Even in Kyoto

What's the longest practical bike commute you would consider? What do you think it is for the average rider?

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About the longest I would consider would be a commute that takes around an hour. That will translate to somewhere around 12-14 miles, depending on traffic signals and other factors like wind. When a commute is that length, it provides two things at the same time: exercise AND transportation. So, at that commute time I wouldn't spend much time going to the gym or worrying about my fitness level. When I lived with

scrottie for a month in Phoenix and commuted to Tempe, I had a great ~8 mile (45-minute) commute. Time to wake up in the morning (and then a shower at an awesome commuter station in Tempe), and time to decompress on the ride home in the evening. He and I both missed that travel leg when our living arrangements shifted around shortly after that period.

It's hard to say for the "average" rider. Who is average, and where is he or she living? Someone living in a place like Copenhagen, Boston, or Seattle would probably want a commute at under 20-30 minutes. My dad had a 15-mile bike commute for several decades, with some breaks in the wintertime when he would van pool instead. In the Phoenix area, I talked to more than one bicycle commuter who traveled 20-25 miles one-way. So the one-hour mark could be a useful benchmark, too. But then there are crazy stories of people with driving or bus commutes that take more time than that. That would crush my soul.

Also realize that there tend to be two very different classes of bike commuter. I fall into the middle-class white person category - I could theoretically afford to commute using other modes of transportation, but I choose to bike instead, and I have a decent bike. I would guess that lower-income bike commuters would look for commutes in the 20-30 minute time range, ridden on poor-quality equipment, but that such individuals probably also scrap around a fair amount to figure out other options, especially carpooling. I found this piece on low-income commuters to be pretty informative.

If I lived less than a mile from my job, I would probably alternate between biking in and walking. I'm very careful to site my home location relative to the things I want to do (rowing, work, errands).

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When a commute is that length, it provides two things at the same time: exercise AND transportation.
Ah, another thing I spend too much time thinking about: the death of practical exercise. Once upon a time -- actually, less than a century ago -- most people got plenty of "exercise" from their job. The need to get more physical activity simply didn't exist.

Now, however, most people get very little physical activity on the job, so they need to exercise. Except that they then arrange their lives to avoid as much motion as possible.

For example, we live in a townhouse neighborhood, and each of the townhouses has a tiny lawn. The smallest of them could be mowed with a push mower; they're easier to measure in square feet than in acres. A couple of people do just that. But a whole lotta folks here hire people to mow their tiny lawns. So a guy shows up with a huge industrial mower, makes a couple of tight turns on the tiny lawn, and leaves. It simply baffles me. It would be a lot cheaper do it themselves, and would get them up and moving a little.

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Totally!

I'm a firm believer in walkability, too, although I am NOT a firm believer in automatic "walk score" calculators.

This town lacks sidewalks. I can't bring myself to call it a city when it's impossible to walk to get places. It was easier to walk in Tempe, and even then, it wasn't especially pleasant to walk. Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. rank high on my list in that regard. Even bicycling becomes inconvenient at points in such cities.

It seems to me that a lot of Texas has been engineered to discourage practical exercise. Lawns are so large that riding lawnmowers are preferred. Things are spread out in such a way that it is challenging to use alternate transportation. The bus system leaves a LOT to be desired. Even Austin, a longtime poster child of bike-friendliness, isn't really a compact city anymore, and most of the people who say they live in Austin actually live in suburbs and clog highways with increasingly longer car commutes.

It is so, so much easier to get exercise when it's built into a daily routine than when it has to be scheduled in. I really feel like children NEED to walk or bike to school.

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Based on talking to coworkers and observing, I'd say that for people who choose to commute, rather than having to by loss of license or lack of car, the enthusiasm tends to drop off at about 20 minutes cumulative time (riding plus changing clothes plus showering) added onto driving time.
Studies indicate that gas price is the best predictor of commuting, regardless of distance.

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That's a much more coherent answer, and sounds about right to me. :-)

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I spend a lot of time thinking about this, whilst trying to convince myself to ride to work more often.

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You have a tough bike commute situation, IIRC. But I wonder if it would be more worthwhile in the face of fewer colleagues willing to go for lunch rides.

