Even my modest home-work-home is about 35 miles. Assuming safe road conditions for me to bike, it’s a full hour and a half one-way, with nowhere for me to lock up my bike once I’m at work, and mostly unprotected bike lanes (or just regular road!) 3 hours round-trip added onto my workday, effectively. I could definitely bike to get groceries, or shop, or anything like that in my neighborhood, but better public transit needs to happen for me to ditch my car in my city.
Honestly that sounds very doable when considering distance alone. With an e-bike you could cut that travel time down considerably. Personally, I think I safe time by cycling to work even if it takes a bit longer on paper because I don’t need to spent time doing any additional workout. I hope the bike infrastructure improves where you live. Commuting by bike is usually much more enjoyable than driving.
I feel the same way. Where I live, we don’t even have bike lanes. We don’t even have sidewalks. It would take about 15 miles of bike riding on narrow, rural roads, with broken asphalt, and no sidewalks just to reach an actual grocery store. The weather is also a factor. The high for next week is about 108F. Oh, and when I did try riding my bicycle, five years ago, for about 30 miles to a major city, I was chased by dogs.
If I lived in some place like Salt Lake City, or San Francisco, where I could combine a bike ride with major public transportation routes, I’d be fine, but that isn’t the case where I live.
Or “just” move closer to work. I wanted to move to within 500 meters of the front gate of my old job, but roommate considerations moved the ideal location out of biking distance. Problem is that housing is artificially limited, so it’s harder to find the ideal home location.
Sorry I might be confused but, are you calling an 17.5 mile commute modest? Or just modest in comparison to 40 miles?
Not sure if this is obvious to the two of you but a huge part of urbanism is ensuring people can be housed near their jobs. Nobody advocating for bike infrastructure wants people to have to bike more than ~5 miles to work.
Except I have met people championing urbanism who simply refuse to understand that not everyone can, will, or wants to do 15 miles on a bike one-way, especially in my city. It’s all starry-eyed “we’ll just make safer bike lanes and places for people to walk” without any feasible planning for housing, or realizing that “hey not everyone has the ability or pay to live close to their jobsite”. This is usually from people who are living in high-rent areas, working jobs that absolutely afford them the luxury of living just down the road from where they work, and not realizing that not every job is right next door to everyone, especially in a lot of older cities.
Even my modest home-work-home is about 35 miles. Assuming safe road conditions for me to bike, it’s a full hour and a half one-way, with nowhere for me to lock up my bike once I’m at work, and mostly unprotected bike lanes (or just regular road!) 3 hours round-trip added onto my workday, effectively. I could definitely bike to get groceries, or shop, or anything like that in my neighborhood, but better public transit needs to happen for me to ditch my car in my city.
Honestly that sounds very doable when considering distance alone. With an e-bike you could cut that travel time down considerably. Personally, I think I safe time by cycling to work even if it takes a bit longer on paper because I don’t need to spent time doing any additional workout. I hope the bike infrastructure improves where you live. Commuting by bike is usually much more enjoyable than driving.
I feel the same way. Where I live, we don’t even have bike lanes. We don’t even have sidewalks. It would take about 15 miles of bike riding on narrow, rural roads, with broken asphalt, and no sidewalks just to reach an actual grocery store. The weather is also a factor. The high for next week is about 108F. Oh, and when I did try riding my bicycle, five years ago, for about 30 miles to a major city, I was chased by dogs.
If I lived in some place like Salt Lake City, or San Francisco, where I could combine a bike ride with major public transportation routes, I’d be fine, but that isn’t the case where I live.
Or “just” move closer to work. I wanted to move to within 500 meters of the front gate of my old job, but roommate considerations moved the ideal location out of biking distance. Problem is that housing is artificially limited, so it’s harder to find the ideal home location.
Sorry I might be confused but, are you calling an 17.5 mile commute modest? Or just modest in comparison to 40 miles?
Not sure if this is obvious to the two of you but a huge part of urbanism is ensuring people can be housed near their jobs. Nobody advocating for bike infrastructure wants people to have to bike more than ~5 miles to work.
Except I have met people championing urbanism who simply refuse to understand that not everyone can, will, or wants to do 15 miles on a bike one-way, especially in my city. It’s all starry-eyed “we’ll just make safer bike lanes and places for people to walk” without any feasible planning for housing, or realizing that “hey not everyone has the ability or pay to live close to their jobsite”. This is usually from people who are living in high-rent areas, working jobs that absolutely afford them the luxury of living just down the road from where they work, and not realizing that not every job is right next door to everyone, especially in a lot of older cities.