Why don't you cycle?

[Rutland23]

It is about 16 minutes to drive to work, and about 27/28 on the bike.

I try and cycle at least once or twice per week, and generally clock up about 1000 miles per year.

7.5 miles each way.

I find that I do feel more alive and awake on arrival, which is great on a 12 hour shift. I sometimes wish that the ride home was a bit quicker, as it eats in to the available time at the end of the day at work, but I take the rough with the smooth.

Regards,

Ian

 

[jon0844]

Why is there no "I don't want to" option?

Cycling is totally impraticable for many people and for many reasons, and I for one am sick of firstly being told I should cycle, and secondly seeing all the money wasted by Councils on unused/underused cycling infrastructure to the detriment of everyone else.

I'm sick of hospitals having a gynaecology department when I have absolutely no use for it. I also left school years ago, so why am I paying tax to fund them?

 

[harz99]

I'm sick of hospitals having a gynaecology department when I have absolutely no use for it. I also left school years ago, so why am I paying tax to fund them?

Don't be silly, there's a huge difference between infrastructure provision for cyclists and gynaecology services for women!

 

[stuu]

Why is there no "I don't want to" option?

Cycling is totally impraticable for many people and for many reasons, and I for one am sick of firstly being told I should cycle, and secondly seeing all the money wasted by Councils on unused/underused cycling infrastructure to the detriment of everyone else.

It really isn't. How many journeys do you do which are less than 3 miles and you don't need to carry more than 10kg? Most people do lots like that, and guess what the best means of transport is, unless you live in Venice or Davos? 20% of all journeys to work where I live are cycled, according to the last census.

What proportion of council budgets are spent on cycling infrastructure? A clue, it's less than 1%

 

[Magdalia]

I'm sick of hospitals having a gynaecology department when I have absolutely no use for it. I also left school years ago, so why am I paying tax to fund them?

You benefit from these, as does everyone, even if you do not have children yourself.

Most of the babies cared for in the gynaecology department, and most of the children educated in schools will go on to be future taxpayers, helping to fund your pension and your health care after you have retired.

 

[jon0844]

You benefit from these, as does everyone, even if you do not have children yourself.

Most of the babies cared for in the gynaecology department, and most of the children educated in schools will go on to be future taxpayers, helping to fund your pension and your health care after you have retired.

Whoosh!

 

[Via Bank]

Much like gynaecology benefiting everyone, everyone benefits from high quality cycling infrastructure, if it's good enough that people end up using it & switch their journey from the car (thereby reducing congestion for those who must drive.)

On a related note, it might be worth looking at why so few women cycle compared to men in Britain. There is research. (spoiler: it's safety and terrible/nonexistent infrastructure exposing them to unacceptable danger.) Compare to the Netherlands, where more women cycle than men, and the older cohort who'd be twirlies on the first off-peak bus of the day in Britain all go to the shops on their bikes.

 

[JB_B]

Whoosh!

I took your post in the spirit intended ( "a modest proposal"). Hopefully the penny will drop for the posters of #93 and #95 .

 

[jon0844]

I think most countries can demonstrate that where you improve cycling infrastructure, those who don't cycle benefit also.

Just like having good safe areas for walking helps too. After all every cyclist or driver becomes a pedestrian at some point.

 

[johncrossley]

One of the consequences of Dutch cycling is that it reduces the likelihood of obesity related illnesses. They have worked out that the cost incurred to continually improve cycling infrastructure, even though it is already exceptional, is outweighed by the savings in the healthcare budget.

"Dad's taxi" is much less of a thing in the Netherlands. Whereas children in the UK are escorted everywhere, because of dangerous roads and paranoia about child abduction and assault, Dutch kids have great freedom from an early age. Again, this is a consequence of their nationwide cycle network.

 

[harz99]

I took your post in the spirit intended ( "a modest proposal"). Hopefully the penny will drop for the posters of #93 and #95 .

Unless your an Alterego you couldn't possibly know how the post you mention was intended...

 

[Krokodil]

Not to mention that cycling that way gets you to work tired and stressed before the day even begins.

