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Comment by gowld | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't match my experience. I see bikers mainly in the city bikeways, just not in the most crowded and well-transit-served downtown core. In suburds the miles add up too quickly and take up too much time. It may depend on how dense your cities are.

Biking looks time consuming, but if you use it as time for exercise and sunshine-time you would otherwise be doing on your free time, it's almost 0 marginal cost.

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And in some cases is actually faster than driving/ride-share/public transit door to door.

It definitely depends. The time of my commute itself is about the same, whether I bike or drive. However, there is about a 10 minute difference from additional activities that are not needed when driving. When I bike (~80% of the time), I need to account extra time for strapping my bag to my bike, attaching/removing easily stolen accessories, donning/removing reflective vest, and changing from biking clothes to business casual after arriving.

Thankfully, my commute is short and summers aren't too hot, so I don't yet need to add an additional 10-15 minutes for showering after arriving.

This is the case for me. I live about 6.5 miles from my office. Congestion is so bad (I'm in the Seattle area) that it can take upwards of half an hour to get to work -- yes, that's an average speed of 13 miles an hour in a car. Miserable.

However, on the bike I can average nearly 15 miles an hour, so I actually save time! In all fairness that time is more than eaten up by the additional steps (don bike gear, load bike, etc.) but it's nearly a wash.

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