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People in the US largely don't have the time to ride bikes. We work from 8:00am to 5:00pm, and it's too expensive for many people to live near where their office is. If you pad an hour on each side of that work schedule for commuting, that leaves 13 hours of non-work-related time per day, 8 of which has to be dedicated to sleeping, leaving 5 hours to "live" each day. If you take 30 minutes to get ready in the morning, and 30 minutes to wind down before bed, that brings you down to 4 hours.

Car commuting isn't instantaneous. I have a short 10 minute bike commute today, which is faster than the car commute since I can take a shortcut through a train station, and I don't have to park in a lot 2 blocks away from the office.

When I had a longer 12 mile bike commute, it took me about 50 minutes by bike, vs 30 minutes by car in the morning, and 45 - 60 minutes by car in the evening due to traffic.

But since the bike route was mostly on dedicated bike trails without stops, my biking time was very consistent, within +/- 5 minutes. While an accident on the freeway could easily add 15 - 30 minutes to the bike commute. So getting to work in time for a 9am meeting meant I needed to leave an hour ahead of time.

So biking added around 20 minutes/day to my total commute time, but also saved me hours each week in the gym since I was getting in a 24 mile ride every day.

It takes some planning to have a bike-friendly commute, but it needn't be a huge waste of time... and my ride home is always my favorite time of day - biking is a great stress reliever, in summer when it stays light later, I'll often take the long route home. But you can't buy a house in a suburb 40 miles away from work and expect to bike to work (unless you're near bike-friendly transit, I did a 30 mile commute for a while where most of that distance was on a train)

Google gives me 30-45 minutes via bike. Chunks of that are through areas without bike lanes, and aside from about a mile through a bike path, it's all right next to the cars going 50-60mph.

My car commute is 12-20 minutes, maybe going up to 30 if multiple stoplights are out (which happens a couple times a year).

I've considered biking, but I'm never going to. I see how people drive here, and I've seen too many coworkers get all gung-ho about biking for a few months, then drop it because of the safety issues. I can't help but see it as an unnecessary risk to my life.

That's what I meant by "it takes planning to..."

If bike commuting is important to you, then look for a home (and/or job) in an area that's bike friendly. I didn't end up with a 10 minute bike commute by accident, though it did take some compromises. Instead of a 2000 sq ft 3 bedroom house in the next county, I ended up in a 1000 sq ft 2 bedroom condo close to work. The condo was a bit more expensive, but I'm saving more money overall by not paying for an expensive car (~$700/month average [1]).

It's within easy biking and/or walking distance of 2 train stations, as well as schools, restaurants, grocery store, etc. And due to the proximity of the train station, several transit oriented developments are being built nearby so the area is becoming even more walkable.

Bike infrastructure is woefully in adequate in this country, so the onus is on individuals to make it work, since housing in many areas is so bike-unfriendly that it may never be made bikeable.

[1] http://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/annual-cost-operate-vehicle-...

The issue with biking as a commute option is land use. America, more so than other countries, completely overhauled it to suit cars. In 1900 apartments or hotels on top of stores and businesses on small lots was the norm in most American towns and cities. In 2018 it is pretty much illegal to build that kind of development except for a few areas in major cities, and even then the mixed-use structures of today are monolithic, curated shopping mall experiences that are bad at encouraging the kind of convenience that exists in New York, because you get bored of it. And on top of that most cities in America ended up gutting their walkable cores with highways and parking lots in the name of progress.

The fact that it is hard to bike is a symptom of how far things apart are in America. But how far things apart are in America is a symptom of blind faith in new technologies.

Have you used the shared bikes? They are usually expensive, heavy, not ergonomic and take up valuable parking space. Amsterdam recently went on a collecting spree, outlawed many of them and reclaimed a few thousand parking spaces.

“People don’t have time to ride bikes” - this is exactly what the article is about: using bikes for normal tasks, like taking kids to school, going to the grocery store, commuting to work. Not for recreation in your off time, or as a sport.

