Saving time & money - the attraction of cycle-rail commuting

[dave holladay]

One of the respondents on the Guardian Bike Blog revealed that

I commute every day(yes, every day, snow,cold,wet etc) on my Pacific Reach folding bike (about the same size as your Airnimal) and I have no problem what so ever on the Stansted Express, even at crowded hours.

If there is space in the train I don't even bother folding my Reach, I <3 my folding bike, I save £30 on the tube every week, £5 every day on parking space and £30 a month in gym membership. Oh, and I took my car off the road since I just cycle everywhere

That works out at about £3000/year plus the £2000-£3000/year (or more) saved by not owning a car and probably 30 minutes saved each trip on walking from the car park to the train and not queueing to get on the Tube, which adds up to about 10 days per year for a typical commuter of time to spend in bed/at home insead of jammed into a train or rushing to partake of this experience.

Leigh in Redhill calculated a saving of 40 minutes when his work took him to Stratford and he could ride London Bridge-Liverpool Street and get a 7 minute direct train trip instead of a tour of the Tube system. This is clearly a USP for cycling and rail - saving money saving time and it can be delivered without a long time being built and a huge budget for construction.

I've counted at least 2 bikes/minute leaving the main bike exit at Waterloo as an insidious and unrecognised demand. What are your experiences?

[meic]

You didnt mention how much the train costs though.

[monster]

on my commute in the mornings there are usually between 15-20 bikes get off the train at culham. banbury to culham, most of them get on at oxford.

[JKT]

That was me! I posted that, I wrote it in a rush and didnt really do the maths.



My weekly ticket without my bike is £105 (Train+Tube), instead my ticket is £68 thats £37 a week saved! if you multiply by 50(2 weeks for Christmas) its £1850 Parking is £5 a day (if you can find it!) so another £25 a week= £1250

I cycle to my station, it takes me 12minutes from door to door (here is a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXErnP75Ko ) Now If I go by car, it takes me about the same (if not more) and then I have to find a parking space that is normally 500m away, pay and walk to the train, all this takes 30 mins (each way) not counting having to scratch the ice of wind mirror etc, traffic etc.

Cycling: 14min each way = 28min
Car: 30min each way= 1 hour

Cutting my commute in half (17mins home-station,28min train, 20min train-work)

This is only from house to station! From Station to work takes me 20min cycling, or 45-60min in the tube.

I save between: 1:45 min to 2:00 EVERY SINGLE DAY by cycling.


Some people say I'm crazy, I just refuse to spend the rest of my life working for the bank and I want the bank to work for me instead, and since I am not very clever and not earn much, this works for me

I <3 my Reach


Edit:

Transport: £1850
Parking: £1250
Car(Petrol,Tax,Insurance,MoT,Services,Repairs,tyres etc) £3000-£4000
Gym: £30 x 52= £1560

Total saved thanks to this great invention: £8660 a year, I am 25, if I save this till I am 65 I will be £350,000 richer


Edit2: Would it be interesting if I stuck my camera to my chest and record what my commute looks like by car vs by bicycle? any volunteers to edit the video? ( I don't know how.. I just know how to press play)

[dave holladay]

Your post says you take 14 minutes - the video (including the stop to put the back light on) comes in doorstep to platform at 7.2 minutes that's seriously underselling yourself!

I have to comment that the camera vibration (and your comfort/safety) might be improved if you managed to ride a bit higher on the road and avoid all those damaged edges. It might also make some of those cars overtake you with a decent amount of clearance.

I'm certainly impressed as you're covering a fair distance on roads with 50-60mph limits and moderate levels of traffic. Your typical besuited commuter might not quite rise to that sort of distance/effort/pace, but it just goes to show what is possible.

I do a bit of cyclist spotting when I stay over in Haddenham and travel in the (early) morning to Marylebone. and reckon that around 10% of those on the train are either obvious (they have a folding bike with them) or not quite in the closet, with tell tale signs like the cycling clothing/luggage or the pump/helmet they don't manage to pack into a bag, and seem at a loss to know what to do with it.... They presumbaly have either cycles to the train or have one of the bikes stacked up on 'platform 5'.

Monster - any chance of some informal photos of the Culham Cycle Commuting Cohort? geting on/off the train, to show what is possible - if that is a 2-car unit and not desperately full that must be around 25% of the passenger count, might be worth a quick check next time you are on the train.

[dave holladay]

Just to refresh this posting, with the change of government we may have opportunities to show rime & resource saving for the operator and through this benefits for Network Rail and ultimately the reduced burden on the public purse.

All examples welcome.

[Vorpal]

Cycle-rail commuting doesn't save time & money for everyone... even where the train companies are good about bikes on trains. The train companies that operate in Essex are quite good about bikes. However, the arrangement of tracks going out from/into London, the lack of branch lines, and the fact that two companies operate the rail service, one in the north of Essex, and one in the south impose limitations. It can take 3 hours and £6 - 9 (depending on origin & destination) by train to get from a town or village in the north of Essex to a town or village in the south, when the journey by car is roughly 40 minutes (and maybe half as much money? I don't know as I haven't operated my own car for several years).

It doesn't matter if you are commuting to-from London, which I guess is what most people who use the trains do, but the roads in Essex are full of people at peak times who aren't going to London.

I don't know how fix that problem. If some of the branch lines were restored in Essex, would people use them?

[dave holladay]

Cheese Head

Noted but there are a) buses/express coaches and b) some remarkable ways round/cut offs - and even if this does not work - there will always be some exceptions to the 'rule'

[iviehoff]

My weekly ticket without my bike is £105 (Train+Tube), instead my ticket is £68 thats £37 a week saved!

If, like me, you live on a tube line, a ticket to London includes getting you to any station in zone 1 whether you want to pay for it or not, even if making that journey involves travelling by mainline train and changing at the terminus onto the tube. I still prefer to cycle in central London, even though using the tube to complete my journey is in effect free. My bicycle provides a much more reliable service than the tube.

[workhard]

multi-modal commuting in the winter months sees me out of pocket. c£140 per month season ticket is about 20% more than all costs involved in running a cheap old car to the precepts of my version of bangernomics. Don't want an annual season ticket as for several months of the year I try to cycle commute at least 3 times a week.

But I don't do it to save money. I do it because it is WAY less stressful than driving to work and, at this time of year, cycling the whole way doesn't float my boat for a variety of reasons.

(Strida Mk 3.2a folder, in case you are interested, I live so close to the station, my choice, it isn't worth unfolding it to do that part, and less than 2km from destination station to office - but every ruddy metre of it is uphill!)

[Vorpal]

I don't commute anymore (made redundant last year), but I am unable most of the time to combine cycle and rail transport because I am cycling with my kids, and can't take a tandem or bike & trailer combination on the trains. Occasionally, I cycle to the station, lock up the bike, and take the trailer with me as a buggy. However, that usually means on the other side of the train journey I have to walk, or look for wheelchair accessible services because the bike trailer is too big for standard buses, tubes station escalators, etc.

That means that we walk-bus or cycle most places. Cycling is usually the quickest and cheapest option.

A few times each year, I go to Chelmsford on my own. Then, I sometimes cycle-train-cycle. Otherwise, I just ride my bike.