Hey everyone this is Justin, new author at Bike4more.com.  I am a friend of Zak, Don and Issac who have been posting on this site for years, and I live in Fresno and am a daily bike commuter.  I moved into the city of Fresno from a rural setting around 2003 and took a while to actually use my bike as my main transportation.  At first I did all car transportation and worked up from there.   I started with riding the bike to college just a few days a month, then every day, then to work also, and eventually I got to the point where I took the bike exclusively to anywhere within 3 miles.  I started riding around on my old mountain bike with slick tires mostly on the sidewalks, and now I have worked up to rideing a road bike on the road.  The only things that stop me from biking to my destination today are a need to carry a lot of stuff or people, and the rain.  Here’s some reasons why it is good to ride a bike instead of driving: exercise, environmentalism, saving money, reducing dependence on foreign oil, saving wear and tear on your car, enjoyment, avoiding traffic jams, avoiding having to find or pay for parking, avoiding road rage, and in some cases, faster speed to your destination.

I’ll elaborate on some of those reasons a little, starting with the last since it seems a little unbelievable.  I had a situation where I started riding a bike out of a need to get to my destination faster than I could get there in a car.  This happened on my commute from my old appartment near barstow and willow to the Fresno State campus.  That trip in a car involves 5 minutes of driving, a few minutes of finding parking, and walking for about 5 to 10 minutes to the classroom.  On my bike it took 10 to 12 minutes to ride right up to a bike rack within 200 feet of my classroom door.  In this situation I would take my car if I was lazy, and my bike if I was late.  It was a great reason to start bike commuting and made me see all the other reasons which kept me interested in bike commuting later.

Avoiding traffic jams is possible on a bike in some situations, such as driving into the Fresno State campus during the first 3 weeks of school.   Every morning I rode my bike on Barstow into the campus I would pass 20 to 50 cars, as they were sitting on the road idleing and waiting for their chance to get up to the stop sign at Chestnut.  There’s a traffic circle at that intersection now, but there’s more stop signs further in to the campus so I bet the problem still exists.  Students should try that route on a bike and see how cool it feels to drive by all those suckers who still have to find a parking spot and walk after they get out of that jam.

Exercise is easy on a bike, so easy.  You don’t have to worry about joint pain problems like you do with running, you don’t have to worry about finding or traveling to a pool to swim.  I am a lazy person and have trouble keeping non-necessary things in my regular schedule, so exercising daily is easy for me to stop doing.  Commuting is a good way to avoid this.  My ride to work and back gives me about 30 minutes of cardio exercise a day that I would never get otherwise.

Bikes are absolutely the best transportation from an environmental standpoint, they emit no pollution or greenhouse gasses and use no energy except what is provided from the human rider.  Bikes are the ultimate green transportation, more than hybrids, electric cars, natural gas cars, bio-diesels or any other alternative transportation.  I read somewhere once that a car would have to get over 3000 miles per gallon to match the efficiency of a bicycle, and even then it would polute and induce climate change more than a bike would.

Road Rage is a problem for me when I am driving, but for some reason, not when I am riding a bike.  I hate slow traffic soooo much, and I am bothered by it almost every time I drive.  When I ride on the other hand, I almost never slowed down by anything except my own lack of strength.  I am free to cruise or put the power down as I see fit and not bother anyone, as long as there is a bike lane or a wide enough median.

Parking is super easy with a bike, and can be a huge pain with a car.  There’s no paying for parking, all you need is a bike lock and a place to lock it too.  At work I take my bike inside the building and keep it in a storage room.  At stores I lock up at a bike rack.  Sometimes there’s no convenient place to lock up and you have to find some signpost that’s a few hundred feet away from where you want to be, but in the city there’s always something to lock up to.

Our country’s dependence on foreign oil is one of the biggest political issues in the world, and there’s no better way to solve that problem than choosing a method of transportation that eliminates this need entirely.  I feel great thinking that I am doing my part to free my country of inflexible foreign dependence.  And I feel great that I am not sending as much money to the other side of the world to address my energy needs.

I have a very fuel-inefficient car that I am unwilling to part with even though it goes against some of my ideals.  It fits in nicely with some other ideals such as my love for driving fast and my love for all wheel drive in the snow and never needing to put tire chains on.  This lovely car of mine is saved from all kinds of short trips by my bicycle.  As I mentioned before, almost every trip I take within 3 miles of my house is with the bike, including work and shopping. I figure I save about 1500 miles of driving a year by taking my bike instead of my car.  This millage savings is even more significant when you consider that all of those miles would be driven with the car not quite warmed up, and this is when you pollute the most and when your engine is more susceptible to wear.  Just for driving to work I would start my car four times a day, going to work, to lunch, back to work, and home.  since I bicycle instead, there’s about 960 cold starts every year that my car is not being exposed to, not considering any weekends.  This saves a tremendous amount of wear and tear and extends the life of the vehicle drastically.

In my opinion everyone should go out and buy a bike or dust off the old one they already have, and go out for a cruise.  There’s so many good reasons to do so, and I’ll keep advocating bicycles as long as those reasons exist.