CoogansBluff

Anybody have more miles on their bike than car last year? I'm sure it's not unusual, but curious to see how common. Just discovered that I did. I feel grateful that I work from home, which limits my time in the car and provides me more time for biking.

indyfabz

Not this year, but I am sure I have done it in the recent past as well as in the not so recent past. I started riding "seriously" as an adult in 1986. Neither I nor my mom owned a car between 1983 and 1995, when I bought one for her that I would borrow on some weekends during riding season. When it was totaled while parked it was over 18 years old with only a bit over 108,000 miles. My current vehicle is a bit over 3.5 years old. It's about to hit 9,500 miles. That's about 2,700 miles/year. In 2017 I logged probably 1,600+ loaded touring miles in addition to road and commuting/errand miles.

UniChris

Speaking literally, 0 is not greater than 0.

Speaking meaningfully, yes, I pedaled more! Even when counting riding in other people's cars. Around a thousand under my own power, probably just over half of that in the cars of family and friends.

Only by counting trains and planes would miles conveyed exceed miles pedaled.

In terms of overall impact though, I probably caused more road vehicle miles than I rode, especially if counting not only individually specific trips where people met me, but a fair share of support infrastructure - trucking food to the supermarket and packages of lycra or parts to my building, etc. Nor can I claim that ridden miles displaced any vehicle miles.

I occasionally think about getting into the mindset where occasionally renting a car would be an option - pretty much exclusively as a way to get to rides that I can't get to by rail.

San Rensho 

Been there, done that. When my office was one mile from home, and I was riding about three to five thousand miles a year, I easily put more miles on my bike in my car. Now unfortunately, since I'm working for somebody else and I have to commute no, I don't have the time to ride my bicycle in the morning and I put a lot of miles on my car

Moishe

Yep, I did. I talked about it here:

Limit your carbon buttprint

But some professor from Trump University spoiled the discussion. Hope you have better luck with this thread.

DaveSSS 

I'm retired, so most of my driving is to a store or restaurant. I may drive as little as 1500 miles a year and I cycled 3800. I used to ride 5000 per year, but then my knees wore out. I'm pedaling on knee replacements now.

I-Like-To-Bike

Probably every year since 2002. From 2002-2012 I commuted to work by bike for approx. 5000 miles a year, plus just riding around on the weekends, and almost never drove my car to work or in town. I usually only drove when my wife and I drove out of town. Our 2003 Sentra, bought new, now has about125,000 miles, most of it accumulated by my wife's driving around town and our yearly trips back to the East Coast prior to 2018. The last few years I have been driving my wife around town for various appointments and shopping in an old Hooptie I bought for the purpose (2000 Chevy Prizm, a Corolla clone made in the Fremont factory with a 5 speed manual and close to 200,000 miles on it), I have added about 3000 miles in the last 2½ years on that car.

DrIsotope

I've averaged 10k miles a year on the bike for the past five years, and my 15yo car has... 90k miles on it, so yeah. I ride at least double the miles that I drive.

But I've been driving for 30 years and riding for 5, so I'm still in a pretty big mileage deficit.

Ogsarg

I live 57 miles from work so no. My daily commute in the car is about what I do on the bike all week give or take a few.

Something to look forward to in a few years when I'm retired.

wipekitty

I think I just barely made it in 2019.

I generally only drive if I need to go somewhere far. 2019 had two trips to see family (600 miles, 900 miles). There was also a move to a new city (1200 miles), a work trip with co-workers (450 miles) and a solo work trip (450).

Otherwise, I'm at probably ~500 miles for picking up heavy stuff, airport duty, the two rides I got from others with my bike, and the three times I drove to work.

2019 was a bad cycling year for me (only 4,400 miles), vs. ~4,100 car miles. I definitely had more bike than car miles for 2015-2018.

bikecrate

I'm lucky that I work close by so my mileage is low on my car. I just cracked 100,000 miles on my 17 year old Honda this past year. My bike riding has varied. I'm probably in the 4,800 - 5,200 miles a year range. So it is pretty close.

winston63 

Yes, I ride considerably more than I drive, but I've deliberately replaced most of my driving with bike trips. I cycled around 6500 km in 2019, I probably drove no more than a few hundred km.

Riveting

In 2016 I put 4x as many miles on the bike than I did on the car (8,500 vs 2,000), I worked 10 miles from home, and commuted by bike almost every day, 5 days a week, except not in the rain or falling snow, due to safety, not discomfort. And rode a ton on the weekends and after work. I didn't even qualify for an oil change that year (and possibly not even the year after), but I did go through a chain and set of tires every 3 months.

Welshboy

From 1982 to 2018 I was a company car driver averaging 24,000 miles a year. Now I'm semi-retired, I probably did an absolute maximum of 2,000 miles in 2019 comfortably below my cycling mileage of 3,125 miles (5,000km). In 2020 that difference will widen even further!

John_V 

7,709 miles driven in 2019, 8,005 miles on the bike. Last year was not a good year for cycling miles as I normally ride 10,000 or more miles a year.

55murray

Yes, routine for me. I drive about 1500 miles and ride about 3500. I only have a 3.5 mile commute I do exclusively by bike, plus summer long road rides. I've had my 94 Plymouth acclaim for 21 years now.

DaveLeeNC

Not totally fair as we are a 2 car family and my wife's car is our joint trip car. That said my 7500'ish bike miles this year more than doubled my personal car miles.

dave