People on bikes, Hardbrucke, one of Zurich’s busiest inter-city roads.
Take the train. Jump on a bus. Walk. Scoot. Run. Today is World Car Free Day, a promotion organized in cities around the world since 1995 to make people think about their car use. Car use which is often profligate and—as the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) has warned—unsustainable.
If walking is too slow, running not an option, scooting out of the question and taking public transport too costly or unreliable how about getting on a bike? Cycling doesn’t just make you healthier, happier and more prosperous; study after laborious study shows that getting on your bike also helps make you a sharper, more thoughtful driver for those probably fewer-than-you-think times when you must drive, and it can even improve your sex life (bicyclists have buns of steel).
There are hundreds of benefits to bicycling but let’s stick to just 45. (I thought of that line while cycling – riding a bike gets your creative juices flowing, see #12.)
A five-year study of 263,450 UK commuters, published in the British Medical Journal in 2017, found regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, and the incidence of cancer and heart disease by 45% and 46% respectively. Other large-scale studies have found similar.
One of the biggest and best studies about the health benefits of cycling was carried out by the Copenhagen Center for Prospective Population Studies. Over some years, researchers studied 13,375 women and 17,265 men. Many died during the study period, and their ages were logged. Those who regularly cycled—say, to work—were found to live longer.
Report author Lars Bo Andersen said: “The major findings of this large-scale study were that in both sexes and in all age groups … those who used the bicycle as transportation to work experienced a lower mortality rate even after adjustment for leisure time physical activity … Those who did not cycle to work experienced a 39% higher mortality rate than those who did.”
According to Dr. James Hagberg, an exercise physiologist at the University of Maryland, a healthy woman riding a bicycle on a flat road at 18 miles per hour for an hour, and weighing 125-pounds, burns 555 calories. Add elevation to burn even more calories. Cycling doesn’t just burn fat: it also builds muscle. Muscle is leaner than fat, and people with a higher percentage of muscle burn more calories.
A Statistics Canada survey found that 66% of people who cycle or walk to work are “very satisfied” with their commutes. However, only 32% of car commuters say the same, and for public transit users, it’s even less, at just 25%.
Just 6% of Canadian cyclists say they are “dissatisfied” with their commute. 18% of car commuters report dissatisfaction, and it’s 23% for those who take public transit. In short, cyclists have more fun than motorists.
Bicycles can scythe through gridlock, and ETAs can be timed almost to the second. With less destination arrival stress—in other words, more freedom, more self-determination—cyclists metaphorically whistle on their way to work.
When you enjoy your form of transport—see #3—you’ll do more of it and by choice. Soon you’ll be riding in the rain—see #27—and loving it.
It’s increasingly expensive to park a car. Parking a bicycle costs nothing.
Cyclists attach banner to their bicycles on the transport day at COP26 in Glasgow.
Sort of. It’s true that the manufacture of bicycles is just as polluting as making cars, but a lot less steel, rubber, and plastics have to be used. And bicycles tend to be used for longer than automobiles. A great deal of the particulates that poison our air is from tires, mostly automobile tires, especially from heavy braking and skidding.
The smaller footprint of bicycle tires—and the lower need for stop-start braking—means that, measured in tires, an individual who cycles is less destructive of the planet than an individual who drives.
Electric cars are great but they’re still car-shaped so do diddly squat to reduce congestion and are still deadly to pedestrians and other unprotected road users.
Most cars are still powered by dinosaur juice. Bicycles are powered by cornflakes.
Cycling is chiefly an aerobic activity, one that uses great gulps of oxygen. The heart and lungs work together to bring oxygen and nutrients to the muscles: the lungs expand to bring as much oxygen into the body as possible; the heart beats faster to transport this oxygen around the body. A strong heart and powerful lungs are the building blocks of general fitness.
No fuel bills. No depreciation. No parking tickets, see #5. No insurance. No car-park fees. No congestion charges. No train tickets. No freeway toll fees. That’s if you ditch your car entirely. That might be a leap too far but cycling to work could help get rid of a second car, saving serious money. It costs the Earth to drive; literally and figuratively.
Rush hour isn’t. It’s not an hour, and it’s more of a crawl than a rush. That is if you drive. If you cycle, you’ll not get stuck in traffic and nor will you be a cause of congestion.
