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I hadn’t ridden properly for a couple of decades, then after Covid inherited a bike and decided to ride on some bike tracks. Had a great time and now I try to ride anything 10km and under.
It took a little while to get used to riding on roads, but I’ve overcome that.
Also, I’ve noticed that there are lots of great bike tracks but even more missing links to join them all together.
Our towns and cities are largely lacking the medium density mixed use neighbourhoods that make it nice to cycle. We can fix it, but it’s going to take time.
I live 42 km from work, and I have school drop off's and pickups on the way. I can't live where I work, and the kids education opportunities means I can't have them educated where Iive.
Bikes and public transport are welcome but won't help my situation.
Hey as long as you're advocating for better infrastructure so people whose commutes are within a distance that's cyclable can do so, it doesn't bother me (and I doubt many other advocates would be bothered) if you drive. The thing that bothers me is that we frequently see people with long commutes explain that as though it's a reason nobody can ride, and therefore we shouldn't bother putting in the infrastructure.
The obvious counter is the fact that if everyone with a 10 km or less commute got out of their car and onto a bike, there would be so much less traffic. You'd probably halve the peak hour commute time for those 40 km commutes as a result.
As a small side note though, the distance is a problem, the "dropping kids off to school" is not. With good infrastructure, kids can be ridden in a bike trailer, in the front of a bakfiets, or on a kiddy seat. Older children can ride their own bikes alongside a parent. And teenagers can ride by themselves the whole journey. Bikes are amazing for independence of growing kids, rather than needing to be ferried everywhere by parents. But only if we build the infrastructure for them.
Of course there's also a big overlap between cycling advocates and urbanism. And that overlap obligates me to ask: is your commute 42 km because you love living way out rurally even though you work in the city, or is it because housing prices are so obscene that that's the only place you could afford to live with your family? Because a key point for urbanists is that it should be possible for anyone to be able to live close to where they work, in large part thanks to reducing the cost of housing by drastically increasing supply of medium and higher density housing. And that medium and higher density housing should come in a variety of configurations, instead of being almost exclusively 1 and 2 bedroom places with a small number of 3 bedroom, and 4 bedroom is basically non-existent, as is currently the case.
And as an urbanist, I'd say that even if you do just want to live 42 km out, it should be possible to take a train in. It's probably too low-density for public transport alone to be viable, but a 5 k–or–less cycle to a train station served every 15 minutes or more is absolutely possible, if there were political will.
To your question, I couldn't afford to live where I work (near the brighton end of the SE industrial zone), and the hub-and-spoke melbourne train network means my PT commute would be somewhere between 2 to 2.5 hours one way, with me getting to work two hours after my start time.
We operate 24 hours a day, for back shifts there is literally no public transport option available at the 10-11pm shift change due to the end of service (and making the start time earlier would just mean shift change at 4am, same problem.)
Changing workplaces in the industrial/ag sector is another important factor. For example, my last job, I was driving 40 minutes in the opposite direction to my current commute, it wouldn't be tenable to sell and buy housing every time there is a job change, the stamp duty alone would be a waste of money. For my colleagues, I recruited a couple last year from a company that wound up, they went from a 20 minute drive in one direction to a 40 minute drive in the other direction, Many travel radially across the city to get here, and large industrial/manufacturing plants are typically NIMBYed in development or if the sprawl grows around it, suddenly there's noise and activity restrictions.
I could get work locally outside my area of expertise, but I'd be stunting my career and dropping about $50 grand a year in earning potential.
I 100% support public transport and personal mobility, but also recognise the limitations.
In many countries with high numbers of cyclers an adult can jump on a bike and cycle along the footpath without a helmet. In Australia you can be fined over $400!
Helmets are great though. Too many people end up with cracked open skulls just from falling over at slow speeds.
No you're absolutely right. On an individual level, it always makes sense to wear a helmet. I'll always see someone without a helmet, whatever the context, and think they're a fucking idiot.
Yes, even in the Netherlands.
But individual decisions are not the same as public health policy. And from a public health perspective, mandatory helmets are a net negative.
A problem, for sure, and the evidence tells us it's a bad idea.
But the evidence also seems fuzzy enough that it seems very unlikely that this is the primary problem with cycling in this country.
Bicycle freeways, put them in every city over 100k pop.
Because we live IN A FUCKING OVEN
So many reasons. Not everyone lives close enough to the city. Not everyone wants to ride a bike. Not everyone has showers available at their work. Not everyone would feel safe riding a bike, especially women. Then there's the big one - the weather.
What fucking shithole do you live in where women don't feel safe riding a bike?
Women don’t generally like riding bikes home after dark through dimly lit streets and parks etc. Pretty universal thing.
Not really. In places that are not absolute shitholes, that is a normal and safe thing to do.
It doesn’t matter if it’s actually very safe to do, it’s the fact that many women have been and are attacked that way so women will always have that fear in the back of their mind. Trying to deny this is going against basic human psychology and behaviour.
You only need to look at the current “man or bear” discussion to see how wrong you are.
No, this is absolutely true. In general, women tend to be more risk averse than men. So in an environment where you have to ride on the road with cars—i.e., anywhere in Australia—women are going to be much less likely to feel safe riding a bike.
Separate from that, there are also issues that matter more to women than to men, relating to things like "eyes on the street" and path lighting at night. Men are more likely than women to feel safe riding on a dark park through a park at night.
I remember reading on the Conversation years ago one problem is we've been trained to see everyone on the road as equal. That's not the case, someone in a car is surrounded by steel in a one tonne machine that can go 100km/h, but they're the one missing out when stuck behind a cyclist or a cycle lane is implemented. Spaces need to be planned with a focus on the movement of people first, then cars.
We also need more complete cycling infrastructure. You look at the cycle lanes on maps and the paths look like a minecraft village. They're disconnected and don't link up anywhere. Also, a metre of green paint at the edge of a three lane road where the speed limit is 80km/h is not cycling infrastructure.
I used to ride the 33kms into the city for work, but that's because I like cycling and got all the gear for it. The ride was either on paths or quiet roads but more could be done to link up sections and make the ride faster.
There was another article about the 'cycling donut' effect in Melbourne where people close to the CBD could walk or take trams, further out people rode because it was that sweet spot of a distance, and beyond that people drove or took public transport because everything was too far away.
Australia is a perfect candidate for cycling infrastructure because our cities are mostly flat, it never gets as cold as it does in Europe or NA, and the heat is generally more of a dry heat which can be avoided with some shade and a breeze. Our cities should be designed around 3-speed town bikes instead of cars.
33km on the bike as a commute is amazing! I only travel 12km and that is 25 minutes each-way.
Having the energy and commitment to ride 33km at the end of a long work day is very impressive. That has to be over an hour each way.
I only did it once a week and I would ride about halfway home then get the train. I did make it all the way home once but it was a slog. My cycling computer said the ride in was about an hour and a half
I’m just imagining a dedicated 2-way cycle path, lined with tall trees the whole way so it’s in the shade most of the day. What a beauty that would be!
I’m already jealous of you Aussies for the affordability of solar and your abundant sunshine making it highly efficient. Up here in Canada where I live solar is mostly a luxury and bike lanes and paths exist but are rather unpleasant to use when they’re covered with snow and ice from December to May.
The two main reasons stopping me are lack of infrastructure (I haven't ridden a bike in ages and there's no way I'm going on a road with any traffic lol), and climate (Perth is often hot as hell, or rainy, neither of which is great unless you have a shower at work).