Darth Lefty 

Only the hottest takes here, folks!

StarBiker

I walked to work for 6 years because I would have had to go around and through traffic when it was faster to cut through where a section of train tracks are. And traffic and safety would have been another issue.
My last job I biked to. Made perfect sense.
Have only drove twice in the last five days........I have seen five cyclists this entire week. This is a heavily residential area.
I got I jay walking ticket for crossing the highway in the mid 80's. Didn't stop me, I still did it. Cycling and digging graves, ha, ha.....

StarBiker

I want to bike the Red Light District. The hell with walking it......

.Slideways.

In my area (probably everyones area) there are no bike lanes and bikes are supposed to be off the side walk and become part of traffic. It’s bad enough driving a car to work. Between people trying to be nice and let you go and others just not seeing you at all it seems way too chaotic/ stressful to do it on a bike.

Miele Man

When I lived in Toronto, Canada, I bicycled to work every day summer, fall, winter and spring. I loved the fact that with the savings over the Toronto Transit fares I could buy a new top of the line racing bike every second year if I wanted to. I also loved that I had a freedom of routes, a seat to and from work and didn't have to put up with a crowded vehicle. My commuting was done long before the advent of bicycle lanes in that city.

Besides that I would often drop into the interconnected parks system after work and enjoy a very relaxing long ride home. It was a fantastic time to unwind. I could even stop and pick up some groceries if I wanted to.

A LOT of people detest inclement weather and nothing will ever convince them to ride a bicycle in it.

I think that the biggest reason why so many people won't ride a bicycle to work is that they consider bicycling to be an extremely dangerous thing to do on roads. All this talk about needing dedicated bike lanes in order to be safe just reinforces that belief.

Cheers

Trakhak

I don't get this, unless you mean that you'd rather not live in any neighborhood with a predominantly Black population. I've ridden through every part of Woodlawn frequently on my explore-the-city bike rides over the years, and I know the area well. It's made up almost entirely of well-maintained older single houses, without much of a visible police presence, unlike my neighborhood in Baltimore City. Most of it is pleasant to ride through, too.

Myself, I've lived in a row house in Hampden for the last 40 years or so, and it's obvious that Woodlawn is less dangerous overall than Hampden and has nowhere near the traffic density I have to contend with here, to say nothing of the sirens and noisy police helicopters we have to put up with.

Northern central Baltimore County: sure, that's a pretty area, and I ride there a lot, through Randallstown and Reisterstown and the Prettyboy Reservoir area and up to the Pennsylvania line. A former pro cyclist I used to ride with occasionally once told me, when I asked him where he enjoyed riding the most among the parts of California, Colorado, Italy, France, Belgium, etc., that he'd raced and ridden, promptly answered, "Northern Baltimore County." Still, your decision to move there pretty much guaranteed that you wouldn't be doing much bike commuting.

mdarnton

I want to amend my report with some other numbers regarding my car ownership. These are estimates:
Parking, $200/month
Insurance, $200/month
Maintenance, gas, permits, $150/month
Depreciation, $0 (car is 2007 Yaris)
I drive the car usually not more than once a week, if that, so let's say
Cost per round trip: $130.

Yeah, I know.

Inisfallen

A lot of answers here to the question of why people don't commute to work by bicycle. Some make sense, some don't, and some are really just unperceptive, even arrogant.

First of all, nobody needs an excuse not to commute by bike. It's an option available to some (not all) commuters. Obviously, for some, it may not be the best option. Age and fitness have a lot to do with it. I couldn't ride a bike for quite a few years, but after many surgeries and two joint replacements, now I can. And I do.

Geographic location has a lot to do with it. I'm not sure I'd want to commute around Scottsdale in August. Or Duluth in January. Or up and down a mountain every day.

I live in New York City. I commute by bicycle three days a week, from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan, on average (sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's what it works out to). There's no real way for me to shower and change clothes at work (actually, maybe shower). But fortuately, I'm an IT drone, and can get away with khakis, or even jeans, and a button-down shirt. But I couldn't really change clothes - our whole office has gone, post-COVID, to "hoteling," and almost nobody but senior partners has their own office anymore. I don't have any place to keep spare clothes. So I totally get why someone who has to wear a suit to work every day (male or female) would reject bike commuting.