Cycling in cities during peak periods is almost always faster than driving or public transit, especially over distances of five miles or less. And that’s not just for speed-demon cyclists, it’s for go-slow cyclists, too. Cars travel at an average speed of less than 7mph in some city centers; the very act of balancing on a bike means you have to travel at least that speed to stay upright.
Cycling is fastest through city centers because cyclists travel directly to their destination, door to actual door, and go to the front of traffic queues. As a cyclist, you’re a long way to your destination when others are waiting for the bus or pleading with a parking attendant.
In the U.S., 40% of all urban trips are two miles or less. (These sort of short trips also tend to be less energy efficient as cars do fewer miles-per-gallon when engines run cold.)
Test after test has shown that for short urban journeys during rush hour peaks, there is nothing but nothing to beat a cyclist. A four-mile trip in the center of London takes 22 minutes by bike, half an hour by tube, 40 minutes by car (even in a Ferrari), 62 minutes on a bus, and an hour and a half by walking.
Cargobikes beat vans in Amsterdam.
Motorists tend to under-estimate the actual times car journeys take, door-to-door. Not too surprisingly, they over-estimate how long the same trip would take by bike.
On a bike, you can estimate your journey time to the minute and can take short-cuts not available to motorists.
The future for motorists is even slower speeds than today. In a one-person-one-car society, just a handful of people can cause gridlock. And with population densities increasing, such bottlenecks will become more and more commonplace.
It’s stressful to get lost in a car—especially one with an up-to-date satnav—but generally it’s less stressful to get lost on a bike. It’s easier to explore on a bicycle, following one’s nose rather than following a hectoring voice taking orders from a bunch of satellites in the sky. There’s also something about cycling that lends itself to serendipity—ride a bike to explore more.
Smile, you’re a kid again!
The first sweet taste of independence for many children arrives via bicycling. Embrace your inner-child by reliving that formative experience daily.
“I thought of that while riding my bicycle,” Albert Einstein is supposed to said about his relativity theory. Like many such quotes, it’s apocryphal, but it remains relevant because many people report that cycling sparks creativity.
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of The Netherlands ride on bicycles as they visit ECOstyle, … [+]
Exercise boosts blood flow to your brain—a 2013 study found that during exercise, cyclists’ blood flow in the brain rose by up to 70%—but the mindfulness of cycling also triggers fresh thinking, a phenomenon noted by many writers.
Speaking for many, Freddie Mercury in 1978 said: “I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle.” Queen’s lead singer added: “I want to ride my bicycle; I want to ride my bike; I want to ride my bicycle; I want to ride it where I like.” However, apropos of nothing, he claimed he didn’t believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman because “all I wanna do is bicycle, bicycle, bicycle.”
Einstein may not have said or written the phrase in #12, but he definitely wrote: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” (The quote is paraphrased from a letter written by Einstein to his son, Eduard, on 5 February 1940.)
It’s a great metaphor, and a good reminder that riding a bicycle is a core life-skill.
Cycling is intensely individualistic, but cyclists also band together, on social media and in the real world. There’s a palpable community feel to being a cyclist.
Even if you only cycle a few miles per day, some important-for-sex muscles will feel and look stronger, which is a turn-on for both you and your partner. The main muscle groups used when cycling are the upper thigh muscles (quadriceps) and the backside gluteal muscles (including the gluteus maximus, the biggest and strongest muscle your bod’s got).
“All these muscles [worked by cycling] are used during intercourse,” said Dr. Matthew Forsyth, a urologist from Portland, Oregon.
“The better developed these muscles, the longer and more athletic intercourse will be.”
Furthermore, research carried out at Harvard University found that men aged over 50 who cycled for at least three hours a week have a 30% lower risk of impotence than couch potatoes.
Contrary to popular belief, cycling does not necessarily lead to bulging leg muscles. What most people find is their legs become trimmer and more toned, in other words, shapelier, sexier. You want a cute bum? Ride a bike.
Car and train commuters can experience greater stress than fighter pilots going into battle, says Dr. David Lewis, a fellow of the International Stress Management Association. He compared the heart rate and blood pressure of 125 commuters with those of pilots and riot police in training exercises.
“The difference is that a riot policeman or a combat pilot have things they can do to combat the stress that is being triggered by the event. But the commuter cannot do anything about it at all … [there’s] a sense of helplessness.”
Dr. Lewis said commuting by car or train makes people feel “frustrated, anxious and despondent.”
