My city's blocks are roughly 100m long so I feel like I'm constantly stopping and waiting for lights.
Curious how many people (especially the Europeans when they wake up) have smooth continuous rides to work, or if your ride to work is very urban.
by FailFastandDieYoung
29 Comments
2 stops on 1 mile commute
American. 12 miles/19km. Usually 1 stop, sometimes none.
1 mile commute. constantly stopping and starting in downtown Chicago
Too many to count
6.7 miles one way in USA, I usually have to stop twice.
Only 2 miles, and no traffic lights. On a busy traffic day, 3 stops, but sometimes none at all.
Western Australia, 15km usually 0-3 stops
About 15k and I go through 2 lights, 2 roundabouts and about 7 stop signs so depends. Sometimes I never have to stop completely.
Well, I have not really gotten back to bike commuting yet per se but it would appear the blocks in my city are roughly 100m long as well. Some areas I wouldn’t have to stop, but most of them I would.
That said, that would just be for the 1.5 or 2.9 mile ride to the train station, since I don’t plan to bring my bike on the train at this point.
3 miles in a major American city, but not during rush hour. I can usually get away with only stopping at 3 or 4 lights, but I’m still slowing down like 20 times. I’m on a fixed gear so I try to avoid stopping as much as I can lol
I have multiple possible commutes, fully stopping usually only happens at left turns and large intersections, could be anywhere from 2-4 times
Oulu, finland 9 miles per way to work, all on shared paths between pedestrians and cyclists, 1 traffic light
European who just woke up: very urban doesn’t necessarily mean many stops. The commute to my last job included crossing the entirety of Leiden and had 2 traffic lights, and typically 3 points with a foot on the ground.
My new 20 km commute has between 5-8 lights depending on the route I take, and about half of those are guaranteed stops.
There’s maybe two stop/yield signs on the bikepath, but otherwise outside of it there’s three traffic lights over the 8 kilometres. For the most part though, I’m on a proper cycle path. If I don’t take the path though, because sometimes its flooded/wintered up, it’s only another stoplight. But we do have yield at stop signs for cyclists so it’s not super bad. The main issue is that I have to go slow because even though not every block is a stop sign, it’s impossible to see around corners because of parking or just tall and compact buildings.
Depends on the lights. I once made it to my office (4mi/7k ish) without having to put my foot down but that involved lights in my favor and some balancing until the light changed.
I will sometimes bike a little further to pick routes with fewer stops (long the water etc).
I’m a bit of a unicorn: live in the southern US, city pop well under 100,000, but I’ve only got to stop at one light on my 4mi commute. In October a tunnel will be completed so that’ll mean 0 stops! Greenway the whole way smooth sailing along creeks.
Enough that it’s a computer bike and not a road bike
3 miles in an urban area. Four traffic lights (including one unpleasantly busy intersection that doesn’t have a protected left turn), quite a few stop signs, some of which can effectively be ignored … about four cannot
My commute is largely (99%) down a single straight main artery. Work is one block to the left, home is second house from the corner. The artery road has a few segments that are each on a timed pattern of controlled intersections. These differently timed segments come into and out of phase. I studied the phase enough to know the schedule. One time I sat at one end of my commute until the lights came into phase late in the evening such that I could blast down the road on my fixie at about 36km/h, never hitting a red light, never having to slow down. Made the 9km commute in seconds under 17 minutes.
There are six segments so I usually make 3-5 stops at red lights when crossing into the next segment on a normal commute. If traffic is heavy I will have to slow/stop as I approach what is now a green light but that has a line of cars starting up from a stop.
It is impossible to drive a car faster than I cycle in any road condition on this road no matter how hard the cagers slam on their accelerator and brake pedals
My commute is like 8ish blocks in San Francisco. There are 5 stoplights. None of them detect bikes.
Depends who’s watching.
10 miles, Brooklyn to Manhattan – more than I have ever counted! Many red lights, though some are occasionally safely runnable.
Usually once or twice on a kilometre. I live in a dense French city, but we have signs that allow to handle a lot of red lights as yield.
(And not just right turns, where the traffic is easy to understand and the volume is smaller it is also allowed to yield when going straight/turning left. The sign always tells what movements they allow.)
About 20 stops on 20 km each way.
Rural Germany. I have a 12 km commute into the city and have to stop up to four times. Minimum times to stop would be once if all traffic lights are in perfect timing.
At my current commute? 6 stop signs total in 7 miles. My current commute is the easiest commute I’ve ever had in 12 years of commuting.
15 km, 8 traffic lights/places where I have to yield when necessary. That does not equal 8 stops. Lights are often green and when there is no traffic, there is nothing to yield to. Large groups of schoolkids riding next to each other at a very slow pace are the most annoying thing on my route.
On my 8 km commute there are maybe 5 intersections that I need to stop at,but some days I get lucky and its all green.
3 traffic lights en 2 other crossings where I need to give way and sometimes have to stop and wait to cross, in 7 kms. European that just woke up 🙂