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To go back to the topic of biking in heat... it really isn't a big issue. I used to live in Tucson and I would bike all over the place, as do many other people, even in the summer. It's definitely tough in mid-day and really the only infrastructure needed, other than bike lanes on busy streets, is some trees (native mesquites work great) and drinking fountains along the route.
Now during monsoon season it could get difficult since the city gets frequent, heavy rain in the afternoon/evening that would flood the streets and reduce visibility. But usually you can just wait out the storm, they typically pass pretty quickly.
Heck, yeah! A round-trip transit run here on a local route costs $4.50 cash. You can buy a helmet for that, according to the ads I found.
You know, my inner libertarian balks at having to pay for the treatment and life-long support of some of these people who are injured in accidents that could have been mitigated by wearing a helmet.
If you do the math, that is about $1100 a year for transit, which can easily afford a bike and a good helmet, which makes biking extremely affordable. Combine that with the cost of a bicycle infrastructure for a city is extremely cheap compared to the amount that is spent on personal transportation and transit infrastructure.
To go back to the topic of biking in heat... it really isn't a big issue. I used to live in Tucson and I would bike all over the place, as do many other people, even in the summer. It's definitely tough in mid-day and really the only infrastructure needed, other than bike lanes on busy streets, is some trees (native mesquites work great) and drinking fountains along the route.
Now during monsoon season it could get difficult since the city gets frequent, heavy rain in the afternoon/evening that would flood the streets and reduce visibility. But usually you can just wait out the storm, they typically pass pretty quickly.
Well, heat is not addressed in the OP either, so I guess we can't talk about it.
Biking shorter distances is obviously easier than biking longer distances, so biking and mixed-use/higher-density neighborhoods tend to go hand in hand. It is certainly possible to bike commute 10-20 miles, but 10-20 blocks is much easier. Of course, driving 10-20 blocks is also easier than driving 10-20 miles (although the perceived distance in a car is less, I think) so the deciding factor after driving distance is parking. If there is no provision for securely storing a bicycle at a workplace, it's a potential handicap to bikeability--but making room for a couple bikes is a lot simpler and cheaper than a parking structure for automobiles. In cities where parking is expensive and not provided by the employer, dropping $100 or more a month for parking rates (a laughably cheap rate in major cities) may help encourage a mode switch, or a move to a more workplace-adjacent neighborhood.
Cycling is a "virtuous cycle": more cycling makes the streets safer for cyclists, more bicycle infrastructure helps facilitate more cycling and more bike safety (a lot of unsafe riding happens because there is no safe path for bikes on a route.) It also reinforces social norms: a cyclist doesn't feel like an outsider if there are many other cyclists doing the same thing, and a driver learns to account for cyclists if they are part of her everyday experience instead of an exception, and when cyclists can model other cyclists, they ride in safer ways that are more predictable for drivers.
The average commute distance is 16 miles each way for a commute, that means there are a large number of people who live within a bicycle range to work. This is something that is much easier for people who live within 10 miles from their work.
Also, biking to work isn't right for everyone, but there are lots of people who commute to and from work that don't need to do any of the "buts" tasks that you are referring to on a daily basis. Also, having a bicycle infrastructure in place is inexpensive and helps encourage people to bike for their commutes, none of this forces anyone to bike if they don't want to, it just creates a realistic option for people who wish to bike for commuting.
Where is 16 miles the average? Canadian metro areas are well below that. The metro area with the longest commutes is Oshawa at a little under 7 miles, and it's not really its own metro area as much as a satellite of Toronto. Next longest is Toronto at a little under 6 miles for the whole metro area. 3-5 miles is typical for much of Canada's metro areas. There's even a few smaller ones that are a little under 3 miles, like Regina and Victoria.
On that note, is there any city that even comes close to the active transportation (walk+bike) mode share of Victoria? It has 33% commute mode share for the city, 16% for the metro. Maybe Davis, CA?
Smaller towns (<50,000) in Canada will often have median commuting distances around 1-3 miles.
The average commuter in the United States travels about 25 minutes each way to work. But that's an average. And as a new Census report details, the average can obscure a lotof seriously grueling commutes. About 1.7 million Americans have "extreme" commutes that take 90 minutes or more each way. About 2.2 million workers have "long-distance" commutes that span at least 50 miles in each direction.
And the "average" commute in the US is about as meaningful as the "average" temperature in the entire US over a year's time.
Interestingly, the potential transplants to CO from CA are all seemingly willing to undertake long commutes. We tell them, "wait till it snows". Although of course, we have some mega-commuters as well, most people like to keep within 30 minutes, less if possible.
The mean commute in Denver is 24.8 minutes, in Colorado, 24.4 min. (Census bureau)
By the way, I should point out the numbers I gave are median distances. Canada has people with long distance commutes too, but these super commuters only make up around 1-2% of the US workforce so they're not going to have an effect on whether biking on a large scale is viable or not.
According to this, it's 33 minutes for Toronto vs 38 minutes for New York one way.
I think the 80 minutes round trip might have included stuff like dropping kids off at school.
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Good find.