According to the Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer those who drive to work need to earn more to pay for their commute, but not just in pure money terms:
“Workers with one-hour car commutes must earn 40% more money to have a sense of well-being equal to that of a person who walks or bikes to work.”
According to the U.S. National Forum for Coronary Heart Disease Foundation, regular cyclists enjoy a fitness level equal to that of a person ten years younger. Cyclists also report feeling younger.
And it’s excellent to freak out medical staff who fret that your low resting heart rate must mean you’re having a heart attack when it actually means you’re fit as a fiddle.
It’s much easier to stay fit when you work exercise into your daily routine. According to the British Heart Foundation, cycling just 20 miles per week reduces the risk of coronary heart disease to less than half that for non-cyclists. Cycling is a low-impact activity, easy on your joints, perfect for fitness newbies.
The benefits of cycling stay with you as you age, both in health and appearance. It’s one of the few activities that can carry you through your seventies and beyond. Ever tried swimming to work?
Motorists are sitting targets for the foul air they help create: they breathe in much more pollution than cyclists, who sit high above the fumes. A study by the Healthy Air Campaign, Kings College London, and Camden Council saw air pollution detectors fitted to a motorist, a bus user, a pedestrian and a cyclist. With the air they breathed measured on a busy London road it was found that the motorist was exposed to five times higher pollution levels than the cyclist.
Greenpeace activists wear white morphsuits as they stage an action against particulate matter and … [+]
Air-conditioning systems do not remove PM10s, the sooty particulates produced by diesel engines. Cyclists rapidly clear their lungs as they exercise; motorists don’t.
Ride a century—100 miles or kilometers—and you’ll sleep like a log that night. But there are also benefits to be had by cycling for 20-30 minutes every other day, found sleep researchers at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. They tasked sedentary insomnia sufferers with cycling and the result was the time required for the insomniacs to fall asleep was reduced by half, and sleep time increased by almost an hour.
OK, today might be World Car Free Day but there are times when a car remains the best tool for the job (carrying four people over long distances, for instance) but cyclists who drive are better behind the steering wheel than motorists, an analysis from 2019 found.
The link between cycling and safer motoring was revealed by a U.K. insurance firm which offers specialist motor insurance policies for cyclists. Nick Day of Chris Knott Insurance said an analysis of his firm’s crash data showed that cyclists make less than half the number of insurance claims as non-cyclists. This analysis correlates with an earlier study which found that cyclist-drivers tend to have faster reaction times than non-cyclists.
Bit nippy out? Get cycling, you generate your own heat. Hot out? A gentle bike ride in stifling heat can be cooling because you create a personal breeze.
“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking,” wrote Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle in Scientific American, 1896.
The great man was wrong about fairies, but correct about the mood-enhancing effects of cycling. A YMCA study showed that people who had a physically active lifestyle had a wellbeing score 32% higher than inactive individuals.
University of Illinois researchers found that a 5% improvement in cardio-respiratory fitness from cycling led to an improvement of up to 15% in mental tests. They figured this was because cycling helps build new brain cells in the hippocampus, the region responsible for memory and which starts to wither after the age of 30.
“[Cycling] boosts blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which fires and regenerates receptors,” said lead author Professor Arthur Kramer.
Having fun on the Taichung rail trail, the Dongfong Green Bikeway.
“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in Collier’s Magazine, 1944.
“You remember them as they actually are,” he added, “while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”
“Bicycling … is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds,” wrote birdwatching author Louis J Halle in 1957:
“There are movements on a bicycle corresponding to almost all the variations in the flight of the larger birds. Plunging free downhill is like a hawk stooping. On the level stretches you may pedal with a steady rhythm like a heron flapping; or you may, like an accipitrine hawk, alternate rapid pedaling with gliding. If you want to test the force and direction of the wind, there is no better way than to circle, banked inward, like a turkey vulture. When you have the wind against you, headway is best made by yawing or wavering, like a crow flying upwind. I have climbed a steep hill by circling or spiraling, rising each time on the upturn with the momentum of the downturn, like any soaring bird. I have shot in and out of stalled traffic like a goshawk through the woods.”
“I relax by taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together again,” actor Michelle Pfeiffer once said.
In a car—same goes for bus, tram, train—you’re shielded from the elements. On a bicycle, you’re not. This is glorious. Rain. Snow. Sleet. Wind. Sunshine. They all cleanse, purify, refresh.
