Biking to Work

Last month, I started riding my bike to work one or two days per week.

I'll start this with an article in the New York Times that my sister sent me about a crazy solar guy who rides his bike to work. I'm pretty sure this is what people think of those that ride long distances to get to work every day.

From a certain perspective, I'm crazy.  I understand this. Like Danny Kennedy, most of my life revolves around solar energy and cycling. In college I built two solar cars in college that can cruise at 50mph on just the power of the sun. Every week I clock 100 miles on my bike. And just this year, I started work at a solar company with new technology in Fremont. And no, it's not called Solyndra.

I'm not different just for the sake of being different.  I'm different because I have gained some perspective about what we as humans do to this planet when we don't care for it.  Over the past century, we've developed weapons that can kill everything in a 50 mile radius, developed power sources that can poison the entire northern Pacific, and tapped oil wells that spill 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  And we're just getting started.

So you might think I'm about to say that I bike to work to save the environment.  I'm good enough at math to figure out that me biking to work has no significant effect on the environment.

I bike to work for fun.  I really enjoy cycling, and have found a route to work that is only about 20 miles long and is mostly on the San Francisco Bay Trail, which is quite pleasant and far away from cars.

I also hate sitting in traffic.  I actually don't encounter much traffic on my commute if I drive, but I feel pretty horrible starting and stopped on the freeway, especially because most traffic is triggered by some idiot randomly hitting his brake.

Of course, there is an argument against riding to work.  It's more dangerous than driving, but only because certain drivers don't pay attention to their surroundings.  I had a near miss when a car tried to turn left in the same lane as me, then merge into me.  I have had several near misses and an accident when drivers allowed another car to turn in front of them, without considering the lane of bicycle traffic next to him.  I had a really bad crash because somebody honked their horn repeatedly at me for riding under the speed limit.

I'd like to point out that the speed limit is the maximum safe speed on a given road, and that there is no minimum speed on residential roads.  Some highways have minimum speeds, but those highways don't even allow bicycles.  In the law, a bicycle is treated the same as a car, meaning that it can take an entire lane if necessary, but also that bicycles must stop at traffic signals just as cars do.

I don't hate cars.  Cars are inanimate object.  I don't hate drivers.  I in fact am a driver.  I do pay taxes, and when I'm riding my bike, I have the same right to the road as any other vehicle operator.

One reason why I really love the San Francisco Bay Area is that it is a "bicycle friendly" community.  This really just means that a lot of people get around by bicycle and that there are bike lanes on some roads.  While living in Maryland, I was once lectured by a man for riding my bike on the sidewalk next to a busy road that was unsafe for bicycle traffic.  Instead of responding that I didn't feel safe riding my bike on the road, and that there was no law against riding one's bike on sidewalks in that town, I just rode away.

The funny thing is, bicycles were around before cars or airplanes.  Both Karl Benz and the Wright Brothers were avid bicyclist and bike mechanics, and the bicycle inspired their revolutionary inventions.

So what have I learned from riding my bike to work?  I've learned that our bicycle transportation infrastructure is pretty abysmal.  Even the awesome San Francisco Bay Trail has to cross the highway many times to go around landfills and wastewater treatment plants.  It also has lots of hazards, like untrimmed weeds, speed bumps (don't get me started), cracking pavement, and unprotected railroad crossings.  I imagine a world where riding a bike somewhere is as easy as driving.  The sad thing is that the federal government provides funds for exactly that, improving bike lanes and bike trails, but many states choose not to accept that funding!

If you've gotten through this whole post, you might be interested in my same vision of a world where it is safe to ride a bike.  You can get started by joining millions of people who agree with you at this website: http://www.peopleforbikes.org/