclists can beat the jams caused by rain.