“What a wonderful tonic to be exposed to bright sunshine, drenching rain, choking dust, dripping fog, rigid air, punishing winds,” wrote French cycling journalist Paul de Vivie in 1911.
“I will never forget the day I climbed the Puy Mary,” he continued.
“There were two of us on a fine day in May. We started in the sunshine and stripped to the waist. Halfway, clouds enveloped us and the temperature tumbled. Gradually it got colder and wetter, but we did not notice it. In fact, it heightened our pleasure. We did not bother to put on our jackets or our capes, and we arrived at the little hotel at the top with rivulets of rain and sweat running down our sides. I tingled from top to bottom.”
Road transport is responsible for 22% of the U.K.’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and in the U.S. it’s even higher. Bicycles are part of the solution, not part of the problem. The carbon footprint of a person on a bike is famously low. Bikes don’t have exhaust pipes; they don’t emit deadly pollutants and they don’t slurp war-mongering fossil fuels.
“Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process,” wrote philosopher Ivan Illich in his 1978 environmental polemic Toward a History of Needs.
Illich continued: “He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.”
Writer Elly Blue of Portland, Oregon, created the word “bikeonomics”, a portmanteau between “bicycle” and “economics.”
She has written: “There are many more local benefits of the bike economy, from lowering families’ health care costs to reducing a business’s need to invest in costly parking spaces for staff and customers. And you can’t place a monetary value on happiness.
“The bicycle economy, unlike its fancier cousin transit-oriented development, is not about new development or raising property values. It’s about bettering our existing communities. It’s about making cities and suburbs that are built on an automotive scale navigable, instead, by human power. It’s about providing the basics to everyone, in their neighborhood, now …
“There aren’t very many economic scenarios in this country where everyone wins. But if you had to choose one single thing that could pull our neighborhoods, towns, and cities out of … a recession, you’d do well to bet on the humble bicycle.
“More bicycling means a healthier economy, a better workplace, and even more jobs.
“Bicycling creates a little wealth. But more importantly, it creates a lot of well-being.”
You don’t have to be super-fit to start cycling. Start slowly, progressively increase your exertion levels, and your fitness will grow along with your skills and expertise. Naturally, if you’re starting from zero and have any existing health conditions, seek advice from your doctor about the levels of recommended initial exertion.
Most doctors recommend cycling because it’s a low-impact, weight-suspended form of exercise. The bike does the carrying. Unlike jogging, your knees do not take a hammering from hard asphalt. When runners are out of puff, they have to stop. The cyclist has the advantage of being able to “freewheel,” or roll along without pedaling.
There’s a fundamental problem with mass car ownership: there’s not enough space to put them all. Gridlock is the outcome of planning solely for cars. When a city grinds to a halt, that’s money down the drain. Cities are waking up to the fact that unrestrained car use is bad for people, and bad for the local economy. Unrestrained car use also leads to ugly cities. Cities that plan for people, not motor cars, are, by design, more attractive places to live and to linger.
Cars—even electric ones above 15mph—are noisy. Bicycles are practically silent.
More cycling, less driving, massively reduces noise pollution, especially in crowded cities. And reducing noise pollution can have physical and mental health benefits for all.
Riding for a long time staring into the middle distance, glancing at your front wheel now and then, can elevate you to a higher plane. This Zen state is a legal high, and, for your brain at least, a long ride can be incredibly relaxing. (Your bum may beg to differ, at least to begin with.)
Naturally, getting into this Zen state requires few other distractions and isn’t likely to be achieved on a four-mile ride to work alongside cars and trucks.
The number of animals killed by motorists each day is estimated to be in the tens of millions globally. Cyclists are far less likely to squish squirrels, flatten cats or run into moose.
“The bicycle is a curious vehicle,” said the U.S. Olympic cyclist John Howard, “its passenger is its engine.”
To propel yourself at meaningful speed, using muscles alone, is a constant source of wonder and pride for those who cycle.
If, at #2, you scoffed at the thought of ever being able to reach 18mph unaided on the flat, think again. It’s very much achievable. Want to go even faster? Fold into a tuck to reduce your frontal area. Once moving at 20mph aerodynamic drag is by far the greatest barrier to the speed of a cyclist, accounting for 70 to 90% of your pedaling effort.
Every time your speed doubles, air resistance increases fourfold—in a car this means you use more gas, on a bike it means expending more effort.
