How to bike to work: With gas prices, global warming and sedentary jobs, it’s time to give bicycle commuting a spin

A perfect storm of high gas prices, global warming and little time to exercise makes bicycle commuting an increasingly interesting option for millions. Look at some of the numbers and suddenly bicycle commuting appears to be a very rational choice:

• Gas prices: the national average is already over $4.00/gallon and predicted to continue climbing, even while fuel economy standards for cars are at or below where they were in the 1970s. Do your own math on your car’s efficiency and the length of your daily commute, then compare that to the cost of bike maintenance.
• According to the League of American Bicyclists, a 130-pound cyclist burns 402 calories pedaling 14 miles in an hour, and a 180-pound cyclist burns 540 calories over that same distance.
• Every mile of car travel puts 3.75 pounds of pollutants into the air. With every gallon of gas used, your car emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. Global CO2 levels are now at the highest in 160,000 years.

Feasibility check: Is this possible?

For many, the idea of biking to work – covering the distance, managing the logistics – may seem impossible. But like a lot of things in life, when you break down the challenge into its components it becomes more feasible.

Perhaps your best way to assess if biking to work is possible is to determine if it’s something you can do once, as opposed to saying “I’m going to bike to work every day for the next four months.” As with many new ventures, achieving a smaller goal should give you the confidence and knowledge necessary before setting out on more ambitious tasks. For example, try it on a Saturday or a half-day Friday, when there’s some flexibility to your schedule.

On such a ride, ask yourself a few questions. How much water did you need, and was your bike in proper working order? If you had experienced a flat tire, would you have had a contingency plan such as calling a cab, spouse or friend – or perhaps the ability to change the tire yourself? (Bit of advice: have a bike shop install extra protection inside your bike’s tires, which greatly limits flats due to sharp objects). Also, do you have a carrier bag (on your back, or panier-style) that can sufficiently hold clothes, files, shoes and toiletries that you'll need when you get to your destination?

Of course, just about everyone should consult a doctor when embarking on a new exercise program. Physicians who themselves exercise are usually knowledgeable about physical activities and will often provide best counsel and encouragement.

By the same way of proactive thinking, take your bike to your bike repair shop and have it checked for mechanical fitness. Bikes are amazingly efficient inventions, but everything needs to be in working order. Annual or semi-annual maintenance checks are highly advised.

Hybrid commuting

If you do not think you can make the full distance, you might instead identify a hybrid configuration of transportation to and from your workplace. That is, either public transportation* or your own car can take you a portion of the distance, at which point you can get off the train or park your car and continue biking the remainder of the distance. This might be the best way to avoid certain points in your traditional commute where conditions slow cars down to a crawl.

Reportedly, about 50 percent of the working population in the U.S. travels only five miles each way to and from work. Five miles by bike is not very far; in urban areas, a bike can often travel faster than motorized vehicles stuck in slow-moving traffic.

*Depending on where you live: municipalities like San Francisco, Chicago and many cities in Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa have established bike transport capabilities on trains and buses – a clear indication that commuters are configuring hybrid methods of getting to work.

Routing for speed and pleasure

When routing your bike-to-work course, you may need to throw certain assumptions out the window. Bikers are not constrained the way a car is. Where a car might take a multi-lane highway or heavily trafficked avenues, a biker might instead ride through a forest preserve, public parks or through residential neighborhoods and on side streets.

The key thing is to stop thinking like a car and instead more like a bird – as in, “how the crow flies.” You might discover entire worlds that exist off those highways and avenues, where the scenery is far more interesting than the concrete and tailpipes car commuters endure.

Municipalities that have moved forward with providing bike-friendly roads usually publish where those venues are. Consult websites for area departments of transportation, and search on the web for volunteer organizations, such as your local Critical Mass group, for additional ideas.

Safety and security

The use of helmets is not the last word on bike safety because a biker can still suffer serious injury or death while wearing one. In fact, there is some debate on whether helmets make bikers feel more invincible, leading to riskier biking practices and therefore greater numbers of accidents. But the use of helmets has been found to reduce the severity of head injuries by up to 88 percent.

So the lesson derived from that could be: wear a helmet, but still consider yourself vulnerable. Also, remember how everyone in traffic instinctively looks out for his or her own safety, so any given car driver is far more concerned about tractor trailers than you and your 20 pound bicycle. Therefore, you should remain ceaselessly vigilant, looking out for moving and fixed objects (vehicles, potholes, doors about to open, drivers failing to signal intent to turn, drainage grates, etc.) that could adversely affect you.

You might use what I call the "zone of concern," an cone-shaped area that flares outward in front of me, where I could be in the next 3-5 seconds. Within this zone, be sure there are no objects, moving or fixed, that could get in your way before you've could brake or divert your movement.