As to people who don't commute because "they don't care about the planet," that's a bit arrogant, wouldn't you say? If I don't ride my bike to work, I take the subway. Which is going to run whether I take it or not. My cycling doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to the planet. Funny, here in NYC you still see the hipster bikes with their "one less car" stickers, which are utter nonsense, at least here in NYC.

Bike storage? My office bulding has it. You have to go in through the loading dock, which in and of itself is no problem, but the security staff there consists of alchoholic ex-cops with guns, dogs and hair-trigger tempers who hate everyone, especially anyone who looks like me. Also, if, like me, you work until late at night (I usually leave beween 10:00 and 11:00), they get really pissed off if you ask them to get off their obese asses and open up the now-locked bike room. So bike storage isn't available to me, just like it's not available to the vast majority of working New Yorkers. I don't have bike storage at my apartment building, either (actually, I do, but I don't have the extra $100 a month I'd have to pay), and my space is limited (like most New Yorkers). My solution is an inexpensive folding bike, and I lock it up at work at a heavily-used bike rack in a wide-open, totally visible space. So far so good.

I guess my point is that I see a lot of people in this thread saying that there really isn't a good reason not to ride a bike to work. And I disagree. Nobody "needs" an excuse. We're all trying to make our lives work as best we can, with jobs, families, children, maybe a second job, getting toi the supermarket, etc. Bikes are an option. It's one that works (most of the time) for me. I absolutely, totally get why it isn't the best choice for a lot of people.

Daniel4

Your opinion is noted.

If the Bloor Bike lane survey is any indication, you would belong to the 4% of cyclists who are opposed to bike lanes. And the 5% who think it is unsafe. Yeah, I know. You're going to try to poke holes through that survey.

I've been riding in Toronto since 1985 and I'm sure glad we finally have them now.

StarBiker

Many people in this thread think that what they do should work for everybody else to the point of absurdity.

I would cycle again for a commute, depends on the elusive obvious.....

mdarnton

I wonder what the bike lane experience is for other people. I ride in Chicago from Addison and LSD to the State and Adams (mid-south Loop) and I intentionally do most of it where there are NOT bike lanes because both bicyclists and drivers abuse them. Cars use them as temp parking just far enough to block both street and bike lane, forcing bikes out into the street to compete with cars trying to get around the same bottlenecking barrier. Bikes ride erratically but the worst is where the slowest and dumbest pull ahead to block the crosswalk at stoplights and then ride slowly, forcing faster riders to pass them again at every f##$%ing light, and of course those same people are the weavers (and there's lots more to say about bicyclists, but I'll leave it at that.)

It's just a whole lot safer and peaceful to move one street over and compete with cars, so that's what I do. Most of the streets I use are 1.5 lane streets anyway, and recently Chicago has started doing this thing of putting out blocking tongues at intersections to block cars from sneaking around and passing on the right in that extra half lane, so it's effectively a bike lane with no f@#$%ing bikers: heaven.

So yeah, put me in that 5%, purely for reasons of survival, defending myself against idiots. Thinking about it, I'm fine with bike lanes to distract the bicyclists to them, as long as the law doesn't require we ride in them.

Inisfallen

Bike lanes are everywhere in New York City. I can get from my home in Brooklyn to my workplace in midtown Manhattan entirely in bike lanes, most of them protected bike lates (by "protected," I mean that there's some kind of barrier between the bike lane and the automotive lanes, even if that barrier is only parked cars).

Bicyclists, however, are being forced out of the bike lanes by electric bikes and scooters, and ICE scooters and sometimes actual motorcycles as well. I don't mean the pedal-assist bikes like those available from the City's bike-share program (i.e., Citibike). I mean throttle bikes, and electric scooters, and internal combustion scooters (e.g., Vespas) and so on.

This has happened over the last few years. It's a weird combination of effects from the COVID shutdown, when everyone in the city started having all their meals delivered, all the time, and the NYPD having pretty much backed off from policiing the city altogether. They've been on a soft strike for a few years now.

So far the situation is still workable (I commute more days than not), but we're perilously close to being driven ouf of the paths, lanes and greenways that were designed and build specifically, and exclusively, for bicycles.

cyccommute 

I agree that no one “needs” an excuse but they all have them. I’m not saying that people have to ride bike to work nor that they have to ride a bike to work. But I’ve had many interactions with people who wanted to ride a bike to work…but…. Or people who are so excited to ride a bike to work on Bike-to-Work Day but will only ride to work on that day. I could even point out the statistics I collected over the years on fuel savings (almost 5500 gallons and $9500), wear and tear on vehicles (saving almost 50,000 miles), and even carbon dioxide savings (34 tons) which was very important for our core mission at our research facility. But…. There is always a big “but”.

