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news
Bike Week 2015 CTC YouTube video stillCTC says half of UK commuters live within 5-mile bike ride of work (+ video)
National cyclists’ charity CTC says that nearly half of Great Britain’s commuters live within a five-mile bike ride of their place of work, and is encouraging more of them to switch to two wheels for their journeys.
Research commissioned from YouGov found that common complaints among those not commuting by bicycle include congestion, inconsiderate motorists, buses not arriving at the time shown on the timetable, and overcrowding and high fares on trains.
All of those are featured in a new video from CTC that has been released to coincide with this year’s Bike Week, which runs from last Saturday 13 June through to next Sunday 21 June.
As well as finding that 47 per cent of people live five miles or less from their place of work, the research also found that while sharing some frustrations, such as roads with potholes, with other commuters, 27 per cent of cyclists said nothing frustrates them about their commutes.
CTC’s Bike Week Co-ordinator, Jonathan Sharpe, said “Our latest research makes a really a compelling case for cycling.
“It is easy to start your day on time, less burdened by traffic jams, and with money still in your pocket ready for a hearty lunch break – the answer is cycling to work.”
Research previously featured on road.cc has found that those who commute by bicycle are more likely to arrive at work refreshed and be more productive than people who do so using other modes of transport.
CTC, which delivers Bike Week in partnership with Cyclescheme and Love to Ride, says that half a million people will participate in the initiative this year.
Bike Week also benefits from funding from Bike Hub, Cycling Scotland, and Travelwise Northern Ireland, and is supported by British Cycling, London Cycling Campaign, Sustrans, the Association of Cycle Traders and Cyclenation.
You can find more information, including events in your area, on www.bikeweek.org.uk as well as via Facebook and Twitter, where the official hashtag is #BikeWeekUK.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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53 comments
I live in a village with sea on one side and fields on two other sides. As a result most of the people that use our local station live within half a mile of it. A perfect opportunity to encourage walking and cycling to the station you would think?
No. The local council are expanding the station carpark as not enough commuters can park at the station... Our local cycle development officer might as well be made of cardboard for all the influence he has and the council rumbles on implementing policy that is 30 years out of date.
Does this survey consider hilly areas? Some people might just be put off by a few lumps (and potholes, and terrifying road layouts, and other drivers, and sweat, and effort, and a sore bum.....) I cycle a fair distance to and from work each week, (admittedly weather permitting), using the train and my bike in equal measure. The cycle from work to home can take 1hr 20mins on a good day, literally the same time, (or sometimes quicker) as using a bus and then train. I get to see some beautiful countryside as well, (once out of town). There's a lot of work to be done, mainly on infrastructure. I believe once this is in place more people will get on a bike. I've lost count the amount of times I've had grief on the road. My biggest bug bear is those who can;t wait to get past you, squeezing you in, and then chucking a left. I like to counter this by chucking a C Bomb back followed by a limp wristed, shaking action. It;s surprising how many people give you sh!t but when you challenge them, don't want to know!
I was thinking about sub 5 mile car commuters the other day and it can be quite difficult to make a convincing case for switching to cycling in many cases.
Cycling is cheap but it's not free. Motoring is much more expensive when all factors are considered but once the fixed and semi-fixed costs have been met the actual cost of using a car for short journeys such as this is pretty minimal. Assuming that in most cases you'd be persuading people to leave the car at home rather than give up the car completely the financial argument doesn't necessarily hold up and outside of heavily congested areas the time-saving argument loses a lot of weight too.
There are other less quantifiable benefits that we are all aware of as cyclists but they don't make such convincing arguments.
5 miles each way is over 2,000 miles per year. At 30 mpg (an optimistic figure for 4x4 owners) that's 300 litres of fuel you save, plus the time queueing to buy it. Your chances of a shunt are lower while your perception of risk and of other road users will probably be improved.
The benefits go far beyond saving you a few quid. You reduce pollution, congestion and noise, all of which have adverse health effects. Public Health England estimates that a mere 10% increase in cycling and walking in urban centres in England would save the NHS over £1 billion over 20 years.
You don't need a fancy drop-bar mudguard-less bike either. I started doing 5 miles each way through Shrewsbury on my old MTB mainly because I was fed up of queueing in the car twice each day. It was hardly any slower and needed very little maintenance. But more important to me is feeling happier and healthier. I'd like to think I was more productive at work too. If I need to pop into a shop or return a book to the library on the way home then it's easy but would be a nightmare in the car. My kids cycle 3 miles each way so no school run to do.
No-one would miss the frustration and stress of urban driving - watching the clock, trying to nudge into a queue from a side road as the traffic lights go to red once more. Yuck!
as simon says (sorry!) the benefits of cycle commuting are huge! it's just convincing people who usually wouldn't to give it a go.
I think things like the lovetoride challenge and cycle to work day are good ways of doing this.
I loath the one day a week that I have to drive into work, but it doesn't stress me out as much as it used to, as I can simply sit back and think, "at least I don't have to do this every day"
I have the luxury of being able to do almost my entire commute off-road without significantly extending it. I wonder how many people (within 5 miles of work) are in the same position and simply don't realise it.
