Commuting - How much time a week is devoted to commuting?

All of us have our different reasons for commuting, but I was curious as to how much time you spent each week dedicated to commuting.

I just got going myself, but I easily spent 2 to 2 and a half hours each day I commute just between riding and showering. However, I think it's worth it. Being off and on the bike every other season, it's hard for me to find regular times to ride. Commuting sort of kills two birds with one stone.

But at what point would you just say forget it and drive to work rather than ride? How long would your commute have to be before you saw it as a time consuming effort.

How much time a week is devoted to commuting?

Not enough. :) I'd feel different if I drove.

I'm willing to commit more time to cycling than to driving, because I figure I'm also getting my workout in and because I enjoy it. But there is a limit; I can't commute 50 miles each way by bike, because there would be no time left in the day beyond working, sleeping and commuting.

That said, I don't know that I actually spend any more time cycling than I would driving, once I factor in the variation in traffic driving, versus the consistency of cycling. Except that I got stuck behind a school bus this morning, and had to wait three stops to get around the bus.

Generally speaking, I ride in my work clothes, so no extra prep time or anything like that. Takes me 30 minutes one-way (15 minutes by car). Between the cost savings, the health benefits, and the stress relief factor, I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

I spend 45 minutes or less commuting each day. It takes about 25 mins to get to work - it's mostly up hill, and I take it slow so I don't show up too sweaty. My record is getting home in 17 minutes, but 20 is a more leisurely pace. I wear my work/street clothes for the commute, just like I would if I drove or took the bus, so changing isn't an issue. Nor is parking. :D


But at what point would you just say forget it and drive to work rather than ride? How long would your commute have to be before you saw it as a time consuming effort.

When it started taking 45+ minutes just to drive home ( thanks to the freeway doubling as a parking lot at rush hour ), I gave up and started cycling. Since then, I've been enjoying the extra free time I can spend with friends, or paddling my kayak, or reading a book.

My present commute is short enough (18-12 minutes) that I don't have to change clothes or shower. If I go to the pool before work, that means a change of clothing, which adds on perhaps 10 minutes, as well as extra milage, which adds on about 40 extra minutes of riding.

taking the train, if i catch it at the right time, will get me in 5 minutes earlier. otherwise biking is faster for me. roughly 45 min each way = over an hour of day for exercise that did not previously exist!

My time in the saddle each day is about 1 hr even. My 7 mile commute takes me 30 minutes +/- a couple minutes either way. Tack on an extra 5-15 extra minutes to shower and/or change at work in the AM and you're up to maybe an hour and a quarter per day. I shower when I get home, but that doesn't really count, because that shower is normally just in place of the pre-bedtime shower I used to take before I started bike commuting.

By metro, including walking and from stations, the commute to my office takes around an hour one way, so I'm saving at least 45 minutes a day plus getting exercise, stress relief, etc., etc. The bike commute for me is, therefore, an absolute no-brainer. And now that I'm hooked, I hope to keep doing it wherever I work until I retire, even if it twere to take a little longer.

I don't factor shower time into my cycle commute, because if I drive or take the bus, I'll shower before I leave home; when cycling, I shower at work. Same routine, just in a different order. When comparing the different ways of getting to work, I look at the time from when the alarm goes off to the time I walk into the office. During the summer, cycling vs. driving vs. public transit are all very close. Not that I did much cycling last winter, but I did notice my cycling time go up as the weather got colder, and especially when I had to ride on snow. That was one reason I decided to hang up the bike and take the bus instead.

In terms of specific numbers, summertime cycle commute is about 75-80 minutes per day (round trip), and wintertime was up to 95 minutes per day.

The same or less than if I drive. Thanks to L.A. traffic.

45-55 min. to work, 50min-1.5hrs back home (uphill), 5 days a week.

My commute is about 45 minutes each way 5 days/week. I also spend maybe an hour or so a week maintaining my bike (some weeks more than others). Driving takes maybe 20 minutes so I spend and extra 50 mnutes or so a day commuting. I shower at work, but do not include that in my commute time, because I would shower at home if I did not commute.