Not in my experience. By the time that I get to work I'm bright and alert. In fact there's a huge amount of research on the stress-reducing effect of regular exercise. Some people pay a fortune in gym memberships and get up extra early for the same aim. I leave five minutes earlier than I would if driving and save the money.

Similar here, although I've concluded that I am adequately visible at night because nobody has run me over in 100+ commutes after dark.

I love cycling at night. You can see headlights coming and the traffic is so much lighter.

and secondly seeing all the money wasted by Councils on unused/underused cycling infrastructure to the detriment of everyone else.

Well-designed cycling infrastructure benefits everyone. Even if a route appears underused to begin with, usage will increase once a coherent network forms. Of course if you stand still and count heads you may well be surprised, a cycle lane may appear quiet, but that's often because bicycles are an efficient use of space so it needs to be seriously busy for congestion to form. Cycling infrastructure is certainly not to your detriment, despite what the likes of Doug Ford may claim - for those not familiar with Canadian politics he lost a Mayoral election in Toronto and once elected Premier of Ontario has sought to attack the city at every opportunity, including by forcing them to rip out bike lanes, despite all the experts stating that doing so will increase congestion.

Unless your an Alterego you couldn't possibly know how the post you mention was intended...

It was pretty obvious (to all bar two posters) that he doesn‘t really view gynecology departments as a waste of money, he was making the point that just because you personally don't use something, it doesn‘t follow that society as a whole (and therefore you as a member of society) don't derive some benefit from it.

 

[Tetragon213]

Much like gynaecology benefiting everyone, everyone benefits from high quality cycling infrastructure, if it's good enough that people end up using it & switch their journey from the car (thereby reducing congestion for those who must drive.)

On a related note, it might be worth looking at why so few women cycle compared to men in Britain. There is research. (spoiler: it's safety and terrible/nonexistent infrastructure exposing them to unacceptable danger.) Compare to the Netherlands, where more women cycle than men, and the older cohort who'd be twirlies on the first off-peak bus of the day in Britain all go to the shops on their bikes.

That explains the never-used cycle lanes going up and down Soho Lane and Spring/Summer Hill into Birmingham, then! Taking away those lanes from cars and making it so even the buses get stuck in the traffic (where they didn't as badly before) really benefitted everyone!

If your solution is "make it so damned miserable to travel by any other route that arriving to work on a bike knackered, while also being drenched in rain and sweat sounds preferable" is your idea of a solution, I'm afraid we have very different ideas of what a solution entails.

"Dad's taxi" is much less of a thing in the Netherlands. Whereas children in the UK are escorted everywhere, because of dangerous roads and paranoia about child abduction and assault, Dutch kids have great freedom from an early age. Again, this is a consequence of their nationwide cycle network.

Personal experience is slightly different for me, as I was "encouraged" to get a 50cc moped at the age of 16 by my dad.

Granted, he was still in the dying embers of his "middle-aged biker" phase of his life, but I do very much miss that little scooter. At 16, it gave me a lot more freedom than my friends got. However, I will add the caveat that I was considered by not only my own parents, but by the parents of friends that I was, shall we say, "slightly more sensible" than my compatriots, which is probably why my dad trusted me to not wrap myself around a lamppost at 38mph going down the hill.

Not in my experience. By the time that I get to work I'm bright and alert. In fact there's a huge amount of research on the stress-reducing effect of regular exercise. Some people pay a fortune in gym memberships and get up extra early for the same aim. I leave five minutes earlier than I would if driving and save the money.

Having been forced to cycle into my job at Tesco's for a few weeks while at uni when my car's turbo (it was a diesel car, so don't get any ideas about me!) kicked the bucket, it was my own housemates who pointed out that I was suddenly way more short-tempered than usual during that time period; my friends from lectures also indicated that I was zoning out of group sessions way more often than normal. While I noticed neither, I did notice a dramatic decrease in my energy and vigour at work. All 3 noticed I'd gone "back to normal" after getting my car back.

