Yesterday i finally whip up the courage to try commuting with bike, i planned the 40km round trip to visit my mom and go grocery shopping on the way back, planned the route with as much residential street as possible, and that was a fun experience! While there’s a lot of “woah, ebike”(where i live a proper ebike is rare, even though mine is converted) and “you travel from that small town? That’s insane!” from stranger, what’s not fun is the ride on some stretch of the road.
I live in a small town outside the city, a lot of the road going out of the town is pretty much 1 lane each way, no cycling facility for the whole country(Malaysia), the road shoulder is narrow to non-existent(the line is basically bordering between road and grass/dirt) if not filled with potholes/cracks/sketchy road maintenance/bump made by tree root, and motorist often driving very fast even on narrow road. Luckily more often than not they does give me a lot of space when they’re passing(thanks to motorcycle culture), but those who don’t is very discouraging for the whole experience, mostly it’s the one riding moped that pass me too close for comfort with 30/50kmph faster than me(no thanks to motorcycle culture).
I planned to do it often, first by doing a no-car sunday, then slowly switch to commuting to work(also 40km round trip), and eventually cut down car use to only just a day or two a week or only on long distance travel, but this experience kinda made me second guess the whole plan. It’s also quite tiring, i can still feel the fatigue today.
So how did you guys that do the commute able to keep going? Any advice on that end?
Full time commuting is pretty dangerous. I’ve been riding bikes for years, and all of the issues I’ve run into over the years almost all came on commutes.
I just treat it as a special treat every now and then. If you do it everyday it gets old pretty quickly. I mean if you have a nice commute then maybe it’s OK. I used to commute into downtown in a city where the war of Bikes vs Cars was very much alive though, and I just decided ultimately it wasn’t worth it. I mostly just ride outside of times when everyone is overfilled with rage, and it’s more enjoyable. Sucks it has to be that way :/
Yeah it’s kinda sucks bike got pushed away in favour of car, even in short distance commute. :/
You know what really sucks though about the bikes and commuting? Its not even the drivers or the infrastructure, it’s the damn theft. They gotta get that figured out. I’d have one of those cargo bikes in a heartbeat, as our driving is 95% just daycare and back and/or groceries. But the theft in our city is insane, I can’t even run into the grocery store without a not-insignificant chance the things not there when I come out.
Our city is struggling with the opiod crisis (like many other cities), and the stolen bike trade seems to be one of the many primary sources of funds for that sort of thing. You’ll see homeless people downtown riding on super expensive mountain bikes, I saw a guy wacked out of his mind on a Pivot Firebird once. Clearly stolen, but the cops just allocate token resources to it, while people walk around openly downtown with battery powered die grinders. I watched a guy a few years ago go through one of those New York kryptonite locks like it was a bar of butter, before I could even act on it (plus I was in a skyscraper a few blocks up). We called it in, but I mean buddy was probably back at his encampment before that call even reached a cruiser.
So I’ve got a rule with my bikes (I’ve got a high end eMtb and a fairly high end road bike), if it’s not in my line of sight or I’m not on it, then it’s not outside. I had a job a few years ago that allowed me to bring it into my office, but my last job that wasn’t possible. I work from home now, so it’s moot, but I just don’t trust leaving it anywhere, which rules out most in-city bike use. Big problem.
Can confirm, I had a bike path the entire way and it was awesome. I tried going on the road to cut the ride a little shorter, and that got old fast.