6 ms·

For the past seven years, I've lived 1.6 miles from work. My route to work almost perfectly follows a bike trail. Despite that, I drove almost every single day.

For the past seven years, I've lived 1.6 miles from work. My route to work almost perfectly follows a bike trail. Despite that, I drove almost every single day. Largely because it meant another ten minutes of free time in the morning, and getting home a little earlier every evening. Then where I work enacted a plan where we pay any day that we park at the office, and get a bonus any day we take alternate transit. The plan is designed to be revenue neutral for the company while incentivizing people to not drive and park. I bike every single day now. In fact, I'd probably keep biking if they stopped the plan because I'm used to it now and really like it. But it was so hard to change my commuting habit. I feel like the drive to work is a point in the day where humans have absolute minimal executive function and willpower. By the time I'm heading out the door, I don't want to be thinking strategically or trying to make the world better or anything. I just want to get the fuck to work and use my brainpower there.

jdavis703 7y ago
I’m glad you’re enjoying your switch! It seems like 1.6 miles at a moderate pace is a 6 minute ride though... Of course I’m assuming no hills and a lack of extreme heat which might be wrong on my end.
- munificent 7y ago
  It's completely flat and weather here in Seattle is cool. It's really an optimal environment for riding. It takes me about ten minutes with another five to park. I could push faster, but (1) I have a pretty cheap bike and (2) I don't want to get to the office sweaty. For comparison, my drive was about six minutes.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  6 minutes is a pretty optimistic estimate for that length of commute. It's only 6 minutes if there's no lights whatsoever and you pedal decently fast. My 3 km bike commute averages 11 minutes on account of all the lights and traffic congestion :/ bike commute
  - munificent 7y ago
    There's only one traffic light before I get on the trail, so it's a super friendly ride. But I don't push too fast either.
PSZD 7y ago
I was living less than 5 miles away from work for years, it made it very easy to commute by bike (although winter really sucked at times). This year, that got bumped up to about 12 miles (work moved, not me). At that sort of mileage, it takes much longer to bike, and doing it consistently 5x a week with a physical job is iffy. Not to mention, bike infrastructure to that location is much worse, mostly because the only option runs along a 6-lane road, and resulted in me crashing due to road debris in the dark. Bills from that incident could have bought me a car. Other options are mainly limited to public transport (buses). Typically takes me about 2 hours one-way, including wasted time at the start of a shift. Then there are cars. Guaranteed to save me a minimum of an hour a day, with much lower chances of personal injury.
- creato 7y ago
  > (although winter really sucked at times). > and doing it consistently 5x a week with a physical job is iffy. I don't think we should be trying to convince people to ride to work every single day. This is much harder to do than just riding some of the time, and it would still make a big difference. Getting people to ride on average even one day a week to work would have huge benefits: reduced pollution, reduced traffic, reduced CO2 emissions, improved health.
  - PSZD 7y ago
    I think daily (or nearly) is much easier than you think, mainly because it's so much harder to form a habit like that when you have to make a conscious daily choice between "easy" and "hard". Context-dependence like "not raining or icy" does make sense.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  > At that sort of mileage, it takes much longer to bike, and doing it consistently 5x a week with a physical job is iffy. Would an electric bike have helped? As car batteries get cheaper and better e-bikes are following suit, and many models get 40+ mile ranges and provide assist to 20-25 MPH even with hills.
  - 7y ago
strstr 7y ago
I came here to tell this exact tale. Our stories were so similar I checked your profile: we work in the exactly same office. I have to say our employer’s strategy worked. I lived 3 miles away (typically a 13 min bike ride for me plus probably 15 min of parking/showering), but I still almost always drove. To fix my commute I just moved, and my life is a lot nicer with this newfound 10min walking commute. Even with the new fee ($12 to park vs $7 of benefit), I would still drive before I moved. I have after work hobbies that require me to drive. Biking 45min in the rain/dark to the climbing gym would have just killed that for me. A lot of people were quite angry about the new system. But I think that it was necessary to fix the parking constraints we were running into (frequent stock outs for parking at like 9am). I have a “there is no free lunch” view for commuting policy.
- rkochman 7y ago
  Same here, same employer, but in Kirkland. The $7 cash incentive was enough to get me to ride my bike most days. Since we never run out of parking now, it seems to have been effective.
duxup 7y ago
I would love to do that. It's a dream of mine....
davidw 7y ago
> I just want to get the fuck to work and use my brainpower there. I find that I have more brainpower if I ride my bike to work, because it gets my circulation going.
ip26 7y ago
I'd probably keep biking if they stopped the plan because I'm used to it now and really like it I actually miss my ride to work when I'm on vacation. In my case I wanted to sell my family's second car. I established the habit by taking a month to "prove" to myself that I could live without it.
epx 7y ago
The car is an extension of your home, and driving to work (or to run some errand) is sometimes the only moment you have for yourself, alone, where you can listen your favorite music in high volume and "thinking loudly". If you are married with kids and work at home these moments are necessary. I wish I had a cottage in the woods to have these "alone" moments with more quality, but didn't get there yet.
- munificent 7y ago
  > where you can listen your favorite music Before I moved closer to work, I used to have a long 40+ minute drive to the office. I hated it, but it did serve as a very nice loud music + personal karaoke time, and I miss that aspect more than I expected. I bike to work now, which means no music or headphones for safety. At the office, I listen to music, but only non-vocal stuff since I can't code and hear lyrics at the same time. So now it's really rare that I get to listen to entire genres of music that I otherwise love, just because the opportunity isn't there as much.
- eVeechu7 7y ago
  I can sympathise, but I get a bit of this on the bike with the headphones on too.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    If bike wearing headphones that prevent you from hearing the world around you, this could be quite dangerous -- not only to you, but to pedestrians too. Please be careful. In many jurisdictions, this is also illegal.
  - peatmoss 7y ago
    I don’t like the headphones because of safety / perception of safety, but back when I commuted by bike, I joked about doing “bike therapy.” The experience of being alone with myself, my thoughts, my breath, and my pedal cadence was a very calming thing.
- kazinator 7y ago
  I listen to music at high volume on the bicycle or in the car, either way. I use a favorite playlist to time rides, instead of a stopwatch. It's fun: you know if you hit a certain landmark before a certain guitar solo (or whatever), then you're hitting a good time.
vjktyu 7y ago
May I ask you, how much it costs to buy a place within 2 miles from your office? I bet, it's a solid seven figure number and at that point your argument is like complaining about how hard it's to switch from Bentley to RR.
- munificent 7y ago
  I live in Seattle. We bought about seven years ago and it was around $500k. I like our house a lot, but most of our friends that also work in tech have nicer homes — bigger, more amenities, etc. My wife and I prioritized living closer to my work over having more space because time is the ultimate commodity.
icelancer 7y ago
How was this policy enforced? I run a small business that has parking issues and we'd love to incentivize people to take mass transit or bike in. I don't know about charging people to park, though...
- munificent 7y ago
  > How was this policy enforced? You have to badge in to get to the parking garage, so they treat that as you having parked unless you provide information otherwise. There's a separate app/site you use to log your commute type. You could probably cheat by driving solo and then claiming you carpooled, but the company culture is pretty high trust.
  - icelancer 7y ago
    Ahh, a parking garage. Damn. We just have an open lot. Thanks for the information!
kazinator 7y ago
For over eight years, I've been cycling it for nearly eight miles each way. For the first seven o those, I didn't have a car. I hit a really good time one day last year, possibly the best time, of 20:09. Then the next day I tried to beat it by car. I was not able to; it took 24:35 by car (in fairly low traffic, late morning). That doesn't include another few minutes of circling around to find a free parking spot, which was far from the building, due to it being late morning. I've cycled in all weather: rain, fog, and snow. (I've run it too, and tried that a few times in the snow, which is very good exercise.)