These days, I work in an office with a free gym in the basement, so I'm hardly fussed on that front. I take the bus in as the parking fees in the city centre are nothing short of daylight robbery, but in the upcoming new year, with fares rising to a level well above what I pay for lunch each day, I may well return to driving in.

 

[Krokodil]

If your solution is "make it so damned miserable to travel by any other route that arriving to work on a bike knackered, while also being drenched in rain and sweat sounds preferable" is your idea of a solution, I'm afraid we have very different ideas of what a solution entails.

I rarely get wet. It doesn't actually rain that much in the UK, and when it does I just dress appropriately. Nor is a 15 minutes on a bike enough to knacker me. I suppose that it is down to what the OP has been saying about fitness.

As for stress, it's not exactly unheard of for car drivers. The term "road rage" has been in use since at least 1988. Ronnie Pickering seemed to be a very well-balanced individual in his van, and way back in the 1950s Disney produced a cartoon short about how getting behind the wheel affects people's behaviour ("Motor Mania", it's quite good).

When I got rid of the car I found a weight lifted from my shoulders. It was a constant source of anxiety - will I find anywhere to park? Which bit of rust will fall off next? Will it start on cold mornings? I remember getting to the hotel I worked at one icy morning ready to serve breakfast. Everyone else turned in late, complaining that their cars wouldn't start.

It doesn't work for everyone, but the more people who do cycle the better for society, and by opposing safe infrastructure (this poll has found safety to be the most common reason people don't cycle) you are taking the opportunity away from other people. You don't own the road, land isn't being "taken" from cars to build cycle lanes, it's just being shared more equitably.

 

[johncrossley]

Personal experience is slightly different for me, as I was "encouraged" to get a 50cc moped at the age of 16 by my dad.

Granted, he was still in the dying embers of his "middle-aged biker" phase of his life, but I do very much miss that little scooter. At 16, it gave me a lot more freedom than my friends got. However, I will add the caveat that I was considered by not only my own parents, but by the parents of friends that I was, shall we say, "slightly more sensible" than my compatriots, which is probably why my dad trusted me to not wrap myself around a lamppost at 38mph going down the hill.

I was really talking about younger children. It is normal for 12 year olds to cycle alone to school and to visit friends etc. in the Netherlands.

 

[Tetragon213]

I rarely get wet. It doesn't actually rain that much in the UK, and when it does I just dress appropriately. Nor is a 15 minutes on a bike enough to knacker me. I suppose that it is down to what the OP has been saying about fitness.

As for stress, it's not exactly unheard of for car drivers. The term "road rage" has been in use since at least 1988. Ronnie Pickering seemed to be a very well-balanced individual in his van, and way back in the 1950s Disney produced a cartoon short about how getting behind the wheel affects people's behaviour ("Motor Mania", it's quite good).

When I got rid of the car I found a weight lifted from my shoulders. It was a constant source of anxiety - will I find anywhere to park? Which bit of rust will fall off next? Will it start on cold mornings? I remember getting to the hotel I worked at one icy morning ready to serve breakfast. Everyone else turned in late, complaining that their cars wouldn't start.

It doesn't work for everyone, but the more people who do cycle the better for society, and by opposing safe infrastructure (this poll has found safety to be the most common reason people don't cycle) you are taking the opportunity away from other people. You don't own the road, land isn't being "taken" from cars to build cycle lanes, it's just being shared more equitably.

Shared more equitably by not being used at all? As stated, I catch the bus into Birmingham City Centre every single day. Up Spring Hill they have 4 effective cycle lanes. Even in the peak of summer, I saw precisely zero people using them in June for a month straight, and bear in mind my travel is at peak time. Miles upon miles of bike lines, and yet they all collectively are less busy than Denton. Great use of investment there... even with all these bike lanes being built, no one sodding uses them, so fat lot of good they are! The old maxim "if you build it they will come" does not seem to hold true.

As stated, I cycled in to work at Tesco's, and it was bad enough that my own flatmates had to hold a mild intervention/whatever you want to call it, basically calling me out for how much more stressed, moody, and short-tempered cycling to work made me. It was a roughly 20 minute bike ride before a long day on the backdoor, and even I noticed that, in the 2 weeks I cycled in to work, I was massively more fatigued on the backdoor than usual especially after a shift, which is probably why my housemates noticed the negative change in my demeanour.

