Whether it’s a case of ‘new year new you’, ‘same old same old’, or ‘tube strike urban survival’, did you swing a leg over your bike this morning? Hannah did, here’s a brief summary:
Heavy drizzle, strong headwind – why am I doing this?
Dirty Reiver training. Come on.
Leave the trail, join the road. Close pass.
Why am I doing this?
This is good for me. It IS. Is it?
Surely they’re not going to, oh sh*t, they are, and there’s a bus and
Oh sh*t it’s a lorry and how f***ing close do they want to
HOLY SH*T they’re pulling in and where is the back of this lorry, it’s still coming and
It’s got a digger on the back and I think I might actually die
No I’m still alive. But I’m going to have to have a little cry.
Not every commute is so terrifying. Some of them are really rather nice, as Hannah’s Instagram posts demonstrate. Invariably, they are the off road commutes. Maybe you are lucky enough to be able to commute off road?
[poll id=”53″]
We last asked people about riding to work in 2009. Impressively (and perhaps demonstrating what a dedicated bunch of riders you Singletrackers are), 27% of you said you rode to work every day.
Since that poll in 2009 there’s been a huge growth in cycling for sport, plus London has seen the Cycle Superhighways and Boris Bikes. Recent statistics also show that traffic speeds in London are falling – 17.4mph in London, slowing to 7.8mph in central London. While congested roads aren’t much fun to ride along, slow traffic is perhaps a little less terrifying to negotiate, and at those speeds you’ve got every chance of getting from A to B quicker by bike than by car. That said, car sales have continued to grow, so maybe the country as a whole isn’t seeing a cycle commuter revolution just yet? With all these changes, it’ll be interesting to see how things have changed.
[poll id=”682″]
Get your votes in. We’ll leave you with a reminder that it’s not always grim out there.
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I was just thinking today, what we need is a national Drive to Work day, a week after Ride to Work day when all the usual cycle commuters use their cars. Would be chaos and gridlock everywhere, (with the exception of Stoodey Pike up there) and car drives would see what a service we do for them when normal conditions resume the following day!
I am sorry there is not an answer for me to tick. The fatoldman (61 and 3/4, 17stone) gave up work last year, and so while I would love to commute by bike, I have no place to go, so just ride local circuits While I was working I used to ride in 2-3 times per week, but in my last few months some sections of my ride home had become too busy, and after a number of near misses I had to stop.
I had to answer never, as Im retired now but when I was at work i often rode my bike to work some reasonable distance too!