Quantitative analysis of commute times
 

Here's a guy who reminds me of a quite a few people I knew when I was an undergrad at Berkeley. Engineers, mostly. I think he should stop thinking so hard and start riding his bike.

http://omninerd.com/2006/04/21/articles/50

I agree. Too much thinking is counterproductive.
Heck, I only pay attention to my cadence and my speed is picking up on its own. Silly computers.

Forget the cadence; listen to the Big Beat.

No doubt! How much time did he spend doing that? That might be a little over the top even for an engineer.

Does big band count? I've been listening to a few louis prima songs lately.

Artie Shaw? I don't even have a bike computer

Forget a bike computer, look for a real computer where you can find on the Internet your favorite tunes that may have fallen off the truck. Then get your self something that can play mp3's.

If that's what you like. Because I know Diddley, I prefer a different Beat

i dunno. if you're an engineer and a cyclist, and you love engineering and cycling best, then combining the two might be inevitable. he probably had a lot of fun doing that.


oh, snap, i was reading more of it and it doesn't seem to be about bikes at all. he still probably had a lot of fun doing that. haha.

"Because I know Diddley"
You knew Bo?

Hey that's some good stuff. Note the site is "omninerd" so math / computer folk like myself should feel right at home. :D Not surprising then that it looks cool to me!

Yay! According to the article, I commute in the 4th worst city! :beer:

Not only did he analyze all that stuff, he took the time to write it down, complete with footnotes, tables, and illustrations. Don't forget about the guys who are out to disprove his research. I'll bet that bunch is a hoot to hang around with at parties.

Hopefully, this guy just gets a kick out of doing that kind of analysis. It’s not exactly a revelation requiring statistical support, that if you travel when everyone else isn’t, you’ll get there quicker.

Regards,
Alan

Honestly, it's not that much work that he's done. A couple of seconds of data entry per day and a little bit of time spent running the data through a set of prepackaged routines to generate the results and create the plots. The write-up (including references and captions, not including machine generated plots) is just shy of 2900 words (shy of 1700 without references) -- that's maybe one day of effort to put this all together.

The only amazing thing here (to me at least) is that he actually remembered to time himself daily for a full year.

Here's what makes me laugh and shake my head:

Even though he concludes that the only sure solution to reducing commute times is getting cars off the road, it apparently never occurs to him (or perhaps it did, but it's too farfetched to mention) to get his own car off the road and replace it with a bike, even for a portion of the route.

Well obviously if we could each get everybody else's car off the road, car commuting would be faster and less stressful. ;)

I changed my work hours to slightly off-peak times (7-4, generally, but highly variable due to my responsibilities) and my car commute times dropped significantly.

When I worked 8-5 I spent, on average 55 minutes a day in the car. If I adhere to a 7-4 I spend around 37 minutes. Additionally, the 7-4 schedule commutes are less stressful (less traffic), allow higher MPG (no stops and starts), and less variable (less accidents/slowdowns).

A great part about bike commuting is, though, that the commute times never change appreciably on my route no matter when I start/stop.