I don't know what rustbucket you had, but I've ever had any corrosion issues on my car that were so bad it kept me up at night.

 

[johncrossley]

Shared more equitably by not being used at all? As stated, I catch the bus into Birmingham City Centre every single day. Up Spring Hill they have 4 effective cycle lanes. Even in the peak of summer, I saw precisely zero people using them in June for a month straight, and bear in mind my travel is at peak time. Miles upon miles of bike lines, and yet they all collectively are less busy than Denton. Great use of investment there... even with all these bike lanes being built, no one sodding uses them, so fat lot of good they are! The old maxim "if you build it they will come" does not seem to hold true.

I looked this up on OpenStreetMap and this looks like the extent of this scheme. This is hardly "miles upon miles". You really need to have a network of paths to be effective. Maybe there are extensions planned in the future.

 

[Krokodil]

Shared more equitably by not being used at all?

Quite a bit of lane width is wasted by the empty seats in cars. The average occupancy of a car is 1.3 people, yet they take up that space all the time. There would be much less congestion if people drove vehicles which were only as big as the journey needed (and yes, a moped is a good substitute for the second car in a family, if only the things were a bit quieter)

As stated, I catch the bus into Birmingham City Centre every single day. Up Spring Hill they have 4 effective cycle lanes. Even in the peak of summer, I saw precisely zero people using them in June for a month straight, and bear in mind my travel is at peak time. Miles upon miles of bike lines, and yet they all collectively are less busy than Denton. Great use of investment there... even with all these bike lanes being built, no one sodding uses them, so fat lot of good they are! The old maxim "if you build it they will come" does not seem to hold true.

Obviously I'm not local to the area so can only go by the imagery online. Judging by Google Streetview these were brand new in June 24 (still had some orange barriers dotted around). The routes aren't even marked on Google Maps yet. One cycle lane in itself is of limited value. You start with it, and one by one you build up a network. Only once Mrs Jones and her kids can get from home to school (or whatever their destination might be) exclusively on a combination of safe, segregated cycle lanes and quiet residential streets will they consider doing it. The slightest gap in the network (where the route abruptly ends with no legal way of continuing without throwing oneself in front of a Range Rover) and no one is going to risk their kids. Directness matters too, some badly-designed routes send you well out of your way, usually swapping from one side of the road to the other a few times and those idiotic "dismount" signs. I'm not sure why your bus is being delayed, there was a dedicated bus lane in each direction on the sections I looked at.

I don't know what rustbucket you had, but I've ever had any corrosion issues on my car that were so bad it kept me up at night.

It's my alarm clock that gets me up at night (don't you love shift work?). Driving to work at 3am one morning, the rust holding the back end of the exhaust onto the bottom of the car gave way. 15 year old Fiesta with about five owners. MoT was only a few weeks earlier. I then had to drive very carefully into work in order to avoid waking up the entire county with what now sounded like a boy racer.

Being late home because I had to walk from the bottom of the village after a Saturday late shift was also something I don't miss. Parking is particularly dire on weekends here.

Incidentally I was rather concerned with the effect that fatigue was having on my driving. I used to live 35 miles from work and could feel myself losing concentration on the way home having been up since 3am. No such problem when cycling, and I certainly don't pose any risk to third parties either.

 

[JohnMcL7]

I rarely get wet. It doesn't actually rain that much in the UK, and when it does I just dress appropriately. Nor is a 15 minutes on a bike enough to knacker me. I suppose that it is down to what the OP has been saying about fitness.

As for stress, it's not exactly unheard of for car drivers. The term "road rage" has been in use since at least 1988. Ronnie Pickering seemed to be a very well-balanced individual in his van, and way back in the 1950s Disney produced a cartoon short about how getting behind the wheel affects people's behaviour ("Motor Mania", it's quite good).

