It’s the classic story of “The Tortoise and the Hare”
The automobile is much, much faster than the bicycle.
Or is it?
I recently did a little experiment. I reset the trip meter on my Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS and drove to work. When I arrived at the office, I found my average speed was just 16mph!
Wait?! How can this be?
In a word? Traffic and lots of it.
Traffic jams are the equivalent of the Hare taking his nap since he was so far ahead of the tortoise. As I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on my drive to work I watched as the vehicle’s average speed quickly began to plummet.
On the bicycle, like the tortoise, it’s a case of a slow but steady pace.
On an average day I can clock an average speed of 12-13mph on my bicycle commutes to/from work. That’s just 3-4mph slower than the traffic-hindered automobile.
Depending on your route and traffic conditions, you may find that you too could benefit from bicycle commuting. Not only will you burn calories but you may also find that riding your bike gets you to work almost as quickly as driving!
My commute is about 12 miles each way. When I bike, it consistently takes me 50 minutes. When I drive, it takes from 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on traffic, road construction, etc.
I’m lucky in that I can often work from home. My job (software engineer) is compatible with telecommuting, and my company allows/tolerates it. On many days my commute is a 5 second walk from the bedroom to my home office.
During the summer there's roughly a 5 minute difference between my commute via car and bike. Almost negligible if I hit all red lights and don't speed.
The winter is a little different, I take a longer route to avoid traffic & bike lanes (I stick to bike paths) and running studded tires w/lower pressure brings my commute to around 15-25 minutes slower depending on my pace & conditions.
Still, every day riding in is that much better than driving. For short trips around town, there's no doubt that biking is the way to go.
Telecommuting is a nice option to exercise if your job permits it. I’ve been able to do that on a few occasions.
Couldn’t agree more with the fact that riding the bike is much more of an “experience” that drumming along in the confines of your car.
I live in a reasonably big city in England and after visiting America a few times I can confidently say that your road infrastructure is much better than ours. During rush hour, getting into and out of a city becomes nigh on impossible and as a result, when cycling to and from work – 10 miles or thereabouts each way – I can quite comfortably beat a car or bus journey by about fifteen or twenty minutes.