Normal distance for commuting by bike?
 

I'm curious to see how many other crazy commuters there are out there. My current commute varies between 26.5 - 29 miles (one way) depending on my route (short & hilly or farther but flatter). I've figured a way where I bike in the whole way and then take the train partially back so that I end up doing almost 40 miles a day.

In the eyes of other commuters, how does this commute rank? I know there's some commuters in my area (North East NJ) that go a far way by bike, but I have yet to encounter someone with a 25+ mile commute.

I used to go round trip, so almost 60 miles a day, but I found that I'd arrive home burnt out and wouldn't have too much energy for much else.

Pretty happy to have 40 miles now :love:

At 60 miles per day you're looking at a minimum time of 3.5 hours, maybe closer to 4.0. That's just a lot of miles, and I wouldn't want to do it on a daily basis.

Train part of the way home is a good idea, if you can take your bike on it.

Mine is pretty idea. It's just under 20 km one way, and most days it takes 45-55 minutes.

My commute is about 66km round trip which works out to 10-11 hrs/wk of commuting. This year I've started taking the bus for a portion of the route a few times a week which cuts the time down to 8-9 hrs. Makes for fairly long days but my kids are out of the house so I don't mind.

My commute is 15km each way and I ride 2/3 times a week, takes about an hour. I'd do it more, but getting up at 6am is hard. 10kms would be my ideal commute distance, I could ride that everyday.

Mine is just over 10 km each way. I'd be fine if it was anything under 20 km. After that, it would likely start taking too long.

i only bike-it to work once, maybe twice a week when there's not chance of ice.
it's 17 miles to work, 22 home if I take the low-traffic nice way. i try to be on the road by 5:30AM, so i'm up a bit before 5AM to get b'fast and get loaded. i've got a 3 mile section with lots of bad pavement and cars. i like to get through there before traffic picks up.
like somebody said, i'm a bit tired when i get home. so only a couple time a week, max.

I look at it TIME wise and not distance wise.

Currently it's quicker for me to bike to work than it is to drive to work, especially in the wintertime.

I'd continue to bike to work as long as it wasn't longer than ~1.5x the amount of time to drive. After that I'm just wasting time.

If you've ever had a job where you had to drive a long ways twice a day, you know the feeling when you get off of work and say to yourself "I've still got a X hour drive home." (For me it was an hour and a half drive home... very long.)

+1. As much as I love riding my bike, but I wouldn't have much time left over for actually working with a commute like that. Or if I did, it would be that much less face time with my wife. ;) Maybe if I only worked part-time...

That's quite long. I used to live 27mi from work, and when I got into biking I would very occasionally drive to work with the bike, ride home, ride back in the morning, and drive home.

Then I moved to about 5mi from work, so I could ride pretty much every day.

Yeah, my commute round trip takes me around 3.25 - 3.5 hours, which is a while. Problem is that even with public transit my commute is minimum 1 hour (but that's the super expensive train) to 1 hour 15 mins (economical train). Way I see it I might as well spend the extra 30 minutes a day for most days and get 40 miles of training in.

You are absolutely in the long-range commuting category now. I live 26 miles from work and we are a single-car family. My commute is consistently 1 hour and 55 minutes, regardless of traffic or weather. On the days I hop the bus or train it is 2 hours and 10 minutes (about twice a week).

When talking with cyclists, some get it, some don't. Non-cyclists have a really hard time even grasping the concept that I do this because I enjoy it.

I've worked here for over 10 years so most folks know that I ride a long way to and from work, but there is the occasional new employee who asks about my commute. I'm always a little uncomfortable discussing it with people here. Mostly because I don't want to come across as braggadocios, so I try to just be matter-of-fact and then it can come off as false modesty ("Yea, I'll ride over 50 miles today. No biggie.").

At our company awards banquet, this past spring, one of our managers was at the podium, commending another employee for his daily 2-hour drive into work. A guy from my department called out, "McNair does that, too! Only he's on a bicycle!"

Nice! :thumb:

I figure anything over 20 miles one way is a long commute. Mine is only 15 miles each way; I do that 3 or 4 times per week, depending on my days off and work trips, i.e., going to the airport instead of the office.


We used to have a guy here who biked about 40+ miles each way, every day (he absolutely crushed it during the May-is-Bike-Month challenges). I didn't really start bike commuting until after he retired, but I still hear stories about him leaving for work at 4 am, literally wearing out bicycles every couple of years, and having to re-build bottom brackets in the parking lot before his return trip home.

I would consider 40 miles RT to be a very long commute. My commute is 32 miles RT and I wouldn't want to ride any farther. The main issue is the time rather than the distance. My commute ends up taking about 2:30 hours a day including time spent getting dressed, sitting at traffic lights, etc. My wife would be very upset if my commute took even more time. I occasionally ride the long way home, which extends my RT commute to 45 miles, but only on days when my wife is not home or otherwise engaged -- because I don't get home until after 7 pm.

The other big issue with long commutes is the weather. The longer the commute, the more likely to you are to have to deal with difficult weather conditions -- such as excessive heat, thunderstorms, ice, etc. I sometimes have to leave work late to avoid storms or catch a ride home with a coworker.

Why did you use the word "normal" in your thread title? You know your commute length isn't normal. Normal bike commute lengths are usually one to six miles.

My commute is 14 miles each way. I don't have a car. My other mode is the subway. Each mode takes about the same amount of time, so when I decide which to use, time isn't really a criterion, though preparing for the bike commute takes a little longer.

My commute is just under 3 mi. each way if I take a direct route. Yes, I know some will say, "just walk," I am not going to walk it, for me walking hurts.

I remember you. Let me know if you're willing to leave a little earlier in the morning (maybe 6:45am or so). And will swing by for a ride into the city. I did four days straight from home and one easy day for a little over 200 miles last week since my car was in the shop. Was damn tired by Friday. Going back to 2 to 3 days a week from home and more sanity...

Mine's similar; 21.8 km one-way is the shortest distance along bike paths (can be ~20km if I take major roads, which I don't). Those bike paths are some of the heaviest used in Vancouver though, so I take a detour putting me at 25km each way along quieter routes, with a nice rewarding 100m of pure descent for the last few km of my commute.

There are variations that take me ~27-30km along the seawall or river or something without adding much more time.

Sometimes (once a week?) will go for a 20-30km ride after work with buddies then ride home after that. That's the only time I'd approach 60 miles in a day though (and even then, I'm probably not there).

I'm doing 25 miles per day, but it's split up in 3-4 segements as I work at 3-4 clients per day

it's hard to work out an average speed, as it depends where I'm working at, and the time of day (lots of commuters early morning and after school, plus I ride on very busy roads in the city with lots of cars/busses/pedestrians)

3.5 miles each way in beautiful SoCal...

I remember you too! Too bad we never were able to get together.

It'll be tough for me to get up early enough to get out on the road by 6:45 but I can try sometime later this week or next just for the experience.

It's funny, "Normal" means 40 miles a day to me now. Like someone else said, non-bikers just don't get it.

I didn't call my commute normal but wanted to see what other bikers consider normal, because I can't use my coworkers or my wife as a benchmark as they aren't cyclists.

Normal and commuting is an oxymoron.

:)
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3.5 miles each way in beautiful NorCal as well.

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