I'm just getting to work in the mornings and I'll take our Greenway unless it's flooded, muddy, frozen or closed due to construction. Alternate is the shortest direct route. Depressingly predictable but the Greenway makes up for that in the morning, deserted, non-stop through a narrow vestige of natural forest.

Coming home I'm more varied, but still formulaic. Skip the forest when there are storm winds, branch out when the weather is nice and the sun is shining. One way for hills, another for sprint intervals, a different route for just a longer ride.

On my route I've come to know almost all the potholes, ruts, large road debris, and other hazards that are lurking in the dark waiting for me to run over it. So the familiarity allows me to effectively avoid them. So in this sense, it does improve your safety.

Certain parts of my route are usually the same but I try a lot of different roads to add variety and relieve boredom. Safety is always paramount and I never ride on certain roads that are too busy, narrow, etc. However, I can take a lot of different roads to work and back with close to the same mileage. When we are on daylight savings time, I sometimes ride a much longer route along local greenways that doubles my afternoon commute distance. I love going that way because there is no traffic along most of the route and it's very scenic, but it doesn't seem safe riding that far in the dark this time of year -- plus the greenway officially "closes" at dark. I probably would vary my route more often in the afternoons except my wife is always ready to eat dinner when I get home and doesn't appreciate it when I am late. I tend to take longer routes home when she has book club meetings or isn't home for some other reason. I don't often add much distance to my morning commute because I'm trying to get to work on time.

Personally, I rely on my lights and my eyes to see and avoid hazards on the road. I'm not sure what kind of roads you ride but around here we don't have too many ruts...at least not on paved roads..., large road debris is rather random, and potholes can develop nearly overnight. I'm not sure what you mean by "other hazards" that might sit still long enough for me to learn how to avoid them.

Different routes or always the same?

On the Commuting thread, ”Describe your Commute,” for my basic (minimal) 14 mile one way commute:

I can agree to the point that "large road debris," meaning (to me) large rocks, tree limbs, etc., tend to get cleaned up fairly fast or moved by cars and trucks. But I have to agree with the ruts and potholes point. I've seen some nasty ruts or pavement cracks, the kind that looks like they're designed to eat bike tires, that have lasted for a year or more. Likewise, there's a road near my commute that's got large dips in the pavement, not real potholes because the pavement is merely sunk, not broken. Hitting those dips after a rain could cause a wipeout if a cyclist didn't know about them. Hazards such as those I tend to route around. In some places, where the governments are fiscally strapped, I don't know that I could avoid by going a road or two over.

My perennial post about road hazards:

I haven't discovered alternative routes that I would consider "safe" for me. What options are exercised are increased mileage. Typically, going to work, the route is straight or may include a detour of an additional 4 miles. My motivation for increasing miles is not the boredom but rather my milage goal. I wanted to hit 3000 this year. Looks like I will miss it by about 100 miles with one day left!

So with the detour mentioned, my route can be 11 miles one way or 15. I would like to get into good enough condition to do a century next summer so I found another route that adds an additional 10 miles. This I save for the ride home. So my round trips are typically 22 miles, 27 miles, 30 miles all the way up to 40 miles. I track average speed etc and have improved over time with the additional hills on the 10 mile addition. At this point in time I am only 40 miles from 2900 this year. I plan on hitting it.

The weather plays a big part. I am still learning how to dress for the temperature ranges too. I find that this impacts how much effort I put into the ride. If I think I am going to overheat, I will slow down in general.

I admittedly found my favorite evening commute route thanks to work being done on the Mt. Vernon Trail. A relatively short section of it was temporarily replaced by a mulch path while it was being moved a bit further away from the parkway and straightened to solve some line of sight issues. Some local cyclists hated the mulch path so much they started a long thread on the WABA forum about alternate routes just to avoid it. One of those routes is now my new fave - I just leave the MVT a little earlier than I did before.

Agreed.

It's not as if we are going so fast we will be surprised by something new (at least I'm not)...

Road debris on the bike lanes do not get cleared up very quickly. There is fairly big piece of rock in the middle of the underpass where the bike lane passes. I have hit it once and it caused a flat tire. Subsequently I have managed to avoid it for the past two months. It's still there. Yeah, I know, I could get off my bike, pick it up and move it out of the way, but I'm lazy that way.

Pay it forward (or not)...

I know. I completely agree. Monday morning I will stop and push it off to the side.:-)

BoB trailers get used for trail maintenance , maybe bring a shovel?

There are a few variations I can take near my house, but for the majority of my 15.5 mile trek each way, I have basically 2 viable routes, one of them being 1 mile longer but less climbing and far less stressful. So I take that route 99.9% of the time.

I usually stick to my 4 main routes, but I occasionally explore a different side street or make a slight variation just to keep things interesting. And every once in a while I'll swing way out to explore a street or pass something that has been in the news or I had been curious about. Oh, and of course errands will have me riding places I don't usually go. I almost always look at a satellite view or street view online before riding somewhere unfamiliar.

I had a very minor route variation (5 minutes of being on a different road) that allowed me to decide between short and steep and long and less-steep to get up the same elevation. But then I got a flat from broken glass on the latter, so I went back to the short and steep route only.

On the other hand, road debris on the 'traffic lanes' tends to get very quickly swept onto the bike lanes.

That's my experience as well. They sweep the bike lanes perhaps twice a season, but about a week after the bike lanes are littered with debris. But it's beautiful right after they sweep it though. Butta.

I wish I could take different routes, but all other routes than the Hudson River Greenway are much worse. The Greenway has hardly any lights. NYC streets has 20 intersections per mile. Forget that.

I'm a creature of habit and the scenery of my commute is diverse enough that changing my routes wouldn't make it any more interesting. For the first couple of years I did make changes now and then to make the route more pleasant, faster, and/or safe.

If I have errands to run or just want a longer ride, then I'll take a different way home. Usually though I've got reasons to be home sooner rather than later so I take the quick way.

My morning route is always about get to work, so it is the shortest possible distance (diagonal arterial 6.5 m), although that will change next year as that road is up for a complete reconstruct and I'll likely have to make adjustments as the work progresses over the summer. I would not takes this route home as the traffic and parking are terrible in the afternoon.

Going home is my get some exercise ride and I have 2 basic routes (14-15m) that incorporate some bike lanes/trails/routes and offer some options for length or extension to fit my time constraints. Both also offer short offshoots for normal errands I do like bank/drugstore.

I do find there is some "safety" involved in a regular route. As there aren't lots of bikes where I commute in the city I find that if you're on a regular schedule, as are many of the cars, they see you regularly and know you will be there. I've even had a car tell me while waiting for a light soon after a rider was killed on his commute nearby that she was glad to see me and know it wasn't "her bike guy".

The ride to work is the same every morning, like clockwork. I'm not a morning person, so the fewer variables my addled brain needs to cope with, the better. In the evening, more often than not I have someplace to be or something to do, so I usually don't come straight home. I have a standard route for going home, but it doesn't feel so standard.

I don't think streets around here ever get swept. One of the problems with bike lanes is that the curb and gutter seems to be included in the bike lane width. The bike lanes are often the most heavily debris-ed part of the road, which is a problem since bikes can't deal with debris as well as cars. A golf ball-sized rock wouldn't even get the attention of a driver but would at the very least give me a flat.

Sticking to a marked bike path or MUP would reduce choice of routes, or around here, jobs and houses. I think there's only one marked bike path in my town that could serve as a route from work to home, and it's only 3/4 mile long. The MUPs are out of the way, so as not to interfere with cars, but lots of people drive cars or trucks to walk or cycle on them.