jdavis703 7y ago

I’m glad you’re enjoying your switch! It seems like 1.6 miles at a moderate pace is a 6 minute ride though... Of course I’m assuming no hills and a lack of extreme heat which might be wrong on my end.

munificent 7y ago
It's completely flat and weather here in Seattle is cool. It's really an optimal environment for riding. It takes me about ten minutes with another five to park. I could push faster, but (1) I have a pretty cheap bike and (2) I don't want to get to the office sweaty. For comparison, my drive was about six minutes.
CydeWeys 7y ago
6 minutes is a pretty optimistic estimate for that length of commute. It's only 6 minutes if there's no lights whatsoever and you pedal decently fast. My 3 km bike commute averages 11 minutes on account of all the lights and traffic congestion :/ bike commute
- munificent 7y ago
  There's only one traffic light before I get on the trail, so it's a super friendly ride. But I don't push too fast either.

PSZD 7y ago

I was living less than 5 miles away from work for years, it made it very easy to commute by bike (although winter really sucked at times). This year, that got bumped up to about 12 miles (work moved, not me). At that sort of mileage, it takes much longer to bike, and doing it consistently 5x a week with a physical job is iffy. Not to mention, bike infrastructure to that location is much worse, mostly because the only option runs along a 6-lane road, and resulted in me crashing due to road debris in the dark. Bills from that incident could have bought me a car. Other options are mainly limited to public transport (buses). Typically takes me about 2 hours one-way, including wasted time at the start of a shift. Then there are cars. Guaranteed to save me a minimum of an hour a day, with much lower chances of personal injury.

