| How to Bike to Work | ||
|---|---|---|
 contents |  next | |
Benefits of Bicycle Commuting
Riding a bicycle to work offers a wide range of benefits - not only to the bicyclist, but also to her or his employer and to the whole community! This page will help you explore those benefits in your own particular circumstances.
Benefits for the Bicyclist
Physical Health
Depending on your weight, riding speed, riding position, and bicycle equipment, you will probably burn 20-40 calories per mile while riding. For your own personal calorie estimate, use the Bike Calculator. The stop-and-go nature of bicycle commuting will result in your burning more calories than the Bike Calculator predicts to maintain any given average speed (source). A 10-mile round trip to and from work will burn about 200-400 calories per day. Doing that round trip by bicycle three days per week, 40 weeks per year would burn 24,000-48,000 calories, the equivalent of 7-14 pounds of body fat each year. It would also provide your recommended physical activity for each of those 120 bicycle commuting days. If you do not already get enough daily physical activity, this can make a big difference to your health, and to your wallet. In 2006 in the US, 365,000 people died prematurely of illnesses linked to physical inactivity! Studies show that physically inactive adults have health care costs hundreds of dollars higher each year than do their active peers (source) . Bicycling to work can help keep you on the right side of these statistics.
Mental Health and Mood
Bicycling elevates mood and decreases the incidence and severity of depression and anxiety disorders (source). Informal surveys of bicycle commuters often reveal one most common reason that people ride bicycles to work: it's fun! Statistics Canada (a Canadian federal agency) found, in its 2005 General Social Survey (pdf), that the workers most likely to enjoy their commute were those commuting by bicycle. Nineteen percent of the bicycle commuters - compared to only 2% of workers commuting by motor vehicle - even considered their commute the most pleasant activity of their day!
Cost Savings
Substituting a bicycle for a car for some or all of your commuting can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars per year. You save on fuel, maintenance, and parking. Reducing your automotive mileage may qualify you for a discount on automobile insurance, and it increases the life of your motor vehicle. You reap even larger savings if, by using a bicycle, you can reduce the number of motor vehicles in your household. Use this Cost Calculator to estimate your savings.
Time Management
Bicycle commuters get to work in little more time than it would take to travel by car, and often less time than it would take to travel by bus. A 10-mile round-trip urban commute that takes 30 minutes by car (20 mph average speed, including stops) typically takes 60 minutes by bicycle (10 mph average speed, including stops). Switching from car to bike increases travel time by 30 minutes per day. By investing that extra 30 minutes, though, the bicyclist gets 40-50 minutes of good exercise, along with time outdoors and often social contact with coworkers and neighbors.
Benefits for the Employer
Bicycle commuters arrive at work alert from their exercise. Workplace studies show that bicycle commuters have better productivity and morale, fewer workplace accidents and injuries, lower absenteeism and turnover, and lower health care costs than their peers who commute by car. Purchasing bicycle racks or lockers costs much less than maintaining a similar number of paved automobile parking spaces.
Benefits for the Community
Bicycle commuting benefits everyone, including the people who continue to drive cars! Switching from automotive to bicycle commuting reduces fuel demand, smog-forming air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Bicycles cause virtually no damage to roads and minimal noise and water pollution. Compared with motor vehicles, bicycles pose little threat to pedestrians and animals. Switching trips from motor vehicles to bicycles reduces demand for paved parking spaces and for the costly expansion of roads. This, in turn, reduces stormwater runoff and the related costs and environmental harm.
| How to Bike to Work | ||
|---|---|---|
contents | next | |