I have the same thought. I manage 16.5 miles mostly traffic free to the office. I have found traffic free routes to the other sites which are within sane cycling distance as well.
We may just be very lucky
I really don't think we are, I think there are far more cycle ways than people realise, partly because most of it doesn't show up on Google Maps.
I think it's pot luck really. I used to do a 5 mile commute on fast, busy roads with lots of HGV traffic. There were two alternatives, one was another similar road and the other was (mostly) on pleasant rural back roads. Unfortunately the most pleasant route was also twice the distance.
i think if you could just encourage some of the "5 mile radius car people" to cycle in a couple of times, that would be all the convincing they needed!
they'd realise just how easy it is, and how much less frustrating it can be than driving, especially for those that work in towns and cities.
it's the fear of trying something new that seems to put a lot of people off.
each time we have a major traffic incident during commuter hours that completely snarls up the traffic - those that have driven in arrive so wound up, and the local news / facebook / twitter feeds are full of people complaining about the state of the traffic, failing to realise that they are the traffic!
Most people agree that more people should cycle.
The same people will choose the easiest option - the car.
It's not enough just to make it easier for people to cycle. You also have to disincentivize them from taking the car.
We need to make not taking the car the easy option.
so true, in our old office, I cycled occasionally (10 minutes), but drove mostly (5 minutes). (100m climb in the first km was the major disincentive). Now my journey is twice as far, but I cycle every day I don't need the car for site visits, or school run on the way. (no hills, and cycling takes 12 minutes (15 in no sweat mode) and driving takes 25-30 minutes.
The trouble is, as more people are incentivised out of cars, driving becomes easier for the rest.
Then you've not sufficiently disincentivised driving.
A work colleague of mine will not even consider walking the 1.5 miles to work. He bemoans the fact that he is overweight and unhealthy yet pays for gym membership to which he drives??? I've suggested that he gets a bike as that may help. He's not impressed as it is a gentle climb for his return journey.
I think we do cycling a huge disservice with the wearing of Lycra and being road warriors by hammering into work at 20mph and collecting PB's and KOMs. While the kit is practical in many ways I feel it is pointless if the commute is less than 5 miles. The people we want to get on bikes are those who are quite happy to amble along at 8mph wearing regular clothesand aren't all that interested in cycling being a hobby. . They don't need changing rooms and showers and all the latest kit. My grandad and great uncle cycled 3 miles to the train, dumped their bikes and then walked the last couple of miles to their work. they never needed a change of clothes or wash after their commute. If we look across to Amsterdam and Copenhagen where commuting by bike is normalised there's not a sign of Lycra to be had.
Another thing that I don't think helps, is that bikes are generally sold without mudguards as standard now days. This is one thing that quickly puts folk off when they get caught sans guards and their shoes and clothes are ruined by the water coming up off the ground. After a couple of soakings the bike is quickly consigned to the shed. That and the lousy infrastructure that we have doesn't really help.
I hold my hands up to the fact that I wear Lycra on my commute but this is due to my total commute ranging from 20 to 40 mile depending on mood and weather and that I hammer the 5 miles on the way in as I'm starting at 5am and leave home at the last possible minute and am sweating like the proverbial pig by the time I get in. If I was a 9-5 office job I would be ambling in with regular clothes and not worrying too much and leaving my big mileage for the evenings/weekends.
All you need if you are a bloke with short hair, and thus instantly alienating half of the population.
whilst I cant speak for all womankind, I can assure you we are still quite familiar with the concept of using toilets as impromptu changing rooms
There's a few things that can affect people.
The obvious is Infra. I started cycling the full 16 miles almost 18 months ago to lose weight for daughter's wedding. share paths making it a sane commute were just being built. There is still a 1/2 gap which would put most off as you have to mix it with buses, LGVs & cars on a NSL limit road. As more of the route has been converted to a cycleable path so more have started cycling it.
Another issue is storage: My daughter actually wants to give commuting a try but is on a waiting list at her work for secure bike parking as they are not allowed to just dump and lock anywhere. But also the new house she lives in has no space for storing bikes, so that's something we need to tackle (no space for outside hanger either). I wish Govt would give grants for bike storage and for bikes other than just the cycle2work scheme. They do for leccy cars so why not bikes?
For a lot of people, the lack of obvious safe cycling routes can be an issue, especially when their normal route is a clogged major road with no infra.
There also seems to be a collective agoraphobia in the UK where most seem as if they cannot cope with more than the shortest walk between building and car. They almost want to be shut off from the rest of society in their own little hermetically sealed and controlled bubble of personal space
You ever been on a bus?
Seriously, in winter, all windows shut, and steamed up, breathing in everyone else's coughs and sneezes and the odour of an entire can of Lynx attempting to cover up the smell of the couple of Lambert and Butler for breakfast (and failing I might add) or sweating out the previous nights pi** up. Yuck. A couple of weeks of that and, at 33, I was finally driven (?) to learn to drive.
