I'm in an enviable position compared to most cyclists.
I live in an area with minimal rain 8 months out of the year, pleasant temperatures year round, and I'm only 3 miles away from my workplace. I have a 15-30 minute ride to work if I take my bike, and while I don't have a dedicated bike trail there are bike lanes for >50% of the journey.
So, why am I still driving to my job 5 days a week?
It's not because I don't have a bike. I've had a great street bike for the past 3 years, my Fuji Absolute is still in great condition.
It's not because of the cost, since my workplace offers an allowance for employees that use alternative vehicles to compensate them for not taking up parking spots. They offer up to $20 per month that can be used to reimburse an employee for bicycle related costs including the bike, replacement parts, and shop repairs. You can save your receipts and get allowances for prior expenses, so I could have amortized my 300 dollar bike over 15 months and all of my replacement tubes, pumps, etc over the remaining 18 months since I got my bike and had all of my costs paid for.
What is really keeping me from bike commuting is probably a combination of laziness, fear, and inertia. I will expand on these below.
Laziness
In looking at a transition to bike commuting, I can compare my current "out the door" routine with the one that I used when I was bike commuting in the following table.
In order to successfully bike commute, I need to actually be disciplined enough to prepare to leave home earlier than I need to for a driving commute. I can't comb my hair, drink coffee, or finish eating breakfast on my bike like I can in my car, and I also cant apply lip balm or keep an extra set of whatever I might happen to need in a frame bag. I also don't have a locker at work to store an extra set of business clothes in case my fresh clothes get messy after a fall, so it really isn't as convenient, despite the fact that it would essentially be free for me to ride my bicycle to work, and that it would save me almost 30 minutes of time every day that I currently spend finding parking, walking to and from various far flung parking lots, and moving my car.
At my last job, we had a locker room where employees could keep clothes and gear, and a break room where employees could keep various food and beverage products, and I used to keep relatively nutritious items there like milk and juice that I could consume after cycling or before going to the gym. My current workplace does not offer these features, and as a result I don't really keep much at work. One of my (shared) workspaces has a microwave for employees to reheat homecooked meals and a mini-refrigerator, so I added an electric kettle and keep some teabags there, but it's not really private or separated from a working area and I don't have enough room to leave food products in that refrigerator.
Looking at the table above, I'm not including gym visits on either schedule. I usually go to the gym after work if I drive to work, and would rarely go to the gym if I rode my bicycle. That being said, I cancelled my gym membership in March 2020, a month before the COVID 19 pandemic got serious, so I haven't been going to the gym at all in the past 6 months.
In addition to all of the above concerns, I am often ridiculously tired after work, to a greater degree than I was after a similar day at my previous job. I have often found it necessary to stop and nap in my car on the way home, and many days I don't actually leave on time.
Fear
I have a variable schedule, so I could be leaving home for work as early as 6:30 AM or as late as 6:30PM if I'm driving. I also have variable shift lengths, ranging from four hours to 12 hours in length. As a result, I could be coming home or leaving home while it is still dark, and unfortunately crossing very high speed and high traffic roads in poor visibility conditions is a real possibility for me.
While incidents of violent crime are not extremely high, there have been multiple historic accounts of pedestrian, cyclist, and vehicle collisions on my residential street and in the surrounding areas. Despite a dedicated bike lane, there is still a serious risk of injury or death when cycling in the immediate vicinity of my home.
I have also been cautioned many times about going out after dark in the area where I live and work, both for safety reasons and due to the risk of profit-motivated crimes. Unfortunately, I have many houseless neighbors that live on or around the properties adjacent to my home, and many of them would be more than willing to impose themselves on me for profit. To put it bluntly, I am often asked for money and or goods while walking or riding my bicycle, and I'm certain that this would happen more frequently if I increased the number of bike trips I make. When considering that I have little control over the times that I leave my home or workplace and therefore the conditions that I would be cycling through, I have in the past been discouraged from cycling to work.
Inertia
I've been working at my current day job for nearly 4 years now. After that much time, certain habits have become ingrained upon me, and I have settled into something of a routine.
It's hard to make an intentional change to a process that has accumulated over many years and offers several creature comforts.
Since I currently car commute, I've invested time and money in overcoming the challenges presented by driving to work and parking in competitive, overcrowded parking lots and structures, and switching over to bike commuting presents a significant learning curve compared to just keeping on my current, car-driving path.
That being said, if I transition into a fixed schedule position that has only daylight hours, and become more comfortable riding through my residential area, I might transition to cycling to work, but for now I'm a purely recreational cyclist.
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