When I first started to commute by bicycle to and from work there were three main factors that help motivate me to get out on the road and out from behind a wheel.
You see, everyone needs motivation to begin something new. It doesn’t matter how insignificant the task or how inconsequential the benefit is going to be to the doer, they do need a reason to stop whatever it is they are doing to begin to do something new. It is kind of like one of Newton’s laws of physics applied to.
For me, the forces that propelled me into bike commuting were my desire to get into shape, my need to save money, and a desire to improve the environment.
The distance for me from my door to work is 11.2 miles according to estimates on several online mapping applications. Riding 5 days a week would bring my total mileage up to 112 miles per week. If I work 48 out of the 52 weeks in a year I will pedal more than 5300 miles in a year just on bike commuting alone. That is a lot of exercise.
To put 5300 miles into perspective it is more than riding on my bike from my native San Diego, California to Charleston, South Carolina and back to San Diego. It represents around 400 hours of exercise – or about 66 minutes per day for the whole year.
In addition to all the benefits of normal cardiovascular exercise, bike commuting also has the added benefit of building lean muscle, improving flexibility, strengthens the core, and serves as a very low impact form of exercise.
The exercise benefits of biking was definitely my first reason to use pedal power to get to work, but the second one is probably just as important – bike commuting saves money.
Driving a care has tons and tons of expenses when you think about. You have gas costs that are never ending and will probably only go up and up in the future. Then there is the cost of insurance which can be vary in cost depending on factors like your age, sex, marital status, and accident history. As a 20 something male my insurance was anything but cheap. Then there are oil changes, and tires, and car washes. And that is just the reoccurring costs.
You also have to consider the purchase price of cars and the cost of wear on tear in terms of repairs and overall car value. Cars are very expensive!
Bike are not expensive. Even if you go out and buy a very good $2000-$3000 bike chances are it will last you the rest of your life if you take car of it. Can the same be said of a similarly priced car? I think not.
Then you still have to consider the costs of things like tires and maintenance on the bike in addition to the cost of clothes to ride in. But that will only amount to one hundred or two hundred dollars a year at the most. Some people I know spend that much on gas in a single month!
In all, I calculated that commuting by bike will save me over $100 a month in traveling expenses.
Strangely enough, many things that save people money also reduce the impact of those same people on the environment around them. According to one carbon calculator, by cutting out 5300 miles of driving from my life I will eliminate 1.8 tons of carbon emissions per year.
All of these factors played some role in getting me out of a car and onto a bike. I wanted to improve my overall health by increasing the amount of exercise I receive each day. I also wanted to find a way to save my family some money so we could use it for other things. And I wanted to positively impact the environment. Luckily, bike commuting provides all these benefits!
Steward writes for Bike Commuting for Beginners where he discusses how he started his bike commuting journey along with tips and trips to make the commute safer, more efficient, and more fun.
My North San Diego County Bicycle Commute (4x speed)