Journeys up to 6-7km are absolutely normal, you don’t have to live next door to the office to cycle. What else is stopping you?

> Journeys up to 6-7km are absolutely normal, you don’t have to live next door to the office to cycle. What else is stopping you?

Work: Close to double the distance, fast roads, aggressive drivers, and lack of bike lanes on some parts of the route.

School: Wife takes the kid, and she hasn't ridden since her childhood. Similar safety issues.

Groceries: It's possible to be out and back in the car in the time that it would take just to get there on the bike. The car can carry a week's groceries. Long hill on the way back, when already laden with food.

In all the cases, there isn't a culture of cycling in the area, aside from packs of dozens of lycra-clad people on the weekends. Cyclists are seen as an annoyance, and the minority of drivers that are dangerous and unpredictable to other cars are worse to cyclists. That's the biggest thing stopping me (although time and laziness are certainly factors, too).

Two words: Chicago Winter

In most US cities your commute will be much more than 6-7 km though. The cities have been planned for cars for decades, so driving to downtown from your suburb will likely be a 20-30 min. drive by car. Not many people are willing to cycle that distance on a daily basis.

> Have you used the shared bikes?

Yes! It was GREAT! Take the train into the city, hop on a HubWay, bike from South Station to the Seaport, work, reverse. Really, really nice.

> People want to reclaim as much time as they can for living. Cars give them the ability to do that.

So do public transports though (actually even more so since you can kinda continue to "live" while being in them); and they're also less stress-inducing, better environmentaly, and more socially inclusive.

Though I believe they've never been a priority in the US, sadly; and as a result if they're available they tend to suck.

Normal and snobbery seem to be, by their very definitions, mutually exclusive. I guess the author has accomplished his goal in that we are paying attention to him - it certainly isn't to bring normal and curious onlookers into his exclusive world.

> it's too expensive for many people to live near where their office is

On the contrary, a major recommendation from early retirement folks is to ditch your car and instead ride a bike to save money on net:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/07/what-do-you-mean-y...

You might need to change where you live to make a bike commute possible, but at least where I live (Austin, TX) I find that living close to my work and riding a bike seems isn't any more expensive than living farther away and driving. Some of my work friends complain about the cost of parking, gas, car repairs, etc., yet I make the same amount they do and I have no money problems. I don't know their precise expenses, but I get the impression that I put a lot more money into savings than they do.

I can't find it right now, but I recall a journalist once crunched the numbers for several US cities and found that living downtown without a car was about as expensive as driving in from the suburbs. You don't need to live downtown, too, saving more money. Living in a reasonably cheap area that's also close works too.

Admittedly, living close and cycling in won't work in every case. Particularly given that many if not most places in the US are very car dependent. But most people pick where they live based on their driving commute, so if one prioritizes cycling they should at least give the same consideration to a cycling commute. It's not uncommon for people to avoid particular cities because the driving commute would be bad, so when choosing where to live it should not be unusual to pick a city based on a hypothetical cycling commute. So far in my life I've been able to pick jobs and where to live such that cycling is not just possible, but desirable.

> People want to reclaim as much time as they can for living. Cars give them the ability to do that.

You can find a lot of discussion among transportation cyclists about the concept of "effective speed". Cars might high absolute speeds, but that doesn't mean you save time from using them. The effective speed is defined as the distance traveled divided by the marginal time needed to travel that distance. Most obviously you need to factor in time spent parking (usually much longer for driving than cycling). Less obvious is the amount of time you need to work to pay for the vehicle and its use. Depending on the price of gas the effective speed of driving could be a lot lower. I've seen people argue that it's slower than cycling when gas prices are high.

I've had people tell me that they'll work the same amount of time either way, so the gas price isn't really a factor. This is fair, but not relevant for me. The money I save allows me to retire earlier.

> some people peer at me through their car windows like I’m serving my children water from the toilet.

otherwise known as "ar-tush-anal water"