According to “Bikeleague.org“, May is National Bike Month, May 15-19 is National Bike to work week, and May 20th is National Bike To Work Day.
Regardless of what the league of incredible biker gentlemen may say, you can start biking to work tomorrow, and every day of the year!
There are a few reasons you might start riding your bike to work
- To look cooler than everyone else
- To smell better than everyone else
- Elitist self-gratification
These are the wrong reasons.
Here are some better reasons
- Gas is expensive ($3/gallon)
- I want to get in shape!
- Chicks hate bikes.
Reason number one: Gas is Expensive! (so is parking) (so are parking tickets)
Let me share my personal experiences biking to work, as an example. All of the data in this article is real, and verified by my bike’s odometer/stopwatch and car’s in-dash computer.
My current workplace is only 2 miles away. Including stoplights, stop-signs, and slow traffic, it takes me about 8 minutes to drive to work. In 8 minutes of stop-and-go traffic, the engine doesn’t warm up enough to become very efficient (Remember the carnot cycle?*) and my in-dash computer tells me that gas economy has dropped off significantly. In fact, it damn near cuts in half. (30 mpg becomes 16, which is good, for an SUV. I don’t drive a SUV, however, I drive a tiny Swedish car**, and my turbo is partly to blame for the terrible economy drop-off)
Let’s do a quick calculation:
In order for me to drive to work and back, it costs 1/4 gallon of gasoline. This translates to $0.75. So, each time I ride to work instead of driving, i save $0.75 I would have otherwise spent on fuel. We will neglect other car maintenance costs for now.
It takes me between 5 and 15 minutes to ride to work, according to my stopwatch. The most common time is 9 minutes. 2*(9-8)=2 minutes net time invested in riding my bike that would have otherwise been spent sleeping in. Some quick division reveals that I am making $0.75 every 2 minutes of extra time, so my extra time is making me $.75 x 30 = $22.50 per hour!¤
This is hard to beat working at a fast-food joint. The only downside is that I only ride to work on weekdays; 20 times a month (on average), which means I am only making $15 per month by riding exclusively to work.
¤If paid for the entire effort of riding to work, however, the wage per hour is $4.50, which is easily beaten by working at a fast-food joint.
break even
I bought my bike (used) for $125. I have since put about $150 into fixing it up and making it look fast. Safety equipment (a definite must) put me back $60. My total investment is $335.00. At $15/month made in gasoline savings, My break-even point should be 22 months. The real clincher is, parking permits at my place of business cost between $75 and $340 per year. Parking convenient to my office is of the $340 variety as the $75 and $175 permits require walking about a mile to my office.
The permit cost is a “sunk cost”, meaning that I have to pay for it up front, but I am not charged each time I use it. From this standpoint, parking costs less than a dollar a day, but it effectively doubles my return investment on the bike. With the cheap parking permit, my investment pays back after 18 months, and with the expensive, but convenient parking permit, my investment pays off immediately.
Reason Number Two: I want to get in shape!
20 minutes of round-trip bike riding is just about right for a decent cardiovascular workout. Couple this with a lunch-time ride of another 10-20 and you’re getting your workout out of the way before you get home. If your business has gymnasium facilities, this is even easier to accomplish, and you have the added benefit of free, usable showers when you show up in the morning, gleaming with sweat from your bike-ride.
All told, riding for 20 minutes between 12 and 14 miles per hour will burn about 300 calories if you are as heavy as I am. The number of calories per hour burned reduces as your weight goes down. source 1 source 2
Reason Number Three: Chicks hate bikes.
I saw this on a tshirt once, so it must be true.
Seriously though, every gallon of gasoline you don’t burn prevents about 20.8 pounds of CO2, (a known greenhouse gas) from being emitted into the atmosphere.
But I don’t have a bike! (yes you do, it’s just not yours.)
You may have read all the way through this article and thought, “well, that’s nice, but I don’t have a bicycle. Boo Hoo.” Cut the self-pity already. You don’t even have to own a bicycle to get around on one! Community Bicycle Programs exist in many areas. If not your area, I apologize for berating you just now.
Special circumstances
If your commute requires more than 30 minutes to get to work, it may be time-prohibitive for you. In this case, I recommend taking public transportation, hitch-hiking***, or car-pooling**** as appropriate. For reference, 30 minutes on a bike is a range of about 6 miles, in city traffic.
*The Carnot Cycle, or Carnot Engine, is a definition from Thermodynamics, which states that no cyclic engine (like a steam engine, or internal combustion engine) can have perfect efficiency, but that efficiency increases as the temperature of the engine increases.
**driven by Maria Bellow’s character in the movie “Secret Window“. She gets to watch her boyfriend’s head get popped off with a shovel.
***Kidding. Don’t do this.
****That’s another article…
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