When I got rid of the car I found a weight lifted from my shoulders. It was a constant source of anxiety - will I find anywhere to park? Which bit of rust will fall off next? Will it start on cold mornings? I remember getting to the hotel I worked at one icy morning ready to serve breakfast. Everyone else turned in late, complaining that their cars wouldn't start.

It doesn't work for everyone, but the more people who do cycle the better for society, and by opposing safe infrastructure (this poll has found safety to be the most common reason people don't cycle) you are taking the opportunity away from other people. You don't own the road, land isn't being "taken" from cars to build cycle lanes, it's just being shared more equitably.

When I was wanting to get started cycling a friend who used to cycle daily to work said pretty much exactly the same about it not being that wet as often as you think which they were correct about. And even when it does the rain doesn't bother me, I just stick lightweight waterproofs on and have mudguards on the bike. One of my favourite cycles this year was a few weeks ago when we had some snow, literally freezing conditions, deep snow and some big hill climbs and hard to keep the smile off my face since I had the right tools for the job:

Spoiler

I find driving stressful and cycling destresses me, I'd hate to do a ten hour drive while I'd look forward to a ten hour cycle. With the driving you need to be so focused all the time which is tiring whereas on the bike I can relax and take in the scenery. Exactly as you say you just get used to being able to go straight where you want and park the bike plus no need to worry about how busy certain roads are or what traffic there will be. When talking about car and bike costs, the far higher car running costs almost never seem to get a mention and that's before anything goes wrong. I used the bike from the picture above in a brutal winter 24 hour off road race and it took a substantial amount of damage thanks to the abrasive mud so it needed a strip down to get properly cleaned and most of the drivetrain replaced...the total cost was something like £230 which is less than the annual maintenance of my car when nothing has gone wrong. That was eight years ago and after many winter rides that replacement drivetrain has worn out and been replaced for around £200, same goes for my daily commuter bike which has been on the same drivetrain for eight years now and has been overhauled for £200 (which would have been less if I hadn't damaged the derailleur).

The more cyclists there are on dedicated cycling infrastructure the better it is for car drivers since it gets more cars out of the way. I was annoyed debating this with a work colleague who wouldn't cycle because she found cyclists annoying in holding them up, a while later I was walking home late afternoon past a roundabout with substantial queues of cars trying to get onto the roundabout...it certainly wasn't cyclists holding the cars up.

 

[Krokodil]

When I was wanting to get started cycling a friend who used to cycle daily to work said pretty much exactly the same about it not being that wet as often as you think which they were correct about.

Indeed. Let's use Birmingham as a handy example. Wonkypedia tells me that in an average year it will rain on 132.5 days in Birmingham. So that's 232 days where it won't rain. But what counts as a rainy day? A minimum of 1mm. Do you really notice 1mm of rain? The average is 6mm per rainy day, some days will be 1mm and some days will be 10mm. Often that rain falls at night, so you won't notice it then either if you're not working the sort of hours I work. And if it does rain during the day then it's more likely to fall while you're at work than while you're commuting because of the relative proportions of time you devote to each task.

I got home from work one hour before the red weather warning last weekend. According to the forecast for that time of night I should have been simultaneously drenched and blow-dried. In reality I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and wondering what the fuss was about, not a breath of wind. Different story an hour later when the cat came in absolutely soaked, never mind a couple of hours after that when the wind brought the power lines down!

 

[johncrossley]

The percentage time that it rains is (for some reason) not a statistic that is readily available. I was curious about this, so I did my own analysis using hourly rainfall data. From January 2023 to May 2024 it rained about 13% of the time at my nearest weather station.

 

[Via Bank]

Of course, rain is famously something that makes cycling absolutely impossible, as we know from famously very dry, not-windy countries with warm and fine weather such as *checks notes* The Netherlands.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Of course, rain is famously something that makes cycling absolutely impossible, as we know from famously very dry, not-windy countries with warm and fine weather such as *checks notes* The Netherlands.

Yes this seems pretty much just "I don't want to get wet".

I cycled to primary school for years in all kinds of weather (except ice or snow), if it was super rainy, I just put on waterproof trousers and took them off once I got there (leaving myself with dry uniform).