creato 7y ago
> (although winter really sucked at times). > and doing it consistently 5x a week with a physical job is iffy. I don't think we should be trying to convince people to ride to work every single day. This is much harder to do than just riding some of the time, and it would still make a big difference. Getting people to ride on average even one day a week to work would have huge benefits: reduced pollution, reduced traffic, reduced CO2 emissions, improved health.
- PSZD 7y ago
  I think daily (or nearly) is much easier than you think, mainly because it's so much harder to form a habit like that when you have to make a conscious daily choice between "easy" and "hard". Context-dependence like "not raining or icy" does make sense.
bobthepanda 7y ago
> At that sort of mileage, it takes much longer to bike, and doing it consistently 5x a week with a physical job is iffy. Would an electric bike have helped? As car batteries get cheaper and better e-bikes are following suit, and many models get 40+ mile ranges and provide assist to 20-25 MPH even with hills.
- 7y ago

strstr 7y ago

I came here to tell this exact tale. Our stories were so similar I checked your profile: we work in the exactly same office. I have to say our employer’s strategy worked. I lived 3 miles away (typically a 13 min bike ride for me plus probably 15 min of parking/showering), but I still almost always drove. To fix my commute I just moved, and my life is a lot nicer with this newfound 10min walking commute. Even with the new fee ($12 to park vs $7 of benefit), I would still drive before I moved. I have after work hobbies that require me to drive. Biking 45min in the rain/dark to the climbing gym would have just killed that for me. A lot of people were quite angry about the new system. But I think that it was necessary to fix the parking constraints we were running into (frequent stock outs for parking at like 9am). I have a “there is no free lunch” view for commuting policy.

rkochman 7y ago
Same here, same employer, but in Kirkland. The $7 cash incentive was enough to get me to ride my bike most days. Since we never run out of parking now, it seems to have been effective.

duxup 7y ago

I would love to do that. It's a dream of mine....

davidw 7y ago

> I just want to get the fuck to work and use my brainpower there. I find that I have more brainpower if I ride my bike to work, because it gets my circulation going.

ip26 7y ago

I'd probably keep biking if they stopped the plan because I'm used to it now and really like it I actually miss my ride to work when I'm on vacation. In my case I wanted to sell my family's second car. I established the habit by taking a month to "prove" to myself that I could live without it.

epx 7y ago

The car is an extension of your home, and driving to work (or to run some errand) is sometimes the only moment you have for yourself, alone, where you can listen your favorite music in high volume and "thinking loudly". If you are married with kids and work at home these moments are necessary. I wish I had a cottage in the woods to have these "alone" moments with more quality, but didn't get there yet.

munificent 7y ago
> where you can listen your favorite music Before I moved closer to work, I used to have a long 40+ minute drive to the office. I hated it, but it did serve as a very nice loud music + personal karaoke time, and I miss that aspect more than I expected. I bike to work now, which means no music or headphones for safety. At the office, I listen to music, but only non-vocal stuff since I can't code and hear lyrics at the same time. So now it's really rare that I get to listen to entire genres of music that I otherwise love, just because the opportunity isn't there as much.
eVeechu7 7y ago
I can sympathise, but I get a bit of this on the bike with the headphones on too.
- zamfi 7y ago
  If bike wearing headphones that prevent you from hearing the world around you, this could be quite dangerous -- not only to you, but to pedestrians too. Please be careful. In many jurisdictions, this is also illegal.
- peatmoss 7y ago
  I don’t like the headphones because of safety / perception of safety, but back when I commuted by bike, I joked about doing “bike therapy.” The experience of being alone with myself, my thoughts, my breath, and my pedal cadence was a very calming thing.
kazinator 7y ago
I listen to music at high volume on the bicycle or in the car, either way. I use a favorite playlist to time rides, instead of a stopwatch. It's fun: you know if you hit a certain landmark before a certain guitar solo (or whatever), then you're hitting a good time.

vjktyu 7y ago

May I ask you, how much it costs to buy a place within 2 miles from your office? I bet, it's a solid seven figure number and at that point your argument is like complaining about how hard it's to switch from Bentley to RR.

munificent 7y ago
I live in Seattle. We bought about seven years ago and it was around $500k. I like our house a lot, but most of our friends that also work in tech have nicer homes — bigger, more amenities, etc. My wife and I prioritized living closer to my work over having more space because time is the ultimate commodity.

icelancer 7y ago

How was this policy enforced? I run a small business that has parking issues and we'd love to incentivize people to take mass transit or bike in. I don't know about charging people to park, though...

munificent 7y ago
> How was this policy enforced? You have to badge in to get to the parking garage, so they treat that as you having parked unless you provide information otherwise. There's a separate app/site you use to log your commute type. You could probably cheat by driving solo and then claiming you carpooled, but the company culture is pretty high trust.
- icelancer 7y ago
  Ahh, a parking garage. Damn. We just have an open lot. Thanks for the information!

kazinator 7y ago

For over eight years, I've been cycling it for nearly eight miles each way. For the first seven o those, I didn't have a car. I hit a really good time one day last year, possibly the best time, of 20:09. Then the next day I tried to beat it by car. I was not able to; it took 24:35 by car (in fairly low traffic, late morning). That doesn't include another few minutes of circling around to find a free parking spot, which was far from the building, due to it being late morning. I've cycled in all weather: rain, fog, and snow. (I've run it too, and tried that a few times in the snow, which is very good exercise.)