Looking for some information regarding commuting.

Computer says

"Incorrect survey link code!"

Jgab wrote:

Hello,

I'm currently a student working on his thesis. I'm looking to get some information regarding the use of bicycles as a mode of commuting transportation.


I have a survey for anyone in this community to take. It's just a simple questionnaire at this time. Just to collect some information for a solid foundation for more research. ( http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?s...0ro5ug2n353453 ) It's only 13 questions.

jerry G

Incorrect survey link code!

Hardly inspires confidence.

I contract with a multi-national underwater construction company which has 20,000+ staff and 46 ships world wide. Let me give you two examples of cycle use.

One of our Stavanger offices. Maybe 30 bikes in the bike shed (February!) for an office with 1/5th the staff of the one I'm based at in Aberdeen. Company will supply staff with 400 quid's worth of winter and summer clothing, cycle to work programme, prizes for mileage targets, secure cycle shed. Norway has has superb and very expensive cycling infrastructure and a high percentage of school kids cycle because it's safe. This is despite the weather and hills.

Westhill Aberdeen office (west campus). 3 or 4 bikes including mine, most I ever saw was 7 on a nice day, despite having 5x the number of staff at a guess. Company doesn't provide anything except C2W programme, unsecured but undercover bike parking and showers in the gym (huge gym complex, main court can sit 400 spectators). The company runs free buses to Aberdeen for staff.

Weshill is five miles from Aberdeen but there's a recently upgraded and half decent cycle path which is safe. Westhill itself (where a lot of workers live) has decent cycle paths on main routes. Some folk in Westhill walk in but a lot drive under a mile despite major parking problems. Despite reasonable facilities folk don't cycle, you can't blame the weather as we're comparing to Norway!

I suspect many of the folk who cycle take the free bus instead. A lot of folk have c2w bikes but many don't cycle and site safety as the reason. As for those who live <2 miles from the base and drive in I think it's a culture thing, they're not used to cycling. I cycled to primary school but there's no way I'd have left my bike at secondary school as it would have been damaged, so maybe secure secondary school cycle storage is an idea? Otherwise folk "forget" about cycling and get out of the habit.

The best way to get more folk cycling would be to organise days where existing cyclists ride in with them and help them get used to the idea, tips about clothing and junctions for example. They also need to have someone come in and give cycle training, they already have a company come in to do fitness checks and help you lose weight. I have tried to get cycle training for a friend via the Scottish Cycling website, but I can't even get them to reply to my emails :-(

22 hours on and he hasn't been back to check, let alone fix his dodgy link. Bovverred...? Me niever...

Edit.

To answer the question properly, I really don't think there's much chance, and it's not an age thing as far as I can tell. The number of times I roll up to work and get the witty comments along the lines of morning Bradley, you must be mad, I wouldn't dare do that it's too dangerous etc suggest that those that haven't got the idea never will - cycling to work is an alien concept that 'other people' do. I do it as I've always done it, cycling. The majority of those that gave up cycling aged 9, or never started, are lost. Get kids to see cycling as a routine way of getting about and you might be onto something. Good luck with it.

A college of mine who is on quite a low wage is having problems with his car. He lives 4 miles away - most which has quiet roads & off / on-road cycle paths. He's a bit of a fitness freak, goes climbing etc, but suggest he cycles the 4 miles into work? Won't have it.

He'd rather drive across town to drop his girlfriend off and then drive into work. Whereas he's in a perfect position to cycle in.

As a famous drug fiend once said, "its not about the bike"
The most significant barrier to commuting is cultural. In some cultures, they do it, in others , they don't. Even within the UK, there are some cycling towns where everyone and their granny rides a bike, and other driving towns where only die-hard riders venture out. You need to identify what factors make a driving town different to a cycling town.
Dont just look at cycling towns, it is critical to compare the two.

As far as bikes go, the only thing I would add is that most everyday , non-expert riders are on the wrong size and the wrong type of bike. Too many tiny women on heavy 700c hybrids vs big men on undersized lightweight cross-country MTBs. Too many yoof riders on full sus MTB shaped objects. Too many hipster wannabees on fixies minus mudguards, too many kids on riding bikes that are built to resemble full sus frames.