 

[Krokodil]

Of course, rain is famously something that makes cycling absolutely impossible, as we know from famously very dry, not-windy countries with warm and fine weather such as *checks notes* The Netherlands.

I believe that the Dutch have a phrase which translates as "you're not made of sugar".

They do have their share of fair weather cyclists, the difference being that they only let the rain stop them on days when it's actually raining, rather than using it as an excuse even when it isn't.

 

[bspahh]

The percentage time that it rains is (for some reason) not a statistic that is readily available. I was curious about this, so I did my own analysis using hourly rainfall data. From January 2023 to May 2024 it rained about 13% of the time at my nearest weather station.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/weather/ has the weather reports every half hour back to 1995. It measures the rainfall to within 0.01mm.

On 42.9% of those days, there was no measured rain (<0.01mm). On 82% of days, there was no measured rain between 8.00 and 8.30am and 5.30 and 6.00pm.

Between 8.00 and 8.30am and 5.30 and 6.00pm, there was >1mm rain on 1.6% of days, or 5.9 days a year. On those days when its wet in the morning or evening rush hour, if you can travel half an hour earlier or half an hour later, then it would be wet on 1.2% or 4.5 days a year. That would be travelling every day of the year. If you only travelled on a weekday and have 4 weeks of holiday a year, it would reduce to being wet 2.9 days a year.

To compare, on the rain radar at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ 1mm rain per hour is for the two lowest colour bands. With steady rain, 1mm/hour is light rain. You could also get 1mm of rain from a brief downpour.

 

[Meerkat]

Of course, rain is famously something that makes cycling absolutely impossible, as we know from famously very dry, not-windy countries with warm and fine weather such as *checks notes* The Netherlands.

Data in this link suggests the Netherlands gets 30% more sunshine than us, and we have 17% more rainy days.
https://www.worlddata.info/climate-comparison.php?r1=netherlands&r2=united-kingdom

I believe that the Dutch have a phrase which translates as "you're not made of sugar".

My mum used to say “You’re not a sugarmouse!”

 

[johncrossley]

Data in this link suggests the Netherlands gets 30% more sunshine than us, and we have 17% more rainy days.
https://www.worlddata.info/climate-comparison.php?r1=netherlands&r2=united-kingdom!

There is of course wider variation in weather in the UK, and a lot of the very wet parts of the UK (for example mid Wales, Scottish Highlands and Lake District) are thinly populated.

Rainy days per year according to Wikipedia:

Cambridge: 107.3
London: 111.7
Edinburgh: 128.3
Rotterdam: 131.0
Birmingham: 132.5
Amsterdam: 133.2

 

[jon0844]

It's perfectly fine to cycle in the rain. You can even cycle in snow and on ice, albeit perhaps needing to prepare with snow tyres/studs or fat tyres (or just cycling slower). We don't have paths cleared so, yes, there will be some days it would be considered impossible to cycle here (in Scandinavia or Canada, they'd carry on as normal). I feel most insecure cycling on crushed leaves, which is only a problem because we don't clear them, which of course we could if we actually treated cycling as a worthwhile means of reducing car traffic.

 

[Krokodil]

Data in this link suggests the Netherlands gets 30% more sunshine than us, and we have 17% more rainy days.

But as anyone who cycles will say (and has said on this thread), wind is a far greater enemy than rain. The Netherlands is pretty windy, being next to the North Sea.

I feel most insecure cycling on crushed leaves,

Count yourself lucky that you're not on steel tyres like a train! Seriously though I haven't had issues with leaves, but sand is impossible to cross on any bike you'd expect to commute with. The council still hasn’t moved the beach back off of the cycle path after last weekend's storm.

 

[jon0844]

But as anyone who cycles will say (and has said on this thread), wind is a far greater enemy than rain. The Netherlands is pretty windy, being next to the North Sea.

Yeah, I did mention wind elsewhere as something that can be considered a 'code black' - but fortunately that's also pretty rare (as in wind strong enough to put a cyclist at risk of being blown off, or veering off course).