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Monday, April 01, 2019

Bike Commuting: A Better Way to Travel

High gas prices. Expensive car payments. Traffic delays. Road rage. Expanding waistlines. There are many great reasons to consider traveling to work by bicycle. It's an effective, healthy, inexpensive, and fun alternative that is attracting more and more commuters all over the world.


Today, there's a lot of information on bicycle commuting available on the Internet. When I first created this bike commuting tips site, there were very few sources of information on just how to do it. And the more you know, the more enjoyable bike commuting becomes.
Most of the people I know travel by means other than the bicycle. For the most part, they're still internal combusters. Automobile drivers. It's the norm, isn't it? In a society like ours--where more money is spent advertising automobiles than is spent on the entire national mass transit system, where everyone's background assumption equates travel with driving--it isn't easy to make the shift to bicycle commuting. I can attest to that. As detailed in this essay, I made many mistakes. I did it all wrong.

This article isn't intended as the comprehensive guide to commuting by bicycle. It's not a "program" intended to work for everyone, in every situation. It merely relates the hard lessons learned by one cyclist over many years of riding to work everyday. My hope is that prospective bike commuters will avoid my errors. If nothing else, my experience demonstrates that it can be done. The addiction to driving can be broken, the necessity of mass transit strap-hanging can be avoided. The following might, just might, encourage others to discover how bicycle commuting can enhance their lives.

Bike to Work Guide: Save Gas, Go Green, Get Fit, by Paul Dorn/Roni Sarig
6 Myths About Commuting By Bicycle, U.S. News & World Report
Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips
How to Live Well Without Owning a Car
Divorce Your Car! Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile

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"The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic."--James Marston Fitch, New York Times, May 1, 1960


Comments? Suggestions? Contact dornbiker@yahoo.com || Updated 04.01.19