Super Eco

When I moved to Vancouver, Canada a few months ago, one of the first things I noticed was how bike-friendly the city is. There are bike lanes on designated streets in congested areas, and almost every other non-busy street is a bike route. A bike-friendly path snakes all around the seawall, where sparkly glass condo high-rises meet the ocean. Every business has a bike rack out front.There are even special accessible-from-your-bike stoplight-changing buttons! Bikes, bike gear, and people on bikes are everywhere.

So what’s my problem? I can’t seem to get used to using my bike to run errands. I’m a cyclist, but for years I’ve been associating the act of getting on two wheels with exercise, not groceries. But I'm not alone, and there's help and motivation at hand.

Speaking of motivation, have a look at these points; riding bikes instead of driving benefits us in a ton of ways:

• Economics: Bikes and bike maintenance cost less than cars. Bike riding promotes fitness, and fit people need less health care.
• Environment: 40% of all car trips are made within 2 miles of the home; the same trip by bike keeps 15 pounds of pollutants out of our breathing air.
• Health: Biking is great exercise, and fun, too!
• Transportation: Bicycles currently displace over 238 million gallons of gasoline per year by replacing car trips with bicycle trips.  Biking is the 2nd-favorite mode of transportation (a distant 2nd to car trips).

Interested in making biking a viable choice for your own commutes or short-trip travel? The League of American Bicyclists has published a map of bike-friendly communities around the country; have a look and see if yours is among them (Pennsylvania, where I used to live, has none, alas!)

Obviously, not every commute or community lends itself to biking, but events like the monthly Critical Mass help bring a taste of activism and awareness to cycling as a way of life. It takes a huge shift in mindset and practice to change the impulse of hopping into the car for short trips to learning to allot the time and necessary gear for walking or biking, with my reuseable grocery bags in tow. Me, I’m still working on it.