That said, commuting by bike saves me time. Before I rode every day I would frequently go to the gym in the morning for 45 minutes or so and then drive to work. Commuting lets me get to work at the same time I workout.

Paul

I don't consider my ride time as a commute time anymore. If I was driving then the drive is commuting time. The ride on my bicycle is part of my recreation time since I would have rode my bike after I got home on days that I drove. That amount of time I ride would have been the same as if I rode my bike to work.

When I was working my commute took me about 15-20 minutes each way. I don't factor in showering because I do that everyday.

For the last 2 or 3 years I was an all year commuter. Maybe a max of 5 days per year did I drive. Usually it was not because of the weather, but because of some stupid mandatory meeting (that my supervisor never seemed to have to go to) at another location.

If I just consider the time from my house to the office, it's slightly faster to drive: 20 minutes v. 15 minutes. So with two trips I'd save ten minutes a day. Big whoop. But I don't bike commute merely to get to work. I just like riding my bike and bike commuting is an excuse to go for two rides every day.

Commuting? roughly 6 hours a day. 3.5 of which is on the bike.

-R

I ride every day so give or take 90 minutes a day x 5 days = 7.5 hours.

Commute by bike, total time (round trip) is 1h30 door-door. 10 mins washing up time at each end and that's 1h50.

Commute by train, total time (round trip) is 1h30 door-door.

So it takes 20 mins extra by bike which is 1h40 per week. Benefits of commuting by bike are the fitness. Benefits of commuting by train is I get to read a book. Both are important things to me.

An hour a day on the bike, or a little more, and then some ancillary time. If I have to take a company car to go to a meeting, I like to bike in by half an hour before departure time to have time to cool down before changing clothes and hitting the road.

I don't consider my ride time as a commute time anymore. If I was driving then the drive is commuting time. The ride on my bicycle is part of my recreation time since I would have rode my bike after I got home on days that I drove. That amount of time I ride would have been the same as if I rode my bike to work.

Well said. :D

Right now on Mondays and Wednesdays I have to work in a city about 50 km away and I drive the car about half way and cycle the rest. Takes me an hour each way on top of the half hour drive each way. I simply don't have the two hours it would take to get there by bike alone directly from home. A good chunk of the time would also be spent on a completely deserted rural trail and I am not sure whether my light set up would be good enough for it and in any case I would have to keep the revs down when it got dark and hence take longer to complete the trip. I am thinking of driving closer to work when it gets really dark at quitting time. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I cycle from home to another workplace and it takes me 30-35 minutes each way. So I figure about 6 hours in the saddle every week plus whatever I do recreationally etc.

About two hours/day, 3-5 days/week. Add an hour or so of prep and extra laundry.

So that's eleven hours tops. Car commuting used about 7.5 or 8 hours.

Net extra time 2 or 3 hours at most. Not a bad deal.

I won't include time spent on BF. That'd be crazy! :)

About an hour and a half round trip, four days a week. So, six hours a week, which apparently isn't enough as I still ride the bike outside of the commute schedule. It'd be quicker, cheaper, and easier to ride the bus; but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Now, it's 10 hours a week commute time on the bike, 2 hrs a day.

If it were double that, I might find another way, and then ride perhaps every other day.
It's tough for me with a full time job of 60 hrs per week.

Wow, some great replies so far.

I definitely think I'm leaning towards the idea that I'm not really commuting. I'm just riding my bike and 45 minutes later, I happen to be at school or at home. :lol:

It is a beautiful thing, though. A little background: I used to work in the north Ft Worth area and moved from Denton (about 20 miles away), to Grand Prairie, which is like 40 miles away on the south side of DFW. As such, my commute via motorcycle pretty much sucked. Highway 360 is notorious for being a guaranteed parking lot at peak hours. It took well over an hour by motorcycle and it rained a lot the first month after the move.

Well, long story short, I lost that job about a year ago now and went back to school. My bicycle route takes me underneath 360. This morning around 7:40 a.m. I approached 360 and saw that it was indeed a parking lot. Big. Grin. I rolled on underneath the poor souls and enjoyed the rest of my ride to school.