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Yeah, the lunchtime ride thing is a huge part of it. 50-some miles of somewhat urban, totally non-scenic riding that I've done a bazillion times, all by myself, on a road with a 65 mph speed limit, or 25 miles with a bunch of friends on scenic quiet roads.
If I lived 5-15 miles from work I'd ride in a whole lot more often, especially if I lived in the Boulder area and had a pretty ride in, with coworkers who commute in every day. But a solo ride on busy roads is demotivational.

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One of my new roommates is basically in that boat, and I can't blame you or him for making that choice, because that's probably what I'd wind up doing as well.

Although, on the flipside, I'm REALLY careful about where I choose to live, specifically because I want to be able to rock the commute, and want to continue avoiding buying a car. I've car-shopped pretty intensively more than once, but I really don't want the bother and expense of it all. Running errands with J in the car last weekend was a strong reminder of that. Give me a bike and a bike trailer, and I can haul all kinds of stuff and actually enjoy running errands!

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I can belive 20 minutes of cumulative time, but "added onto driving time"? Maybe for very short drives... We used to commute to one of French-named Company's research campuses at a distance of 18 miles. With a little care, that could be done in 25 mintues (~43 mph) and substantially longer in the worst parts of rush "hour". I'm having trouble imagining people willing to bike (etc) that long... but perhaps I underestimate y'all's dedication to the sport.

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So, my total bike time estimate for a drive commute of that length would probably be around an hour and 15 minutes (I would tend to use a rough estimate of 12 mph to account for stops and traffic). That puts the total time well over

randomdream's cutoff (which would be 45 minutes), and above the hour cutoff I would use. Ergo, not many people would switch to biking. Unless the predictability of time of the bike commute was greatly improved relative to the predictability of the rush "hour" drive, and the rush hour drive frequently wound up being closer to 55 minutes.

But overall, as distances increases, the probability of not biking goes up.

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Ah, OK. You've given me something else I was looking for: cyclists' speed estimates for practical biking. And I didn't even have to ask. :)

I'd guesstimated a little faster than than that (15-20mph) from thinking in terms of the mechanical advantage bikes provide over walking. But you're right that I should have taken into account traffic delays. (Which, since I'm a naughty child, I tend to ignore while walking.)

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Oh, and I use scare-quotes in "rush 'hour'" after some judgement. Around here, the morning rush... interval lasts a few hours, with peaks corresponding to 8:00, 8:30, and 9:00 work start times around here and in Philly.

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I'd assumed that was your justification. ;-) Around here, I think there's basically just a 30-minute period in the morning and evening that gets busy, to judge by the traffic backed up at the light on Villa Maria right at 8 am, and the traffic backed up by the lights around campus right at 5 pm. Yet people still complain about it. I would, too, if I were stuck in a gas-powered wheelchair box!

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When I was going to CSU, my door-to-seat time was five minutes faster by bike than by car, despite it being 20 miles of rural driving, because parking was so bad and the walk from parking to classroom was so long, and as a result I rode every day it wasn't snowing hard or raining. Likewise my brother, who had to pay $5 for parking every day, and drove maybe five times during ten years of working at that job -- and, similarly, had shorter ride than drive times to work. (Longer on the way home since his workplace was 800 feet lower than his home.) Almost any city traffic at all, and suddenly bikes look vastly more attractive, because even though stoplights still stop you, you get a block per stoplight, whereas cars often go through multiple cycles because of the traffic density.

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That's the best, when biking is easier than driving. It angers me that driving to this campus is as convenient as it is. If the campus planners had built a more walkable campus and structured the parking differently, it would be way more pleasant to work here.

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Aw, man, that's some excellent Hobo Style. I'm totally envious of your situation. That's a great distance, and sounds like an excellent routine.

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You know, I'm really pleased with it. In some ways, it's better to live further from home, particularly because it's more comfortable to bike in spandex and then change at work. Living 3 miles away from everything in the Villa Maria house got frustrating because I was constantly chaining together shorter trips.

I am glad, however, that I don't have to come in to the lab 3 times a day on weekends at the moment. Although I suppose if I wound up on that sort of schedule, I'd just come in for the whole day.

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Bring in a bunch of books and the laptop. Or go on rides between cricket feedings.

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