Bicycle Commuting Guide

Introduction

Benefits

• Getting Started
• Top 10 Excuses

Improve Health and Fitness.  Like any form of regular, aerobic exercise, bicycling improves personal fitness, enhances energy levels, reduces stress, and stimulates the immune system. Bicycle commuting is a great way to build regular exercise into a busy, but often sedentary, work routine. Bicycling is a moderate, low impact exercise which can be continued throughout life.

The Centers for Disease Control stated recently in their report "Public Health Consequences of a Sedentary Lifestyle":

  "... a sedentary lifestyle is one of the most significant public health problems facing the US today."

To which the American Medical Association offered a solution in their Journal from October 1999:

  "Automobile trips that can be safely replaced by walking or bicycling offer the first target for increased physical activity in communities"

and they identified that

  "...approximately 25% of all trips are less than one mile, and 75% of these are made by car."


Save Money.  Add up what you spend driving to work every day. Bicycle commuting saves you parking fees, fuel costs, and maintenance costs. Don't forget that the largest costs of automobile ownership are paid up front: insurance and car payments. Insurance premiums usually are lower when you do not use your car for commuting to work. You might be able to save as much as 25 percent of your income if you can replace a second car with a bicycle. A new bicycle would pay for itself in a few months.

Avoid Congestion.  Ever find yourself sitting in traffic, wishing you were somewhere else? On a bicycle, you can travel on secondary roads and paths, often arriving in less time than if you'd driven through rush-hour traffic! And you can usually park your bicycle quickly and close to your destination.

Save the Environment.  Autos are the single largest source of U.S. air pollution. Short trips - those that are most bikeable - are up to three times more polluting per mile than long trips. An average four-mile round-trip bike commute prevents nearly 15 pounds of auto air pollution from contaminating your air. When it substitutes for shorter auto trips, the bicycle eliminates 3.6 pounds of auto pollutants per mile. And since the bicycle season matches the ground-level ozone season, by biking instead of driving, you contribute to pollution prevention when it is most needed.

Help your Community.  Bicyclists should be taxed less. If the real taxpayer subsidy of autos were reflected in fuel taxes, a gallon of gasoline might cost as much as $9.00. That's because our other taxes cover the costs of road building, maintenance, parking space, police services and losses from accidents, pollution and congestion. If more commuters bicycled, these costs would go down; all taxpayers (businesses and private citizens) would save money.

On to: Getting Started…

Back to: Introduction