I have pretty much always cycled to work when I wasn’t driving for work. In three cities, it has always been the fastest way to get to the office.
10 km from work is the sweet spot. Yes, that’s a bit more expensive real estate wise, but it’s a 20-minute ride and is always faster than sitting in traffic or on public transport. I have no idea why it isn’t the most popular way to commute.
If I lived further out like 30 km, I’d get an eBike and still ride.
A 20 minute ride to go 10 km is damn good cycling! I’m pretty decent and when I’m in shape I consider 30 km/h to be par while moving. But a commute is more likely to involve stopping at intersections…especially in Australia, where we’re terrible at building proper separated cycle paths with a minimal number of interactions with the road, and priority at those times it can’t be avoided.
I used to cycle ~7 km in to work, but since I moved and changed jobs (ironically, the new job would’ve been just 2 km away from where I used to live), my new commute would be 25 km by bike. And considering it’s about 10 minutes of walking all up if I take the train instead, I’ve switched to that.
Though I was very tempted to ride in this morning, after the trains had a 40+ minute delay. If they’d come out and just said it was a 40 minute delay from the start I probably woulda done it, but it’s the creeping “10 minutes, oh no now it’s 15, oh no it’s 20…” thing that leaves you hoping…
Yeah fair point. It’s usually around 22 minutes, and I have the luxury of a dedicated cycle path for all but the last kilometer through Perth CBD. I only need to get through 4 sets of lights and it’s rare for more than two of them to be red. Getting through Melbourne CBD was slower, though I had a dedicated cycle path for most of my ride there, also.
I cycled 26km to work for a while and it was always 75 minutes. Driving was mostly faster at around 45 minutes, but it was stressful, I got no exercise and sometimes it was 90+ if there was a major traffic issue.
Private cars shoukdn’t be in cities.
There certainly shouldn’t be 4–8 lane stroads without bike paths running alongside them with raised priority across most intersections & side streets.
Moggill Road is especially bad. A little under a year ago I tried to run from St Lucia to Moggill along it. I got as far as Pullenvale Rd before I had to give up. I got to a lengthy section with high-speed traffic, no footpath, barely any shoulder, and no reasonable alternative route. There was a section earlier just past Kenmore with all the above but a slight detour, but that last bit was impassable on foot. And even the rest of the run was very unpleasant because cars are unpleasant to be near, and because of dealing with intersections across side roads where cars are given priority.
There have been several cyclist deaths on Moggill Rd over the past couple of decades, tragically.
I wonder wat speed Google Maps thinks people ride at?
Our commute each way is 25km / 25 mins off peak / 40 mins peak.
According to Google Maps that translates to a 1.25 hour ride. Which I actually wouldnt mind doing to get some fitness back, if it wasnt all frankly terrifying main roads.
My commute would also be 25 km by bike if I went the way Google recommends, and it has an ETA of 88 minutes. That’s 17 km/h.
CoMaps routes me a more direct (but probably less comfortable in terms of traffic stress) route, 20 km. It estimates that’s 93 minutes, so just 13 km/h. I think the route it takes is a bit hillier and night require more stopping at traffic lights than Google’s though—not sure if that’s part of its calculation.
I’d usually average more like 28 if I can just ride, and somewhere around 20–24 if I’m stopping a bunch (hard to say for certain, because my Garmin pauses when it detects I’ve gone below about 5 km/h). So that’s more like 53–75 minutes total. When I was really fit I did the 7 km commute I had at the time at an average speed (according to my Garmin, so times I was completely stopped didn’t count, though slowing down and starting up before/after each stop still counted) of 30.
if it wasnt all frankly terrifying main roads
Depending on where exactly you live, there might or might not be an alternative detour you can take to be on safer or more separated roads/paths.
Tools like Strava Heatmap, Ride With GPS, council maps, and local bike groups might be able to help you find a better route than the one you’d instinctively go if you’ve been driving a lot.
I wonder wat speed Google Maps thinks people ride at?
Extremely slowly in my experience.
Google maps barely considers anything outside of a car to exist.
It’s why Swanston Street looks tiny on the map despite being busiest in Melbourne’s CBD