The right bikes are generally out there but not widely understood. It is like a car market where the norm is a Hummer or Caterham 7 or dumper truck and only a few car-club beardy weirdies drive hatchbacks.

The other bike factor is poor choice of the right size bike for big or small riders.

Non-bike factors include the bike awareness of road planners. They need to go on a bike-awareness course. I realize how this will sound to the editor of The Scum and Daily Snail, afterall, every 5-year old knows everything there needs to be known about cycling, the idea of a course for adults is hysterical. Remember the police rider courses they scoffed at. Again this is a cultural issue of peer pressure to conform to a Top-Gear vrumm vrumm mindset.

Maybe the best thing for cycling would be if people in "East Enders" cycled to the Queen Vic.

bails87 wrote:

As said above, commuting by bike needs to be just another form of transport, not something that Wiggins wannabes in lycra do as part of their training.

This, look at Holland which has one of (if not the) highest rates of cycling commuting in Europe
1/ Lots of dedicated cycle paths away from traffic - check
2/ A relaxed atytitude to cycling such that many use 'dutch bikes' which to most of us are heavy clunky and slow, but work really well for a relaxed pootle in normal clothes on dedicated paths away from traffic

Of course the fact that Holland is as flat as a pancake helps with both the above!

I cycle when I'm in India, the irony there is that most people see it as the means of transport for poor people who can't afford a motorobike, they think it really funny that people should cycle for leisure!

if you're trying to make a commuter bike for the average short distance plod to work for someone who doesn't currently cycle and hasn't been on a bike for years then I think cheap, with weather protection and mimimal maintenance would be the main targets. Dutch bikes and Boris bikes are a good example of how that's done.

One big benefit of cycling is that it can be an incredibly cheap way to get around, if the initial outlay is several hundred pounds then that benfit is lost.
If your clothes get sprayed in road grime then people will need a full change of clothes at each end, reducing the convenience and increasing the time the journey takes. Proper full mudguards won't stop rain falling on you but it does stop the grimy water on the roads soaking you through when the rain stops.
Maintenance is something that a lot of us take for granted but something as simple as adjusting brakes or even fixing a flat tyre would put some people off the road until they could get the bike to a shop. I've fixed a few bits for friends of my wife and often it's something you could almost sort during the red phase of a traffic light if you know what you're doing but a lot of people don't know, don't want to learn and don't want to get oily hands.

As for things that put people off - my wife likes cycling, before we had a baby we used to go for jaunts round the local parks or on quiet backroads, occasionally out on the train to ride one of the old train lines in surrey. She's quite happy to cycle 15 miles a moderate pace, including a few decent hills. BUT there's no way she would even consider cycling to work because of the traffic (and I think she's probably right) - there's no way of bypassing busy roads, even the backroads are commuter rat runs for cars with only a token gesture towards provision for cyclists. If there was a safe route all the way I could see her cycling to work about 50% of the time in summer.

90% of the issue for potential commuters and to a large extent existing commuter is motor traffic. You can argue what the best way to 'solve' that problem is, but the fact remains that the biggest barrier to cycling is cars.

I'd add a small note about cycle lanes - they're only any use if you know about them. Seems obvious but it's a relevant point.

I've commuted up the CS7 "cycle superhighway" across south London for a couple of years and despite being supposedly one of Boris' flagship cycle lanes, it's little more than an intermittent blue line for most of its length and does very little to address dangers to cyclists.
About a month ago I took a bit of a diversion on the way home and stumbled across another cycle route which follows the back streets from waterloo to clapham common - almost parallel to the CS7 - but is signposted along relatively quiet roads with dedicated segregated lanes where required (eg to allow you to go 'the wrong way' down a one way street).
In short, it's the kind of cycle lane that is often requested to allow less confident cyclists to get out on the road, it's not perfect by any means but if they're willing to walk the short sections where traffic is unavoidable then it's safe enough for kids riding to school, grannies popping to the shops, new cycle commuters etc.
Trouble is, nobody knows that it's there - even if you go on the TfL website and set your start and end points at each end of the route and set the planner to 'easy' to give you quiet routes, it sends you down the bloody A23 and onto the A3 to meet the 'cycle superhighway' down some very busy routes and dangerous junctions.