(Howard happens to be a bit of an expert on how to go very fast on a bicycle by the canny use of aerodynamics. In 1985 he set a land speed record for a cyclist when he managed 152.2mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, drafting behind a pace car.)
A young Mountain Biker Riding Into The Sunset at La Costa Preserve, Carlsbad California
Judging speed by airflow velocity is no longer possible in modern cars (convertibles are the notable exception) so today’s motorists have to use gizmos to warn when they are approaching or exceeding local speed limits. In short, it’s getting harder and harder to feel the speed in modern cars. Not so on bicycles. 25mph on a bicycle feels incredibly fast, especially when cornering.
Twice this speed is possible on steep downhills for competent, confident riders. 50mph in a modern car can feel pedestrian; 50mph on a bicycle most definitely does not.
Want to experience the racing driver buzz? Ride a bicycle.
Mother and son repairing bicycle puncture together; first, find the hole by dunking inner tube into … [+]
The very first cars required their drivers to be able to fix them. Not so for today’s drivers. That’s a key benefit, of course, but it’s also a loss of control. Cyclists, on the other hand, need to be able to sort minor roadside repairs, such as mending punctures.
“Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers—those people ride a bike,” said Wolfgang Sachs, the former chairman of Greenpeace.
Reduce congestion by not taking up space in an inefficient motor vehicle built for multiple occupants but which often only carries one, the driver.
“The bicycle uses little space,” said Illich in his 1978 book.
“Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles.”
When was the last time you screeched to a halt in your car to watch a gamboling hare? Such stops happen habitually when you cycle. Being cossetted in a climate controlled car is comfortable, of course, but it’s also deprivation of sorts. It may seem crass to say it out loud but, when cycling, you feel at one with nature. And you don’t always have to stop to get that feeling—it’s possible, at dusk, to ride with a hunting barn owl, flying only slightly faster than you can pedal.
Motorists are lulled into a—false—sense of security by almost always arriving at their destinations without crashing. Motoring is deemed to be safe when it’s anything but. Until a crash—and one always comes—motoring is perceived to be so inherently safe it’s mundane, boring even.
Cycling is many things but boring is not one of them. Flying along balanced on two wheels with just millimeters of rubber holding you to the road is never dull.
Cyclists are fully aware of their vulnerability, moving as they do through an auto-centric landscape without a steel exoskeleton or airbags. Cyclists develop a self-preserving sixth sense—they know when a car door will be opened on them as they ride along because they are looking for it, planning escape maneuvers for when the inevitable happens. There’s nothing like riding in motor traffic for developing the ability to focus on the here and now. This isn’t danger-lust, it’s knowing that, with skill and forethought, hazardous situations can be controlled. See #16.
Courier cyclists darting and diving through moving motor traffic may appear to be suicidal but, in fact, they are using the sort of daring just-in-time skills and fight-or-flight judgments that has kept our species in clover for millennia. Your ride to work hopefully won’t be quite so action packed—especially if your city is foresighted enough to have installed a tight grid of separated cycleways—but, on a bike, it always pays to pay attention.
Cyclists who go on pleasure rides to and from their front doors get to know their surroundings in exquisite detail. Walking is also good for this, but few would go on 20-mile jaunts on foot. Twenty miles by bicycle—ten miles out, ten miles back—takes even a slowish cyclist just a little over an hour and a half. Factor in some time for spotting hares and barn owls—see #39—and a two-hour A to A pleasure ride can generate mind maps that stay with you.
“It’s as easy as riding a bike” is a strange simile. Riding a bike might appear simple, but it’s downright miraculous. Riding a unicycle even more so—that’s an example of how to accomplish the impossible.
Research from Transport for London (TfL) claims that people walking, cycling and using public transport spend more than motorists in local shops. Conducted by Matthew Carmona from University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning, the research reveals that those not in cars spend 40% more each month in neighborhood shops than motorists.
Notice those cracked paving slabs? They weren’t broken by cyclists but by motorists, often parking illegally on the sidewalk. The repairs are paid for by local taxation— more cycling equals less damage to the local infrastructure, equals lower bills for all.
There once was a day, when cars were still young, that people used to go out for “pleasure drives.” Who does that any more? Cyclists, that’s who. Riding in an errand-free A to A loop for the sheer hell of it is normal for cycling, not at all normal for motoring. “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride,” remarked John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States.
This article is based on one from the same author in 2018.