StarBiker

Woodlawn is not safe, and muggings were common. Armed guards were all over the place around the Social Security Buildings. My Mother was mugged outside the Mac at Gunpoint. Yeah, that Woodlawn.

My Father brought us out here because nobody in their right mind was living in the city in the late 60's early 70's. FROM HAMPDEN. My Parents are from there, my Great Grandfather owned a Texaco in Hampden for 45 years. Place was a zoo by the 70's.

Hampden has changed drastically, as well as Remington. Still would not live below 36th Street.

Up until recently the road that runs behind Mills One and Two people were cycling and getting there bikes stolen and robbed. More police presence has slowed that.

Many things have changed, and somewhat improved but many of these areas are not safe.

I bike all over the place. There is zero cycling infrastructure in the suburbs. None.

Even with bike lanes in Roland Park you could be taking your life in your hands.

And Taxes are now high in the city. It's forcing people out into the suburbs. They aren't moving places for their ability to cycle.

Inisfallen

Absolutely. I agree.

What I'm saying is that sometimes those "buts" are valid, for those people's lives.

There seems to be a bit of an attitude in this thread (not saying you, or anyone in particular) that those who don't commute by bicycle, even when it's been explained to them why it's better for them, and the planet, and everything, somehow need to justify that decision. And I don't think they do, any more than I have to justify riding my bike.

Daniel4

Unless you make the ultimate decision to go car-free living, some of these expenses will remain even if you cycle or take the bus to work and leave the car at home. And then some people have free parking at work.

When someone asked me how much money I saved by cycling to work instead of driving, I estimated $200 per year. That's because I lived so close so my gas consumption wasn't that high.

Miele Man

I moved out of Toronto in October 1989 and I rode everywhere in Toronto on the road before bike lanes were a thing. I rode Bloor street, Danforth Ave., St. Clair, Kingston Road, Avenue Road, Yonge Street... My riding was NOT confined to quiet streets during non-rush hour times either.

I'm not opposed to bicycle lanes if they're not dangerous. However I DO consider that Bloor Street bike lane to be a dangerous one. Why? Because bicyclists are often out of sight of any driver in a vehicle making a right hand turn. Ever single intersection including entrances/exits to/from parking lots is a hazardous place for any bicyclist who is out of a driver's line of sight.

YMMV

Cheers

BobbyG

+100

JoeyBike

I've worked at 3 different bike shops where employees didn't bike to work AND had to pay to park a car at one of them.

I gave up hope long ago for people in the USA to bike to work in any significant numbers.

tFUnK

This.

I've been on bikes for decades (road, mountain, gravel, urban, track), and commuted by bike for years. I choose to not bike commute currently. I have my lame reasons/excuses for not doing so, some so lame that they even make me laugh. I can admit that. What I don't need are people on the internet (or in real life - bike advocate types who may be less experienced cyclists than I am) thinking they know what's best for me, assuming I haven't biked before in my life, telling me what to do, or that I should feel guilty for not riding my bike to work. Ultimately I still believe more people on bikes is a good thing. But this thread wasn't started to convince people of the benefits of bike commuting (that's what this forum is for); this thread was made to hear people's various reasons for not commuting by bike. It's an opportunity for us to rant and complain about the vagaries of living in infrastructure not optimized for the two-wheeled life.

DVC45

Geographical location and lack of bike friendly roads.

Pugs2xLove

I started bike commuting to work full time approximately two years ago and I love it. Weather does NOT matter for me in the Midwest!

JoeyBike

Yeah, there is a special mental and physical toughness that dedicated commuter cyclists have that most Americans do not. Also maybe a touch of denial for us commuting in a busy city grid or some high-speed rural roads. I would mention physical ability also, except a tough person can build up to a reasonable level of conditioning over fairly short amount of time.

Darth Lefty 

From the recent awkwardly-headlined thread in A&S. Getting killed is still #1 by a long shot. Mitigations not entirely trusted

tFUnK

Does "spouse does not think it's safe" fall under "safety" or "personal factors"?