brunop

check this out. kinda innersting.

https://business.bostonherald.com/bus...ticleid=186804

velogreen

Lots of great stuff in there! Indirect positive impacts of bike commuting that people usually don't think about. Thanks for posting that article.

slugman

always good to see something somewhat positive to be written... if only it counteracted all the cars here that want to kill me

rajman

I thought it was odd that they thought that studded tires were more remarkable than heated cup holders for a bicycle. AFAIK both bikes and cars have had available studded tires decades before heated cup holders.

meteparozzi

With high pressure slicks and a solid-fork hard tail?

Does anyone else have a similar experience between commuting on a mountain bike versus a road bike? Obviously there are going to be speed differences, but they make it sound like the road bike is a ferrari and the mountain bike tugs along like some Model T.

Just looking for feedback from those that have ridden both - I only have a mountain bike I commute with, and it seems plenty fast to me. If the speed gains are that serious between the two, I might be justifying a new purchase in the near future.

mopey

Yes i can say that my new cyclocross commuter (norco ccx) is alot more fun to ride than the giant yukon with semi slicks. Riding position took a little getting used to but now feels great and handles my commute just great.

buzzman

+1 it'd be great if it had even an incremental shift in the hostility of some Boston drivers. I've read many articles about Boston's falling population rate being traced to the negative experience of commuting by auto in Boston. Maybe if more people considered a bike as a way to commute it might shift things a bit.

newbojeff

How about this short Tale of the City that was in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine yesterday?

Az B

Yes, it's like night and day. Mountain bikes are great for trails or commutes that have some off road portions, but if you're riding on the road, even an old tuoring bike is far more efficient.

It is a lot like comparing a Ferrari to a Model T.

Everybody should own a mountain bike and a road bike.

Az

recursive

A road bike vs a hybrid with front shocks is a pretty drastic difference. I've ridden both. Never going back.

hairlessbill

Yeah, it's a big enough difference especially if your commute is longer than about 5-6 miles each way. I've used just about every type of bike to commute with and a dedicated road bike is still the 'easiest' way to go. A lighter bike with strong, light wheels is just a joy to ride no matter how you slice it. Ideally it should have clearance for fatter tires (so you can get a softer ride if you want and for mounting studded/knobby tires for snow) and fender/rack mounts.

Definitely the mountain bike is the more rugged toss-it-around-like-you-don't-care bike but the road bike is the one you want for fast-in-traffic-muck-it-up-ride-at-20+mph riding. Biggest problem with the road bike (especially modern ones) is the lack of carrying capacity and ability to put wider road tires in them.

YoungerNow

Nice article. One of the guys the quoted is a coworker -- I'm pretty sure I've seen him suited up to leave in the evening.

Anybody notice that 3 of the 4 employers they mentioned (Sun, Akamai, ATG) were computer-related?

HardyWeinberg

The article says he "cut his South Weymouth to Boston commute by 30 minutes each way by switching from a bulky mountain bike to a sleek commuting bike". Is that like a 15 mile trip? 30 miles per day? If he can maintain 25mph on his roadbike, that would be 36 min to go 15 miles. If his mtn bike cost him 30 min, that would be 66 min for 15 miles. The latter sounds reasonable to me, but the former, unless he's a real ath-a-lete, does not.

Saving 30 min total over 30 miles, is that 90 min r/t on the roadbike vs 120 min r/t on the mtn bike? That would be a 5 mph difference. That still seems high. I don't get close to that difference between my flatbar roadbike and mtn bike, but I haven't compared them over distances longer than I don't know 8 miles. Maybe dropbars make all the difference in the world, but I gather that dropbars most benefit those w/ true athletic level aero-form (back arched, elbows in, yadda yadda), not so much those who mostly just bend down (and expose their backpacks or panniers). Maybe he left the bigass knobbies on his mtn bike, and maybe it had full suspension w/ LOTS of travel, who knows...

FormerFF

Yeah, maybe he was using the full zoot mtn bike with knobbies, but I've found the difference between an unsuspended mtn bike on city tires and a sport road bike to be about 3 mph. What really impressed me was that one guy who said his employer listened to employee requests. I'd like to work for a company like that.

DCCommuter

Wow. It's pretty rare to see an article in the mainstream media about cycling where the reporter doesn't feel the need to make some backhanded comments about cyclists breaking the law and obstructing traffic. Plus there was only an oblique reference to safety instead of the fear-mongering that is usually included in such articles.

velogreen

I agree wholeheartedly with this. You can put slick tires on a mountain bike or buy lighter components and so on, but it still isn't the same.

The other thing about road bikes--if you are comparing them to a mountain bike with, say, shocks--is that generally road bikes are stiffer. I dislike any "give" from a bike on the road; stiffness for me makes the commute more predictable and I have better control overall. The differences most would find might be subtle, but riding a road frame definitely has its advantages.

Brian Ratliff

Don't know if you've been on a road bike before, but my own experience, when I went from my mountain bike to my first road bike, it was kind of like that: trading in the Model T for a farrari.

Nicodemus

WTF world is this, what are these people doing??? watching TV?? grrzzll shiznnitttllee blaarrrggghhh wtf wtf