I get to commute by bike once a week now (in the summer anyway) at 30 miles each way. A bit too long to seriously do every day (around a couple of hours). Surprised as I was, my family actually wanted to see me occasionally.
I looked into dropping the car altogether for my commute, riding to the nearest mainline station and back and getting the train. However, the cost of a monthly rail ticket outweighed my cost in fuel by about 25-30% (something like £210 a month vs my £150 ish of fuel) although took roughly the same time if you ignore the bike ride (and inevitable delays and cancellations).
It worked out something like:
- Car journey, about 45 minutes in, an hour/ hour and a quarter home. £150 a month.
- Bike, two hours each way. Free, apart from eating more
- Train. About 45 minutes each way (1 change), ignoring bike time of about 30/40 minutes. £210 a month.
Is it any wonder the roads get so crowded when what should be our most efficient mass transit system is so prohibitively expensive? We all know why that is though .....
I don't disagree with a word that you say. However, the article is clearly discussing people who live within 5 miles of their workplace. i.e. Easy commute distance on a push bike. Nobody expects public transport and bikes to completely replace cars (I'd never give up my car), but imagine if the half of commuters that live within 5 miles of their workplace took up cycling? The benefits would be phenomenal: Minimal traffic for those that need to drive, far fewer cycling deaths, reduced obesity. As a society, laziness is costing us heavily.
My company moved to a new office last year. I was really pleased when I saw the place we were considering as it was a 13 mile journey door to door and along some reasonable roads, and with a nice new shower room as well. But we were gazumped. Instead we moved to a place that's 17 miles from my home by the most direct route which I seriously would not want to ride as these are high speed dual carriageways, and there's no shower. So I either take the motorbike, or take the train part way and cycle part way.
Interestingly enough, I get a similar reaction to the motorbike as I do to the bicycle. Using it cuts at least 20 minutes off the journey in comparison with the car. The cycle/train journey isn't quick but I can do my email on the train and get working as well. Driving in the car is just extra, dead time.
I've lived in London for over 20 years and I seriously cannot understand why so many people still choose to commute by car. They clearly do not value their time or their health and are content instead to spend money they could otherwise save.
I love those that drive a mile or so to the gym...
funny you should say that. i was talking to a guy at work today. he lives about 2 miles from his gym, but hasn't been in 6 months as he doesn't currently have a car. he's paying £35/month in gym fees (£210 wasted so far) but won't walk there and won't be going back until he has another car. he couldn't understand it when we berated him!!
Whether he couldn't understand it or just couldn't run away
my work is 35 miles away. i am lucky enough to work 2 days from home.in sunner i part commute 1-2 twice a week 25 miles by car , 14 miles by bike. would love to do whole distance because i hate to do the 25 miles bit by car, however it would involve cycling where i do not feel safe. . it is far easier to get in the car and do the direct 35 miles. if the infrastructure was there, such as long distance motoways for bikes i would sell my car. (keep the wife's though)i also do all convenience shopping by bike, but the local roads are so tight and some experiences i had were so negative that i am very apprehensive of my 12 year old going off on his bike on its own. one of my neighbors bought his son a playstation instead of a road bike because of such fears.
In the UK we are seven years into a downturn where millions of folk have either not received pay rises or just minimal increases. I struggle to believe that there is anyone who will see publicity for bike week and think 'wow there is my answer for how to save money'.
I'm still amazed at how little people value their time. I cycle for my commute from Bristol to Bath on a daily basis. It's amazing how many cars overtake me on the dual-carriageway that I then zoom past 10 minutes later when we get to traffic. I've driven the route a couple of times, it's 30 minutes on bike, or an hour in car if there's traffic. If I didn't have showers at work I could still go and use the local swimming pool showers and get into work faster.
It's mainly excuses when a big reason that more people don't cycle is because they can't be arsed. I can't see the survey questions, but the article doesn't state how many people responded with "I can't actually be fucked"
This one always amazes me.
In my last place my commute was 20 mins (guaranteed) by bike, or 45 mins by Tube on a good day, or 60 mins by car but could be more. I even had a dedicated parking space but I value my time, and sanity, too much to have wasted two hours of every day in the car.
However my colleagues didn't see it that way and in an office of 50 staff I was the only one who cycled every day. Some were doing 1 hr 30 mins EACH WAY. Three hours chucked away every single day.
I just don't get it at all.
I commute 20 miles each way every day. I have to say, if I only liv ed 5 miles away I'd be very very disappointed.
And probably take up running instead........
And lets not forget, whilst the law takes not interest in bike theft it does little to encourage people to spend money on something that may not be there when they get back at the end of the work/school run/shops etc.
Infrastructure for cycling where I live is non existent, even new roads are lacking anything, but at the same time new housing developments are woefully short on parking space because of some deluded idea that everyone is going to get on a bike or a bus (by the way, local council also cut the bus services)....you couldn't make it up.
I hope that if the driver in the still at the top of this story ever gets on a bike they grip the handlebars better than the steering wheel. Clearly not in full control of their vehicle.
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