“Bicycle,… Think Bicycle” Young Man.
I recently decided to bike instead of driving my car to the gym and then spending half an hour on the stepper or treadmill. Doing so, I realized the absurdity of driving a car to go exert my body at a gym…
And I realized that millions of people every day do exactly that. That is crazy !!
The craziness is that many of us live in a movable bubble: get up, shower, get dressed, get coffee, get into portable bubble, that is: my car. Get out of portable bubble when reaching in my employer’s parking lot, get in work bubble, work until lunch, go to cafeteria, back to work until 6 pm, drive in portable bubble back to permanent bubble called “home”. Have dinner, go to fantasy land or watch what is happening outside through the TV magic lantern. Sleep and do same next morning, and the next and the next. In that life style, it is possible not to notice the changes in temperature, the changes of season or changes in the weather. I know, I lived that way for years.
By bicycling to the gym, I save the time it takes me to drive to the gym and another half hour by skipping spending time on the aerobics machines all together. I save the gas money, reduce my carbon footprint, reduce the wear and tear on my car and I enjoy being outside.
After years of driving everywhere, I suddenly rediscovered why bicycling is so much fun? How do I describe the thrill of flying down a hill at 30 or 40 miles an hour, wind in my face, fully awake, all my systems working at 110%, enjoying the smells of a summer morning: here honeysuckle in bloom, there cow manure, small unidentified flying objects banging at full speed into my forehead.
The fun of riding an all terrain bicycle in town is a lot similar to skiing or to the practice of martial arts. It is the love of taking risks, of passing cars stuck in traffic, of picking a path through one way streets, of coming on and jumping off sidewalks, avoiding parked cars and delivery trucks. In short, bicycling is a daily adventure.Compare that to moving around in my portable bubble.
The worse part of bicycling is that at regular interval I get to taste the smell of residual hydro-carbons from passing cars, trucks and buses. And that will change too.
In 2007, four teams of Freshmen from Drexel University Engineering School students working on the Engineering 101 Class – Freshman Design project under the supervision of Assistant Professor Bradley Layton, of the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department decided to work on the design, modeling, field testing of a “Bicycle Highway”. For more information on the “Bicycle Highway” concept, please visit: http://www.drexel.edu/news/innovations/bicycle-highway.aspx
One of the teams composed by Sean Hannon, Andrew Jarvis, David Korth and Mary Kain focused on the biomechanics of bicycling. The students analyzed the amount of power generated by an average human cyclist (100-200 Watts) and compared this to an automobile about (5,000-20,000 Watts) and discovered that humans are indeed anywhere from 25 to 200 times more efficient than cars and emit one-fifth of the CO2 per mile than a car. The Wikipedia entry for Bicycle Performance shows similar data as what the Drexel University Engineering Students computed.
Bicycles have been around for a little more than two hundred years and bicycles are still the most efficient means of individual transportation we have – no contest.
So, if I can save $50/week by using my bicycle to go back and forth to work, while keeping in better physical shape and having fun at the same time, than why are there not more people bicycling to work? I can see three reasons why bicycles are not used more widely for commuting from home to work:
1. Lack of proper infrastructures to accommodate bicycles, such as parking and secure bicycle pathways.
2. Physical danger to the cyclist.
3. Lack of support from employers. How many companies and organizations in the Philadelphia area have showers and dressing rooms for their employees to clean up and change clothes? Would you want to save $50 per week, cycle and sweat 10 miles to work and smell sweat the whole day long, every day?
In the end, the main reason why people do not use bicycles to commute back and forth to work is because of the general lack of support to cyclists.
Support Bike To Work Day by Andy Singer
I think that, for now this world is organized around using hydrocarbon based transportation with all the dysfunction that comes with it. This will change as well.
It is time to encourage alternative modes of transportation by making our infrastructure more welcoming to cyclists through bicycle only Highways, bicycle parking, bicycle sharing and by providing sufficient showers and changing room on premises for workers who commute by bike.