45 to 55 minutes per day in the saddle. 10 to 15 minutes to get cleaned up at the office.

Driving takes 40 50 45 minutes round trip.

I just got going myself, but I easily spent 2 to 2 and a half hours each day I commute just between riding and showering. However, I think it's worth it. Being off and on the bike every other season, it's hard for me to find regular times to ride. Commuting sort of kills two birds with one stone.


90-110 minutes a day which is currently 6-7 hours a week.



But at what point would you just say forget it and drive to work rather than ride?
There are other options I've used in the past. While owning real estate I just didn't apply for jobs that weren't a comfortable biking distance away. After selling near the market peak and becoming a renter I just move.

How much time a week is devoted to commuting?

Not enough. :) I'd feel different if I drove.

+1

on the other hand, my commute is about 6 minutes in the morning and about 15 in the afternoon :)

I chose to live relatively close to work. I didn't want to spend my life on the road, either in a car or on a bike. Right now it's about an 50 minutes to an hour each day. Some times I take the long way to get a little extra training in.

Winter adds a good 10 to 15 minutes each way plus additional prep time. That's about my limit. If I lived further away, I might go multi-modal or just choose to ride once a week.

Don't get me wrong. I like to ride but I don't want to set aside much more time to bike than I already do at this point in my life. If I do some non commuting rides I prefer to do them with other people and make it at least partially a social outing.

I don't understand how some of you are able to ride to work in your work clothes.

Mine is 30 minutes and im drenched. In fact, im sweating by the 10 minute mark..and it doesn't matter how 'slow' i go, or how few layers i wear..i sweat. I envy people who don't...but it still perplexes me

I spend between 3 and 4 hours/day riding my bike to work and back, or roughly 18 hours/week. In the winter, or on really bad weather days, I multi-mode commute (bike + train) which drops the biking time to around 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on whether I take the train both ways or just one way.

I don't understand how some of you are able to ride to work in your work clothes.

Mine is 30 minutes and im drenched. In fact, im sweating by the 10 minute mark..and it doesn't matter how 'slow' i go, or how few layers i wear..i sweat. I envy people who don't...but it still perplexes me

I used to ride in work clothes but I'd only go on days when it wasn't too hot and I'd take it a bit easier in the morning. I'd sweat a little but I wouldn't be drenched. On a hot day, I'm going to be sweating by the time I walk from the parking lot to the office anyway.

Now I shower/change when I get to work and I ride as hard as I want. It doesn't really add much extra time. I just shower at work instead of at home before I leave.

I don't consider my ride time as a commute time anymore. If I was driving then the drive is commuting time. The ride on my bicycle is part of my recreation time since I would have rode my bike after I got home on days that I drove. That amount of time I ride would have been the same as if I rode my bike to work.

Excellent point, I missed your post before :( Totally agree. Time on a bus or train is time wasted for me, not true when on a bike.

Adam

I live far from work so my commute is a bit long, 22 to 25 miles each way depending on the route. Takes 1-1/2 hours each way.

The alternative to the bike is to take the bus for a one-hour ride to work.

I would rather spend the extra time on my bike and get a workout, rather than sitting on the bus.

I'm very fortunate to have a bike locker right outside my office building to store my ride and a full locker room with showers in the basement of my office. Only takes about 15 minutes to get cleaned up after a ride and ready for work. That's about the same time it takes me at home to get ready for work on the days I ride the bus.

Mine is about the same and I'm still lazy about it and won't do it when it's hot :). Is 1.5 miles even a commute ;) ?
+1

on the other hand, my commute is about 6 minutes in the morning and about 15 in the afternoon :)

I have a mixed mode commute: home-bike-train-bike-work. I leave home at 0500 and arrive at work at 0715. So 4.5 hours is taken out of each day for commuting. I do this 2 or 3 times a week. But as others have said, I don't regard it as time spent transporting myself to/from work. I see it as a great opportunity to spend more time with my bike :D

Max

Benefits of commuting by bike are the fitness. Benefits of commuting by train is I get to read a book. Both are important things to me.