Intersections are particularly dangerous places, where right and left turns are made by motor vehicles unnanounced (i.e., no turn signal used), and where narcissistic drivers speed through yellow and even early red signals. As a biker, you should always slow down at intersections to anticipate erroneous driving. Clearly indicate your own turns with hand signals (right points right, left points left). Make your presence more visible by doing what I call "Intersection Cobra," where you rise up from your seat to become taller even as your body catches the air to slow you down. Look directly at drivers approaching your zone of concern even while you observe subtle drifting of vehicles that gives you an intuitive indication of their intent to turn.

You can yell or gesture at bad drivers under these and other circumstances. But remember it's not possible to educate the whole world, one driver at a time. Your first priority is to get to your destination safely. Often, confrontation increases safety risks and may leaving you feeling even more angry in the aftermath.

For more on this topic, follow the links below to the multitude of organizations that focus on this topic.

As for the security of your bike, “U” locks are generally recommended when the bike is parked in a public place. Better, make that a highly-trafficked public place, where a bike thief is less likely to try to break a lock than if the bike were parked away from public view. Some public parking garages now offer bike parking, which carries a higher level of security. Or perhaps you can bring your bike into your office or work area, which is probably the most secure.

Weather, sweat and clothing

Unquestionably, biking to work complicates how you dress. Factors in play are your work dress code, access to/need for showering, your climate and the time of year. Consider each separately:

Work dress requirements: Business in most industries is far more casual, sartorially speaking, than a generation ago. Still, crisp and clean duds remain essential to most careers, so you might look for a laundry or dry cleaner at or near work; many cleaners will deliver directly to your workplace. Some clothing will roll-up well into a carrier bag or backpack, just the same as you do when traveling overnight. Shoes might just be left at work.

Need to shower?: Workplaces and adjacent health clubs that provide showers are a perfect solution to body odor abatement. But that luxury is not necessarily available to everyone, and not all commutes necessarily cause excessive sweating. The biker can simply wear wicking fabrics, commonly sold in athletic supply stores, which reduce sweat left on the body. A body odor is generally from bacteria left to grow on fabric or on the skin. Therefore, if you start your day clean (yes, shower before you leave home), wear wicking fabric and then clean all the problem areas (underarms, crotch, feet) with baby wipes and use deodorant, you should be able to reduce or eliminate the problem.

Some companies are establishing relationships with nearby health clubs to allow employees to use their showers. Consider pursuing this with your employer and a local gym.

Climate and time of year: Each season presents its own opportunities and challenges. Cool weather requires more clothing, such as windbreaker jackets and gloves, perhaps even a cap and ear muffs to wear under your helmet. The heat of summer should have you packing wicking shirts and shorts for both the morning and evening rides (unless you can hand wash and drip dry them during the day). Maybe you are just a fair weather biker, which still beats idling some 8-cylinder vehicle averaging 10 miles per gallon in 4 mile per hour traffic.

Where are the best biking cities?

Bicycling Magazine regularly reviews and ranks municipalities according to active and effective programs each city engages to raise the use of bicycling as a functional and recreational activity.

The 2007 designation of the Best Overall City goes to Portland, Oregon. For cities with a population of 1 million or more, New York, Chicago and San Diego provide the best support to bikers, with honorable mentions going to Philadelphia and Phoenix (note how climate seems not to be a deciding factor). Cities with a population between 500,000 and 1 million that respect their two-wheeled commuters are Denver, Seattle and Portland (Ore.) with honorable mentions going to Austin (Tex.) and San Francisco. Cities with a population between 200,000 and 500,000 with bike friendly conditions are Albuquerque, Madison (Wis.) and Tucson, while honorable mention honors go to Anchorage and Minneapolis. Smaller cities under 200,000 populations that were recognized are Boulder (Col.), Eugene (Ore.), Ann Arbor (Mich.) and Davis (Calif.), while Chattanooga (Tenn.) and Cambridge (Mass.) get honorable mentions.

The magazine conversely cites Atlanta, Boston and Houston for being the worst to allocate resources and road space to the biking cause.

Oregon really takes the lead where it comes to biking to work. Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR, Portland) is the sponsor of the Bike Commuter Act, which would include bicycles in the Transportation Fringe Benefit written into the federal tax codes. H.R 1498 would provide strong incentives for employees to bike to work, putting it at a par with incentives provided for other forms of transportation such as public transportation and vanpooling. The bill enables employers to reimburse employees for the costs associated with bicycle commuting, such as lights, bike maintenance, raingear, panniers, parking (locker rental) and changing facilities.

Under the triple threat of global warming, waistline expansion and stratospheric gas prices, that seems like a piece of legislation that could accomplish a lot for very little money. Let’s just hope the legislature grasps the degree of interest among would-be bicycle commuters.

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The author commutes about 16 miles round trip three days a week to his job in downtown Chicago when temperatures are above 30 degrees. When circumstances force him to drive, his co-workers report he has a much surlier personality.