This is one of the reasons I like my multi-modal commute; I get to do both :)

I realized that I didn't answer the actual time question originally posed; my total daily commute at present is about 2.75 hours. I spend about 45 minutes in the car (getting daughter to school and then getting car back home at the close of the workday). I spend about 1 hour on the bike (riding from school to metro and back) and 1 hour on the train.

This post made me look into what the distance would be if I ride all the way in, and skip the train, and I just determined that I think the total would stay the same. I plan to try it on Tuesday or Wednesday, just to see.

How much time a week is devoted to commuting?

Not enough. :) I'd feel different if I drove.


I don't consider my ride time as a commute time anymore. If I was driving then the drive is commuting time. The ride on my bicycle is part of my recreation time since I would have rode my bike after I got home on days that I drove. That amount of time I ride would have been the same as if I rode my bike to work.

Same. I only "commute" a mile each way. I go home for lunch, just to ride a little more. When I lived on the other side of the bay, I never considered riding a bicycle. Basically thought it was much too far. I look at what my commute would have been now and kick myself. I could have been riding 40 miles a day!

I hated every minute that I was locked in that cage when I drove. I love the bike ride so much that I wish it was much longer.

2-3x per week for me, 36 miles round trip. Takes 2 hours, and it's a great workout. Unfortunately, takes about 45 minutes longer than if I did it by car, since traffic isn't so bad around here during my work leave hours.

5 hrs.

Typically save about 10 minutes a day vs driving (including bike prep. and getting changed).

More time savings in bad weather (i.e bad traffic).

Between 6 hrs and 8 hrs of riding depending on the routes I take and the weather. It takes considerably longer in the winter to travel a given distance; 55 minutes in the winter versus 35 minutes for the same route in the summer.

I spend a negative amount of time commuting.

How is that?

I figure that the time it takes to drive plus the time it takes to exercise at the gym is greater than the time it takes to cycle to the workplace. So by traveling by bike and with the freedom from dedicated workout time, I'm saving time!

20 hours per week.

i live about 40 miles from work. i bike an hour to a bus stop and take the bus another hour to work. reverse that for the way home. multiply that by 5 days per week.

i do not own a car, so drive time is out of the equation for me. my commute times by various modes:

by bike: 45-50 minutes on my titanium road rocket, my other bikes are slower, but they're only for inclement weather.

by train: 50-55 minutes door to door once walking to/from stations is included.

by kayak: 10 minute bus ride to put-in, 20 minutes to set-up my boat, 165 minutes on the water, 20 minutes to break down my boat, 2 minute elevator ride from the marina level dock up to my condo.



when i kayak commute (which is only about twice a month), it's only a one-way trip home from work because it would just take to much time to kayak up to work in the morning, i'd have to wake up at 4 in the morning to make it in on time, which ain't never gonna happen (i take my kayak with me on the train for the morning leg). so all things considered, biking is my fastest way to get to and from work and if i bike commute all 5 days in a given week, that means i'm spending 7.5 - 8.3 hours commuting by bike that week.

Pretty much 3.5 hrs per day minimum. Each leg of the commute is bike-train-bike. I do it every work day (5 days a week). So that is about 18 hrs or so a week. By car, my commute would take me 2 hrs per day, or 10 hrs per week. So I have invested 8 hrs a week to get execise, stress reduction, reading time on the train, and cost savings.

My commute is 40-50 minutes (depending mostly on the wind) each way. Add in about 10 minutes to change clothes and get the stuff on and off my bike. So between 1.5 and 2 hours a day. That's comparable to the time it would take by bus or shuttle.

The drive would be about an hour round trip. And that's only if I'm willing to pay $100 a month for parking. If I want to cut that to $40 a month, I won't save any time by driving either. Figure in the time cost of a 45 - 60 minute exercise program and I'm way ahead on time.

That said, I wouldn't want my ride to be much longer than it already is. (Especially in lousy weather!)

Just under 2 hours a day, 600 miles a month towing 3 kids. I never have to find parking only takes seconds to load the crew and everyone benefits from the ride. In the car it is nothing but a scream fest. I will take the tranquility of the bike any day.
I can change in about the same time it takes most people to use the bathroom and that has sort of cast me as this Clark Kent guy.